A Quote by Cate Blanchett

There's plenty of girlfriend roles out there. They've come my way, and many people have turned them down, and I think, "Oh maybe I could do something with this." It's interesting when you get those roles, which seem like nothing on the page, and you kind of subvert them. It's hard to say no.
It's interesting when you get those roles, which seem like nothing on the page, and you kind of subvert them. It's hard to say no.
Theater roles are written by the great masters. The greatest literature that you can possibly know are the theater roles like King Lear, Hamlet, and all of those great roles. So all you do is you dive into these unchallenged roles and see how far you can get, what kind of accolades you can get, and how good you can be in them. In movie roles, you can actually improve them by knowing a lot about your own stage technique, which helps a great deal in the cinema and how you can project inner humor even though the particular dialogue is not necessarily funny, but you can infuse it with humor.
For a long time, way back in the โ€™30s and โ€™40s, there were fabulous female roles. Bette Davis and all those people had incredible, great roles. After World War II, something happened where it was not only "get out of the factories," but "get out of the movies." That's when women's roles started to really [change].
If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.
I'm not particularly fond of playing villains. I do want to be a working actor, and I've had to look at what was offered to me, what roles I could get, and what I could do with them. Even though I'm not drawn to putting those kinds of darker characters out there, I think it's an interesting challenge.
There are so many good roles for women out there, I don't understand it when people say the role choices are fewer as you get older. I find the opposite to be true - there are less good roles out there for the hot 20-year-olds because the normal girl parts just aren't interesting.
There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, 'Oh, you're playing yourself.' I guess it's kind of a compliment. Or people say, 'Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.' The work is to make it look effortless. That's the hard part.
I wanted to play roles which offered new ways of viewing black women and black people in general- and I have done that. And I have always, whether I needed to pay the rent or not, I've always turned down roles which I thought were stereotypical. And so when I look at my body of work in that respect, I am really happy. Because I feel my work does say something positive and that was what I always set out to do.
If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do something that you didn't think you could do.
Women in their 40s have gone through quite a few different things, and so the roles are going to reflect that. People say, 'Oh, it's done by 40,' and now everyone knows it's not. I actually feel like the roles are a lot more interesting.
I've turned down a lot of roles. Some of them made stars out of the people. I have no regrets.
I think I'm open to adventures and surprises. As a performer, I'm really just naturally talented. And those roles may not look as good on paper, but I know how to create them on screen. I like to have fun and interpret my roles in my own way.
The roles do get fewer as you get older. That's the same for all professions, there's fewer roles for people later in life. I don't think it should be like that because as long as you are able to do your job then people should keep working with you. It shouldn't come down to age.
I have roles in plays that I hope that I'll be able to do one day. I might be doing them at, like, the East Wilton Playhouse in wherever. But I think that Edie Falco... to get something even resembling her type of roles, that would be amazing.
Yes. Otherwise I could have done a lot of Hollywood movies. After Crouching Tiger I got a lot of offers, but I turned them down because they were all victim roles - poor girls sold to America to be a wife or whatever. I know I have the ability to go deeper, to take on more original roles than that.
What I have wanted to do is take roles that are unexpected for people who look like me. Roles that the establishment would say, 'Oh, she couldn't possibly be that.'
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!