Cate Blanchett / Mrs America
Cate Blanchett is feisty, witty, sharp-tongued and lively. She greets you with a smile and a warm handshake and is the consummate professional when it comes to talking about her life and work. She’s also the kind of woman who approaches life with a pragmatic spirit that sees her multitask her way through the day. In the morning she’s preparing breakfast for her children before spending the rest of the day reading scripts or discussing projects with producers, directors, or her agent. And in the evenings, she and her husband Andrew Upton try to find that quality time that has kept them happily married for over two decades.
Today, the Oscar-winning Australian is more determined than ever to find great new screen roles and expand her horizons. Having turned 50 last year, she’s already gone on record as admitting that although she thinks about her age “on an existential level” she had a far more difficult time adjusting to thought of turning 30!
“Paradoxically, the birthday that most marked me was that of the 26. Ridiculous, isn’t it?” Blanchett recalled. “But I said to myself: ‘I’m 26 years old, and soon I’ll be 30!’ Then you hit 30, then 40, and now 50. We women live in fear of aging, as if we had an expiration date, especially those who work in a profession like mine. But the beauty of life is to go on, explore, navigate…Pleasure lies in the journey, not the destination.
On the heels of her recent film, Where’d You Go Bernadette, in which she portrayed a failed architect whose life as a mother leaves her lonely and unfulfilled, Blanchet is about to star in MRS AMERICA, the limited series which begins streaming on Hulu on April 15th. Delivering yet another charismatic performance, she plays American conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly who infamously led the fight against the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70s. Blanchett’s Schlafly is pitted against Rose Byrne’s pioneering feminist Gloria Steinem who led the charge in favour of the doomed amendment.
Blanchett, in a recent conference call with the media to promote Mrs America, speculated on how successful passage of the ERA might have created a very different social and political climate from the one we live in today.
“What laws would have been put in place to shore up equality, not only between the sexes but between races, between the 1% and the 99%?” Blanchet asked. “I have to guess that we’d be in a very different place… I think that what we’re dealing with now in 2020 is still a very unequal system”…