Fashion Neurosis with Cate Blanchett

36:14It wasn't like that. It wasn't a step and repeat. You just meandered your way through it. But I was behind her as she worked the carpet. But I'm sure if any photos were taken of me, it just would have been looking at Celine Dion going, just watching her strike all these extraordinary poses in this outfit, like really work it. So you've got a proper picture of it. It was like a masterclass on, but of course that doesn't come natural to me. So I've never been particularly good at that. But, yeah, so, yeah, I don't think I thought, I didn't have a sense, fortunately, a sense of consequence there.

37:00So I just sort of, I think I just was looking out rather than thinking how I was, not even thinking that anyone would take a photo of me. Although I had this, the very first time I went, I had this beautiful dress that John had made for me. I'd seen, I can't remember what year it was, but he'd done this beautiful collection with a lot of embroidered knits and there was one gorgeous white dress which was embellished with a whole lot of flowers and I'd asked, I was doing a photo shoot for Vogue in Australia and I asked for them if they could call it in and getting anything through customs still in Australia is so complicated so it didn't make the shoot.

37:45And then he and I met in London through a mutual friend and he offered to design something for me. I couldn't believe it. And I was describing this dress and he says, well, why don't we make it in another colour? And so we decided on this beautiful purple and then this whole beautiful back that was embroidered with hummingbirds. I remember that. Yeah, it was just gorgeous. But why? I didn't think anyone would take a photo of that beautiful dress. It had nothing to do with me. It was just all Galliano. But you inhabit these dresses so well. You seem so at ease. And it's the sort of combination of your sort of natural modesty.

38:27And you seem to sort of have this natural instinct of how to show it and how to work it. It was Celine's masterclass. Yeah. No, no, look, it's taken me a very, very long time to feel I'm much better in, I mean, you know, when I, you know, I had my time over, I would have loved to have been a buto dancer or worked with Pina Bausch or, you know, Martha Graham or, you know, and I had the ability, of course, which I don't, but I sort of feel like I make sense in motion. and so to make sense to a still camera has, it's been a long awkward road I think for me. That's something that has, I'd look at other people in awe, at their comfort.

39:22And then I had the great fortune, I made a film about Queen Elizabeth and Richard Avedon was taking some pictures for The New Yorker, I think it was of, I think it was people who, because Judi Dench was photographed, I think Patrick Marber was photographed. So it must have been people on stage, but for some reason he, I was in front of his lens and I realised he didn't look down the lens at all. Of course, he just had the, what do you call that thing? The presser butter thing. It probably has a name. but yeah but he would we would just talk and he only took about five pictures he did a polaroid and then what the equivalent of he did one test and then we we just talked and he just knew exactly and i realized oh okay so you could have a conversation with the photographer through the lens so you're actually communicating something and i know that sounds so simple but by working with these amazing photographers and you learn, you do learn a lot from them.

40:34But the red carpet's something different and also, of course, what it is today. There's even the notoriously discerning and exacting TikToker, Nicky Campbell. He's declared your outfits are flawless and it's... Oh, well, there you go. I mean, that is really something. What am I doing here on the couch, Bella Freud? I should be on TikTok. What, I mean, what does it feel like to have designers projecting their love onto you? Because it is an amazing thing to be able to dress someone who seems to bring, will bring your work to life and you were really good at that. Oh, well, I enjoy it. But it's also, I'm always curious.

41:23it's like a part that you get offered you think oh you want me to play that that's fascinating wonder wow and so you rise you're moving towards someone's perception of you or something they've seen in you that perhaps you didn't even think was there and so when someone does a sketch for you I mean it's an incredible privilege of course and but I'm most curious it's like oh wow you you think that I would be able to move well in that and all you you've seen me wearing that that's really interesting well that color that fabric that silhouette so it's and then it's of course then how you wear it um and it's wonderful when you're in dialogue with a designer and then you, through the fitting process.

42:14I mean, that's the part I almost love the most about developing a character is that time with the costume designer where you try things on and you think, well, no, that's not the right direction and you move in another direction or they make an offer and then you then tweak it and say, what if the shoulders were slightly larger, smaller? you know that that so through that process of the fitting with with a designer you know whether it's for a an event or or as a costume that a character might wear that process is those little nuances I think those details finessing those details I find really interesting because when you're working on a character do you imagine what that character would wear or do you find the clothes and develop her from within that or him?

43:12You never know where it's going to come from. I mean, sometimes it's nothing to do with clothes. Sometimes it's a piece of music or a painting that you've seen or something, a snatch of something you've read that seems to resonate with something in the story. But it's usually something akin to a head-on collision between the exterior and the interior. But certainly, because costume fittings in a way are very practical, it's like meeting someone that you're enamoured by or deeply admire. If you approach making something together, your conversation has a focal point in a way, whereas sometimes it's really difficult to, or there's too many hurdles of shyness or whatever, to actually approach knowing how to talk to one another.

44:17And sometimes it's like that with the character. if you if you approach it too directly barriers can go up so if you have something practical to do like okay what are we going to wear what shoes am i going to wear what what colors what silhouettes might you inhabit and you start trying things on then your brain the the synapses disconnect a little bit and and so into that space can come more unconscious thoughts i think um but yes it's So in that space, in the psychological space of the changing room, that's where a lot of things are born. And you don't know why necessarily you're drawn more to that shirt or, you know, that jacket or that skirt or whatever it is.

45:10But you don't need to know, really. And then, of course, it's then when you've built the wardrobe, it's then how do you how might those clothes tell that story so you don't have to do it with the other bits of your arsenal the other parts of your performance or you can you can I mean not to be too obvious but you could wear something to to show the the mental disarray in slightly, you know, slightly akimbo, that then you can be, you're not paying any attention to that internal disarray and the character actually thinks, well, no, I've got this, I'm on top of this. But you can see by the way they're presenting themselves, they might be sweating or maybe they've done their button up, their shirt up with the wrong button, you know, And then you've got to know what the shot is.

46:06So is the audience even going to see this? If it's all shot in a long shot, maybe I need to express it differently. So it's not just the choosing of the clothes. It's working out in the moment how you might wear them. Oh, that's so interesting. And also, too, I think I worked with an actor really early on on stage. and she, I thought, she's a bit older and she'd always come, her stockings were really wrinkled and sort of, and often she'd put, you know, she'd put something on a bit wrong and I'd try and fix it up for her in some, in, you know, very discreet way on stage. And then I realised halfway through the run that she was doing it deliberately so that she was giving me something to do with her.

46:59We had some, so she was making, offers to me about a relationship through the way she was wearing those clothes. And here I was feeling terribly embarrassed and sorry for her. But she was a genius. That's fantastic. Did she tell you that or did you just... Yes, yes. No, I think I said to her dresser something about it and her dresser just went as if, you know, you moron. You know, she's doing it deliberately. That's wonderful. One of my favourite of your roles was you playing Bob Dylan in the Todd Haynes film. I had such fun. I'm not there. Todd Haynes, what a genius. Genius. I mean, there's a strange ask.

47:43You have to say yes to that, don't you? Well, I mean, it was just brilliant. And you play a boy very well and it suits you. And I wondered what adjustments you make within yourself to incorporate being a man because it wasn't just you playing a man. It was so much more subtle. Well, it was so liberating for starters because I was playing him in one of his most sort of iconic, visually iconic periods, you know, when he went electric. I'd lost a lot of weight and so the clothes were feeling because he was raked thin himself and quite, in a conventional sense, quite feminine, you know, big hair, small body.

48:36And, you know, he was wearing a lot of heels and quite embellished shirts. And so I lost a lot of weight. And so the clothes felt differently on me. So I think I was moving differently anyway. and then there was a scene on a bed in a hotel room and a friend of mine who was working on the film says, put a sock down your trousers. I went, it'll change the way you move and it really did. Something I had another thing to contend with. I must try that. Just for fun, just because, just put a sock down your trousers and see how it changes the way you move. And it did. And so I did that for the rest of the shoot.

49:24And I was really, yeah, I was really grateful for that really simple piece of advice. It really helped, actually. I can imagine. It's totally, you know, couldn't be more alien, could it? No. Yeah. And it was a bit strange at first, and then I got used to it. I don't still have a sock down my trousers. Because he also talked about, around that film, about something called identity avoidance, and I wondered what that meant. Who talked about that? You did. Oh, did I? Yeah, I was looking at an interview, and someone had asked you something, and you said it was more like identity avoidance. You mean for that part?

50:09Yeah. I wondered sort of if that meant you closed something down in yourself in order to... Well, people are always asking you as an actor whether you identify with your role. Right. I mean, all acting cultures are subtly different. And being Australian, I think it's perhaps an acting culture, certainly on the stage, it's more akin to performance in Germany than it is in England. or we're somewhere between Germany and America. You know, we're quite physical and we don't mind being a bit messy emotionally. But yet we've inherited and been colonized by sort of so much British culture. And so we have a regard for language.

51:04But people are asking often if you identify with the role in the way that they do in America, say, so that the closer your experience is to the identity within the role, the more true it has the chance of being. And I think I probably, not that I avoid that, but I don't think of that first and foremost because I think if there's any identification with those things, it's going to be there. You don't have to mind that. But is that what you mean? Or you mean because I was playing against my gender? I've never heard anyone say identity avoidance yeah I probably I think I do I don't think about it to be honest maybe you could say because I have the privilege of of being perhaps conventionally identifiable but I don't I don't try and pin down the character's identity because I think about my maybe it's rolling and derolling constantly as an actor.

52:08I've always had a very fluid sense of that. And I don't think about it until someone asks me the question. And I tend to probably avoid direct questions pretty absolutely. So maybe I just avoid everything. Everything avoidance. That's why I don't. So having gone through a bit of therapy, the bed, the couch, see I don't even know what to call it, was in the room but I never got on it. You never got on it either. No, I was slightly horrified when he said, do you want to lie down? I said, no. Yes. Have you ever done that thing? Sometimes when I have an excruciating amount of lines to learn and, you know, having a lot of train journeys and car journeys, I will record myself saying the other person's lines and leave a gap so that I can then say my lines, you know, just by rote if I have to learn them.

53:08And I wonder if you ever laid on this couch and recorded yourself and put a little speaker over there asking the questions, would that be too weird? No, I haven't done that. But you'd see it wouldn't work because you'd know what the questions were that were coming. Yeah. Maybe you'd get so involved in your own answers that you would forget what the next question was. I mean, I quite like the idea of any kind of, you know, kind of contortions of trying to find anything out about anything. So it isn't, I could imagine trying some weird thing out or maybe, I mean, I like the idea of any exploration, really.

53:57And, you know, when just going back to the identity avoidance, it was such a good phrase because Bob Dylan seems so avoidant. You know, he won't, he doesn't seem like, I mean, obviously I've never met him, like someone who will be placed no matter what he seems to represent. He absolutely won't have it. Yes. I mean, there was a lot of furor, wasn't there, when he didn't go and pick up the Nobel Prize. I mean, he continues. He doesn't want to be called a poet. He doesn't want to. Labels are very difficult. But he was so claimed so early. And I think it's the thing, too, when you get known, you know, he doesn't want to be a folk singer.

54:43But he said something interesting recently, relatively recently, in an interview saying he doesn't even know who wrote those songs that he wrote all those years ago. It wasn't him. He's not that person anymore and he certainly couldn't write that way now. Yeah. And he was sort of saying it with quite a good deal of awe. But I think it's when you're so engaged in the stage you are currently in, creatively, aesthetically, whatever, to imagine yourself back in a previous time is, yeah, I don't know if that's a useful thing to, maybe the only way you can deal with it is to avoid it until there's enough distance.

55:32Seems like a good position rather than harking back and being nostalgic to sort of think, well, you know, that was then and this is now and now is what counts as we know from cold water. Yes, exactly. Submersion. But it is a wonderful thing. I'm sure you've had this from moving around so much that if you discover something from a time long ago, an object, you know, a pair of shoes or a scarf or a shirt that you haven't seen, say, 20 years. Like the other day I went into, we were getting out, I'd put a whole lot of stuff in the attic and I was getting out some, because we're going to the Arctic Circle and I was trying to get out some old ski jackets for my kids.

56:27And I found this suit that I wore when I was pregnant with my, just after I had my first son who's just turned 23. And I hadn't seen it for, I'd say about 15, at least 15 years. And I just, there and then, I didn't have the time. I just took my clothes off and I put it on straight away. And I was transported back. It was like a portal right back to when, you know, my son was sort of one. And being Sydney and right back to that time. It smelled a bit stale. So it wasn't the smell. It was just the feeling of it. Yeah. And, yeah, so they can, it is nice to revisit those things if you keep them long enough.

57:19Yeah. But not to, I wasn't trying to, you know, I took it off again and, you know, I didn't feel nostalgic or try and reinvent it, but I certainly loved remembering it. And if you fancy someone and you don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them?

57:45No. No, actually, no. I'm always quite curious because you think that. I mean, look, it's because I think people who are very, I think what probably does, would kill attraction is if they threw something out the window

58:12or they put their shoes on the sofa, which I find very, I don't know. I tried to get you to get your shoes on the sofa. No, I couldn't. I'm really sorry. Do you want, is it big the ice couldn't? No, but I, it's more about if they think they, you know, there's a wonderful thing when people feel so comfortable in their own skin and in a way you can feel they're just thrown on what they're wearing and they're not wearing it for you to admire. That's really attractive. I think probably the turn off would be is if they're wanting some comment on it Or there's some sort of overly self-aware thing about the effect that they're having on people that's not necessarily appealing.

59:10If you come across someone and you think, wow, that just doesn't suit you, I want to give them a pat on the back for having a good Aussie go. Yeah, a good Aussie girl is a great attitude, definitely. I definitely find that walking around each town, I'd be critical if someone was showing out. But now when I see that, I'm so glad, I'm so grateful that anyone makes an effort. Yes, yeah. And do you have other anythings, particular pieces of clothing that a man wears that you find instantly attractive? I like a man who doesn't wear socks. That's so interesting. No socks. Yeah, I find socks are funny things.

1:00:10I mean, I like them. I mean, they're for practical reasons, particularly in trainers, I guess. do you i'm yes no socks i think it's really great and i do i do love jewelry on a man i i do really glamorous actually isn't it yeah no i mean not there's there's jewelry and there's jewelry but i think that's yeah a bit of gold it's quite thrilling isn't it yeah i think the The only thing I don't like is matching earrings on a man. I mean, you can overdo it. But then on some people it works. I know, I know. You can never entirely know, but it's... When a man does wear jewellery or rings and stuff, it's like they're telling you something about something you don't know about, which is always an exciting clue.

1:01:12Or you just catch a glimpse of a bracelet under the shirt. But I do like knitwear. It's because it's just the touch, I think. When I worked for Vivian Westwood in the 80s, she... How fabulous. I mean, she was an amazing, bigger mentor to me. But she'd often go off to be interviewed and she'd wear the same things and she would usually wear this red jersey corset with long sleeves and a matching jersey skirt that had, she designed, it had these kind of covered balls at the back of the, like the small of the back, and it was based on a kind of 18th century idea. She wanted to exaggerate that shape, and she'd wear this outfit, And sometimes even we would say, like, are you wearing that again?

1:02:14But she just knew how fabulous it looked. I don't know. She just wore what she thought was good. And, you know, it's one of those fashion things that's noted about you, that you will occasionally wear something that you've worn before, which is almost a crime in this day and age. But it's very appreciated. and noted and... Oh, it's just, I mean, the excess of it, there's a sense too when you have a public profile, I guess, is that something that you wear in public for an event or something public can become a bit like a uniform that Cate Blanchett wears or whatever your name happens to be. And I felt that these really beautiful objects, items that I really loved, were becoming like a uniform.

1:03:19And I thought I just wanted to wear them more so that I could feel that they were mine, that I wasn't becoming something other than who I was. you know I mean there is a certain um skin or armature that you want to put on in order to often endure being in the public if you if it's not a space that you necessarily feel comfortable in which I don't always but that said it's it just felt like these things were I wanted to either bring them into my everyday life or wear them again to claim to claim them I guess yeah it's a apart from the fact that it's just a bit wasteful isn't it i mean you do i'm sure you you the sweater that you're wearing now you you've worn lots of times because it's fabulous and that you might you know you'll wear it in lots of different ways so why does that not happen when you're in the public eye seems but i know the people have said to me you know been slightly embarrassed for me like I've somehow forgotten that I've worn it before fashion dementia I know I wondered um like if you're wearing a major look that do you have to work harder at not feeling self-conscious because you you do wear these things incredibly well and you just always look at ease in them and I just wondered do you have like certain adjustment if it's a major fashion look how do you kind of adjust yourself to seeming your natural self while having to incorporate I think you mean you mean if you're on the on the on the carpet yeah I think I probably wouldn't because there's a slight gladiatorial quality to those events.

1:05:26You do want to feel comfortable. It's the only way. I mean, some people, I guess, are better at it than me, but I can't do it unless I feel comfortable. And so that's kind of the bottom line in a way. it has to express the mood you're in that day and and oftentimes when you're getting dressed you'll you'll take one bit off where you go no actually i won't wear that with that i'm going to do that it has to feel even though sometimes these things are you know particularly if you're working with you know an atelier or at a certain time of year when when things can't be changed at the last minute you you have to plan something in advance you do want to feel that there's a a modicum of spontaneity to it.

1:06:16Otherwise, all the fun's gone out of it, really. Don't you think? I mean, I... Yeah. Yeah. I think that sounds like a good way of handling it because sometimes you have to figure out how something can belong to you. And I suppose if you're going out, not just representing, you know, the work that you're promoting, but also this designer who's got so invested in you. And the atelier. I mean, so many hours and stitches and, you know, go into making these incredible things. And you're playing the Arcadena, Irina Arcadena. I say Cardena, but some people say Arcadena, yeah. Oh, Cardena. Yes, in the seagull.

1:07:11Yes. It's a thing that, you know, as an actress playing an actress, you know, in a way I think the tendency or the temptation is to lean into the cliché so you can actually avoid looking at who you are as an actress. You know, there's a comedy gold to be had there, but then there's also probably a lot of quite confronting gold if you're prepared to go there. But I, you know, I had a director say to me once when we were doing Uncle Vanya, you know, that Jacobian women are like the weather. They change like the weather. And so I think, too, I mean, I know that if you put, on some days, if you took a picture of me at 10 o 'clock in the morning and then at 4, you know, in the afternoon and then after dinner and then maybe one o 'clock in the morning, they look like four different people.

1:08:11You know, we can hold all these very eclectic aesthetics and impulses within us. So I'm kind of quite interested in exploring that. That's such an interesting... Within her. Yeah. I'm such a Chekhov fan. Yeah. And particularly when you return to a place, as these characters do, a place that you've had a life outside your current life, her very public life. You know, what items and objects would you leave there or pick up there or would only ever wear there? What combinations? You come in mid-fashion conversation with someone, you think, why are they wearing that? I watched the trailer for Black Bag, your upcoming film directed by Steven Soderbergh, and your character's very sexually overt, or that's the impression I get from the short amount I've seen.

1:09:11And you seem, you're so private without being like, you know, Greta Garbo. But I wondered... I wish. What bit of yourself do you switch on to allow everyone to see that side of yourself? Well, I had to do it because Steven Soderbergh was directing and I was really keen to work with him again. And I don't know. I mean, a lot of that comes out of the script and you know it's really important that the character's seen through a certain lens, certainly at the beginning of the film and so it's just something you have to butch up and do. And you know that you're going to go home at 5 o 'clock in the afternoon and take a bath and go back to normal and go back in.

1:10:10I think perhaps if I was doing inhabiting a certain energy,

1:10:20a certain mode of operating all the time that was distinct from my own, or ploughing one farrow all the time, I think it could be unsettling. But when you visit that island and then you return to your own, it's actually quite pleasant because you, I think certainly for the time that you're in that other modality, it sort of augments your own, which is kind of nice actually. I guess it's a little bit like your therapist saying, why don't you try attending to that through this perspective maybe. But, you know, when you're working on something, does it influence the way you look at the world around you?

1:11:10Does it, like, you know, when you're reading a book and you're so inside the way that particular author will express themselves, the pictures that they're painting or the emotions that they're drawing. I find, well, I do, I find it will come into my conversation. The way I will attend to certain things, it will be influenced by what I'm reading. And when I'm in a film or really happens when I'm on stage, because of the situations that you're inhabiting, you will start picking those the similarities up in the world around you so I don't think it's necessarily I start moving as the character and thinking it's the character but it's literally like you're constantly coming from having dinner with that character so you're they're very much their perspective on the world is very much alive I mean like when you go home on the train do you sort of notice, do you find it slightly catching, like, to notice someone watching you and to have some sort of, you know, enjoyment of that?

1:12:23Do you find yourself playing with it? Watching me? Well, in the trailer, your husband says, you say, you're watching me. I like it. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, of course. And I just wondered, I mean, obviously you're a great actress and you can do all these amazing things, but it's such a kind of powerful thing when that spark is lit. And I wondered how much you kind of tinker with it just to see how much more you bring to your performance or how you're affected by it. Yes, I mean, it's one thing to be watched by someone that you're really close to and being watched by a stranger that may or may not be unwanted.

1:13:27would get me a bit creepy. But with a director like Soderbergh, the frame in which you're put into is so particular. Like he's always got a very specific way that he's shooting and looking at the characters. So you know there's a very particular point of view on what it is that you're doing. He's not prescriptive at all about action and is quite monosyllabic in terms of what directions that he'll give. I mean, if you ask him a question, he'll give you some feedback, but he lets the actors completely go. But if you see the frame, I think, oh, okay, we're doing that dance. and so it kind of, it directs your flow, I think.

1:14:27And so I know that it's always within that frame that I'm behaving like that. It's not a constant role and like some sets you go on and you know that the camera's there and you've just got to keep expressing that particular mood or moment over and over and over and they're going to pick it off and put it together in the editing room with Stephen, you know, exactly what you're all going fishing for, if that makes sense. So it's quite streamlined in a way that doesn't make me feel remotely uncomfortable. But was someone to be, was I in a free-flowing mood, which sometimes has happened, and then you realise someone at another table is taking a picture of you.

1:15:18then that's very strange and that will completely arrest my mood. And so it's knowing that that's a work frame. It means that you can be as free as you like because you're all heading, you're all dancing the same dance together. I think it's when you're dancing a very private dance and that is suddenly turned out as being public. It's a weird, yeah, suddenly everything feels slightly contrapunctal and out of sync. Yeah, it's the invasion. And stolen, yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Kate, for being on Fashion Neurosis. It's been just wonderful to talk to you. Yes, you too. And if you ever want to switch places, you know where I am.

1:16:07Okay. That would be fun. Although my questions won't be nearly as soul-searching and interesting. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Night.

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