Vanishing Act


Cate Blanchett and I are trying to determine whether she’s a fake — or whether she’s merely as hidden from herself as she seems to be hidden from strangers who would like to capture her essence over breakfast at the Chateau Marmont, tape recorder and pen at the ready. It’s the Sunday morning of the Oscars when Blanchett and I meet, and there’s a slight fizz of anticipation in the Los Angeles air, a kind of hometown pride that one senses. There have been soirees and private parties going on since Friday night, but in the restaurant at the Marmont everything is calm, cool and collected. The Marmont, I decide, is too hip to be excited, which is probably why Blanchett has elected to stay here with her friend, the makeup artist Jeanine Lobell (creator of Stila), instead of at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she was initially booked. When she walks in at 10:10, all in black, except for her bright blond crown of boyishly cut hair, no one so much as looks up from their conversation. Then again, despite her singular beauty, she’s simply not the kind of actress who begs to be stared at, who enters places with that “I am somebody” awareness of herself that demands attention. She’s a dignified, pre-red-carpet star caught in a celebrity-tweeting culture, with the result that she’s learned how to promote her role of the moment — in this instance, that of a ruthless C.I.A. agent in the thriller “Hanna,” directed by Joe Wright — without seeming to be promoting anything, least of all herself. I dutifully bring up the subject of the film and mention that I found it beautiful looking but disappointing. Blanchett says she took “Hanna” on “because it was the best first 20 pages of any script I’d read — brutal, terrifying and suspenseful.” And then she’s happy to move on to other matters. It’s an art all its own, this straining toward the shadows of self-effacement when you’ve been shoved into the limelight, there’s no doubt about that.

Blanchett is whippet thin and wearing black jeans with a black Gaultier jacket (this much she will divulge) with what she describes as a “wispy, lacy quelque chose” underneath. Her face is bare of makeup except for perhaps a smidgen of mascara, and she wears no jewelry save for a striking onyx and gold ring. Her nails are unmanicured, which on her looks like the last word in efficient chic, and I suddenly find myself wondering why I bother with a weekly polish. Mostly, though, I find myself staring at her skin, which has been justifiably much-commented on by interviewers and is, perhaps, the most divalike thing about her: luminous and poreless and the color of a pale peach. Second only to her skin is her bone structure, which is a gift from the gods, and then come her eyes, which are a piercing blue-gray with tiny pupils. Not to mention her generous, mobile mouth. Together these visual assets can be played up or played down, depending on the maquillage — depending, indeed, on whether she wears so much as a dab of lipstick — which is why Blanchett can look alternately wanly attractive, as she does in the 2005 Australian indie film “Little Fish,” playing a troubled woman trying to rise above her past, or undeniably stunning, as she does later that night when presenting an Oscar for best costume and makeup, dressed in a haute couture Givenchy gown (one of two gowns that she chose between) that made everyone else look tacky.

Take the matter of Blanchett and fashion, for instance. She wears clothes with great ease, as anyone who has ever spotted her in a magazine layout knows, and she seems to have an instinctive grasp of what looks good on her. Yet she never comes across as the sort of woman who spends the better part of an afternoon touring the shops for the latest in designer jeans. One might wonder, for one thing, whether she has the time, given that she is the co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company with her husband, Andrew Upton, as well as the very hands-on mother of three sons, Dashiell, Roman and Ignatius, who range in age from 9 to 2. “They’re a little pack,” she says. “Our first one has a real radar for popular culture, which my husband has without participating in it. They keep me connected.” Then there is her interest in all things green, which starts with her personal involvement — her house in an upper-class suburb of Sydney is equipped for passive cooling (using solar panels on the roof to power the air conditioning) and thermal heating — and extends to her work with an organization called the Australian Conservation Foundation. Blanchett does admit to liking clothes — “I love dressing up,” she says, “although that doesn’t mean necessarily on the school run” — and the stylist Elizabeth Stewart, who has worked with the actress for a number of years, considers her a natural in this area. “Cate is extremely knowledgeable about fashion and understands it in the way that a fashion editor would,” Stewart says. “I don’t think she spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. She just happens to be extremely smart and picks up a lot about any aspect of her very broad world. Her choices are pretty swift and decisive, and always very true to herself. She wears what she loves. It’s pretty ‘pure.’ ”

Or take the matter of Blanchett’s finely chiseled biceps. I noticed them first when she flexed them impressively at the photo shoot the day before, which took place at a Spanish-style white stucco house in Los Feliz — also known as Old Hollywood — that Cary Grant once lived in with Randolph Scott. These days the house, which boasts coral lounges around a turquoise pool fringed with purple bougainvillea, is inhabited by Jeffrey Deitch, the former financier turned art dealer who is now the director of MOCA, and is filled with provocative contemporary pieces, including a large unpacked piece labeled “Fragile” that sits in the entryway.

By the time I arrive at the shoot from my hotel — my taxi driver has trouble finding the out-of-the-way address — it has been going on for several hours. It is an unusually cool day, and Blanchett, who has just gotten off the plane from Australia, is wearing a lilac terry robe over a gold gown to keep warm. She goes through her paces like a trouper, despite her fatigue and having suffered through a spider bite, investing each shot with a narrative arc, calling on the skill she puts into delivering information on screen about characters as diverse as Queen Elizabeth I, Charlotte Gray, Veronica Guerin, the elf queen Galadriel, Katharine Hepburn and Bob Dylan. Blanchett seems patient and unfussy but also keeps at a slight remove from the proceedings in her regally self-possessed way. (When I asked her whether she felt nervous about giving an award at the Oscars, she answered with a simple “No.”)

So, over soft-boiled eggs (Blanchett orders a side of spinach) the next day, I bring up the biceps issue and the more general one of her svelteness. Blanchett doesn’t admit to dieting (wouldn’t it be nice if someone other than Carrie Fisher did?) but does avow how she doesn’t have a big sweet tooth. She also explains that she and her husband gave each other running shoes for Christmas and have renewed their commitment to exercise; Blanchett spends a half-hour on the elliptical trainer four days a week. “I don’t enjoy it,” she says, “but I certainly have more energy.” We go on to talk of other things, of the perils of performing versus writing (Upton is a writer as well as director), the limitations of psychotherapy (she’s never been in “very intensive” therapy), how death doesn’t solve anything (“I’m not interested,” she says, striking a rare note of annoyance, “in using my father’s death as some touch point for why I’ve become an actor — it’s grossly opportunistic”) and the crucial importance of timing, especially when it comes to romance. “Don’t you think like most things, like comedy, like sex, like anything, it’s about timing? I think we collided with each other,” she adds, referring to her husband, “at what turned out to be the perfect time. We knew each other socially and we didn’t get on and we played poker one night and I don’t know how we ended up kissing but we did and he asked me to marry him about three weeks later and we got together in the same spirit. . . . Maybe I’ve got a lack of consequence,” she adds, “a healthy lack of consequence.”

Almost two hours have passed, and somehow or other I begin to imagine that I’ve actually gotten to know Cate, that inside of the face she shows to the world is someone who shares my interest in outsider art and makes use of the same nickname for one of her sons that I used to use for my daughter (“Noodle”). She is so friendly and present that it is hard to believe she has also succeeded in eluding my grasp, but this is exactly what I discover to be the case when I read the transcript of our interview and realize that she’s revealed nothing she hasn’t revealed before, that there’s very little she has actually given away. And yet . . . it felt so intimate as we continued talking, especially when she wrote down her e-mail and phone number and I promised to send her an article I’d written. I couldn’t have been imagining it all, could I? Or could I?

Perhaps this effect of seeming open despite being so contained is yet another testament to her acting skill, her ability to slip under the skin of such a range of characters — including the Cate Blanchett who is accessible. When I asked her at the end whether she ever considered herself blessed, which is a question I’ve never asked anyone before but which seems right when applied to Blanchett, who genuinely seems to have it all, including a highly articulated sense of priorities, she answered: “Lucky. I feel very lucky. I’ve been very lucky being in the right place at the right time.” Which is not at all what I meant — she’s more than lucky, after all, she has made choices, plotted out the story of her own remarkable career and rich life — but how to explain to a woman who insists on acting ordinary just how extraordinary she is without sounding like a panting, maddened fan? So instead I ask her what her fame means to her, and there again, quick as can be, she upends the question by stepping to the side and ducking her head. “I’m constantly humbled,” she says. “Just at the moment when you think, I’ll call and get a table at this restaurant, they’re always like, ‘Who?’ So whenever you try and pull that out, it never works. People are always saying they loved me in ‘Titanic.’ ”