Cate Blanchett at Cannes

by Elisa Giudici

Cate Blanchett. Photo © Elisa Giudici

Cate Blanchett came to Cannes ostensibly to spotlight the Displacement Film Fund, the initiative she co-founded with the UNHCR to support displaced filmmakers and stories about forced migration. But the conversation quickly expanded into something broader: a sharp, funny, deeply thoughtful reflection on acting, authorship, AI, artistic risk, and the changing state of cinema itself...

Dressed in black with oversized salmon-colored sunglasses straight out of the 1970s, Blanchett moved easily between self-deprecating humor and serious industry critique. She spoke about Carol once being viewed as a dangerous commercial proposition, described Tár not as a “cancel culture movie” but as a film about the brutality of artistic creation, praised Todd Haynes and Martin Scorsese as directors who build entire cinematic worlds around actors, and argued that the biggest issue with AI is ultimately one word: consent.

A few highlights from the conversation follow.

On presiding over the Cannes jury in 2018

I was actually very nervous about taking the role. I remember calling Guillermo del Toro beforehand and asking him: ‘How did you do it?’ And he gave me this surprisingly simple advice. He said: ‘Make sure you arrive first every day and sit in a different seat every time.’ It sounds banal, but in any room, the person who speaks first often shapes the entire conversation. Changing seats constantly shifted the dynamic.

One of the things I realized very quickly is that judging films has nothing to do with personal taste. Your responsibility is to understand what the filmmaker is trying to do, not whether it aligns with your own sensibilities. Sometimes a film wouldn’t fully connect with me on first viewing and another jury member would passionately defend it as a masterpiece. So I’d go back the next morning and watch it again. That was one of the great gifts of the experience. You learn that sometimes you’re simply not ready to receive a film yet. Deep listening becomes incredibly important. You can’t arrive with an agenda.

The jury itself was extraordinary. We came from completely different artistic backgrounds and countries, but everyone was acutely attentive not just to performance or direction, but to editing, cinematography, production design: every element of filmmaking. That level of conversation was exhilarating.

And there’s something strangely beautiful about the secrecy of the process. Cannes protects the deliberations very seriously. Once the screenings end, they literally stop people from leaving so the jury can remain completely isolated. It felt almost like being part of a secret society.”

On why Carol once felt “dangerous”

“Nobody wanted to finance Carol. Which feels absurd now because it’s such a deeply romantic and universal love story. But at the time it was considered risky simply because it centered a non-heterosexual relationship. What was extraordinary about Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt was that it offered those characters a happy ending. That was incredibly rare for stories like that.

You didn’t have to be gay to connect to the film. It was about desire, fear, vulnerability, longing. It was a profoundly human relationship. And I think audiences were much more ready for those narratives than the industry was. You now see films with queer relationships at the center premiering in major festivals without being treated like exceptions or “special interest” stories. That shift matters enormously.”

On Tár and the “cancel culture” interpretation

“I never saw Tár as a film about cancel culture. For me it was a meditation on power and on the brutality of the creative process. Lydia Tár is someone who is profoundly brutal with herself before she’s brutal with anyone else, and I think that violence inevitably gets externalized. Creation often involves destruction. Those two energies coexist constantly. There isn’t really a separation between them.

What fascinated me was watching someone who had built her entire identity around control suddenly lose that control. Someone who had lived entirely inside a state of mastery and precision suddenly experiencing collapse. That interruption of flow was artistically fascinating to me.”

On a bizzare fable del Toro told her recently

“Guillermo del Toro told me this bizarre story recently, a kind of French fable about the asshole declaring itself the most important organ in the body. All the organs start arguing about who matters most: the heart says it’s the center of emotion, the brain claims intelligence, the lungs talk about breath and inspiration. Then the asshole says: ‘Try doing it without me.’ So it shuts down, and the whole body collapses.

The point is that even unpleasant or difficult forces have a function. In art, frustration, conflict, disappointment. Those things are often what produce something interesting or beautiful. You wrestle with them. You need resistance sometimes.”

On what separates a great director from everyone else

“Increasingly I think a great director is someone who knows exactly where to put the camera. Sometimes you’re on set and something feels wrong. Not because the acting is wrong, but because the perspective is wrong. The camera isn’t in the right place. Marty Scorsese talks about this constantly — that directing is fundamentally about knowing where to put the camera.

Other directors build entire imaginative worlds around actors. Todd Haynes, for instance, creates playlists for every actor. He shares films, visual references, music, atmospheres. You enter the mental landscape of the movie before you even begin shooting. He’s incredibly generous in the way he shares the emotional architecture of the film.

Scorsese communicates similarly, but often through cinema itself. On The Aviator he screened screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday for me because he wanted me to absorb that rhythm, that velocity, that attack. He didn’t necessarily explain it intellectually. He wanted you to feel it. And I think the best directors also know their limitations. They know what they’re strong at and they build teams around themselves that compensate for what they’re not strong at. Cinema is profoundly collaborative.”

On preparing to play Bob Dylan

“While I was finishing Elizabeth: The Golden Age I was constantly watching the Pennebaker Bob Dylan documentary because I knew I was about to fly to Montreal and start shooting I’m Not There. I remember panicking because I thought I hadn’t prepared enough. I felt like I was moving directly from one enormous role into another without enough space in between.

But I must have absorbed it all by osmosis because my body was changing for the role, I was living with all those images every day, and then eventually you arrive on set and realize the preparation only takes you so far.

At a certain point you have to leave all of that behind because nobody wants to see your homework onscreen. The real work starts when you enter the atmosphere the director has created, when you put on the costume, when you start responding to the other actors and to the environment around you.”

On Woody Allen, Blue Jasmine, and Penélope Cruz’s advice

“With Woody Allen you often had one or two takes and then you moved on. Penélope Cruz gave me this wonderful piece of advice before Blue Jasmine. She told me: ‘If you want another take, blame the accent.’ Since Woody didn’t speak Spanish, she would apparently always ask for another take because of her accent.

So I started doing the same thing. I’d say: ‘Sorry, can I do that again? I messed up the accent.’ That was sometimes how you got a third take. But there was also something thrilling about that level of urgency. If everyone knows there’s no time, the entire set enters a kind of collective concentration that feels almost theatrical. Everybody locks in together. And when it works, it’s electrifying.”

On choosing roles that surprise her

“The only roles that really interest me are the ones where I think: ‘I never imagined myself doing that.’ Playing Elizabeth I when I was still basically an unknown Australian actress changed everything for me because nobody expected me to do that. Later, playing Bob Dylan felt similarly destabilizing in the best possible way. Those are the projects that force you into unexpected territory. They push you somewhere you didn’t know you could go.

I don’t really think about maintaining a certain image or consistency in my career. I’m much more interested in curiosity. If I can sense too clearly what something is going to become before I start, I often lose interest. The only roles that really interest me are the ones where I think: ‘I never imagined myself doing that.’ “

On balancing acting with motherhood

“I have four children and a very full life outside cinema, so sometimes my choices are also practical. That’s partly why I’ve done huge leading roles and tiny supporting parts at the same time in my career. Sometimes I just want to enter a project for a few weeks, contribute something, and disappear again. I like being part of ensembles. I like moving in and out of things. I’ve never really wanted my entire identity to exist only inside the industry. I love my garden. I love my family life. There are a lot of things outside acting that are deeply important to me, and I think keeping that balance is healthy.”

On female solidarity in the industry

“When I entered the industry there was this toxic narrative that women were inevitably rivals. It was a lie. We were encouraged to see one another competitively because there were so few opportunities being offered to women in the first place. What I see now is actresses producing films, directing, creating opportunities for younger women, supporting emerging filmmakers. Scripts written by women always existed. The problem was they weren’t getting made properly or distributed properly.

I think my generation is very aware of the environment we came from and very determined not to replicate it. There’s much more mentorship now, much more active support, much more desire to help other people into the room. And honestly one of the most exciting things is the exchange between generations. My son works in the industry and he’s constantly introducing me to filmmakers, musicians, artists I don’t know. That cross-generational conversation is incredibly energizing.”

On AI and the future of cinema

“The central question with AI is consent. AI is inevitable, but audiences need to know what is real and what isn’t. Human consent has to remain at the center of the conversation. I’ve been working with a group called RSL Media that’s trying to develop a machine-readable consent standard. The idea is very simple: red means consent has not been given, amber means consent can be requested through certain channels, green means permission has been granted to use someone’s image, voice, work, or likeness.

“At the moment AI systems don’t inherently understand human consent, and that’s deeply dangerous. Innovation can absolutely coexist with human creativity, but not if transparency disappears. I’m not someone who uses AI much in my daily life. I’d rather read a book or go for a walk, but it’s obviously going to become part of all our lives. Which is exactly why these conversations need to happen publicly and clearly.”

On whether she can still watch films simply as a spectator

“Absolutely. I think I enjoy movies even more now than I did when I was younger. Early in my career I watched films analytically. I was constantly trying to understand what every department was doing, what had been cut, how scenes were assembled, how performances were shaped in the edit.

Now I surrender to movies much more completely. I still cry, laugh, get frightened. I’m a great audience. I think it’s important to preserve your capacity for wonder. If you lose that, maybe you shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

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Comments

[DK]

"One of the things I realized very quickly is that judging films has nothing to do with personal taste. Your responsibility is to understand what the filmmaker is trying to do, not whether it aligns with your own sensibilities."

Couldn't disagree more. I'm not a mind-reader, I don't always know what a director was "trying to do," but I know exactly how the finished product lands with me and my personal tastes.