Cate Blanchett | Craig McDean | W Magazine June 2010

NYTimes critic Ben Brantley called Cate Blanchett’s artistic interpretation of Blanche Dubois “heart-stopping”. For once in theater history, Blanche Dubois and not Stanley Kowalski became the real lead in “Streetcar Named Desire”.

Strong women, who had loved the play, for decades rejoiced.

Will Cate Blanchett take a bow? Probably not, says Liv Ulman, director of “Streetcar”. The astoundingly talented Australian actress, mother of three boys and wife to playwright Andrew Upton.

You will wait endlessly for Cate Blanchett to comment on herself. The answers to Cate, according to the in-depth Danielle Stein Cate Blanchett interview and Craig McDean photo editorial, are in her eyes.

Ullmann hopes to one day film the “Streetcar Named Desire” production so that a wider audience can see Blanchett’s face up close. “A thing would just happen in her eyes, in what she was thinking,” Ullmann muses. “In this very private woman, who doesn’t give all her secrets away like a lot of other people, you could see the secret of Blanche.”

Cate Blanchett At Ease

Sharing the backpacker background in Cate’s history, Danielle Stein paints a flurry of Blanchette sketches of Cate “scooping up chicken and salad with her hands, then wiping them on her white bathrobe”; and dipping her finger into someone else’s cappuccino and licking off the foam.

We get the typical, descriptive W Magazine interview closeup of the older-woman face. Yes, Cate has crinkles around her eyes.

Blanchett | Upton Marriage

Together Blanchett and Upton are embarking on a second three-year stint as artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, Australia’s most prestigious theater group. Their collaboration works exceedingly well, and many feminists will find it seeped in traditional role models.

Upton is expansive and the big-idea guy; Cate picks up the pieces and makes an execution plan. It’s their business-personal life, and it works. Cate Blanchett’s future lies in directing, although she’s making another movie.

Ullmann, who knows something about transitioning from screen legend to director, is confident Blanchett will succeed because, she says, “she understands people. When you saw Blanche on the stage, you also saw things there that Cate knows about life, that are a part of Cate that we don’t see, things that she fears or that she’s happy with.” Ullmann objects to the common tendency to label Blanchett a “chameleon.” “I don’t think she changes colors,” she says. “She’s not good at mimicking. She’s good because her soul is there.” via W Magazine

Ever quick with a deflective response to a Cate question, Blanchett closes the W Magazine interview answering the question on whether she feels misunderstood.

“I’m not focused on what other people think of me,” she continues, her voice again silky and measured. “Some people get you and some people don’t, and to spend your life trying to make people understand how deep and complex and varied you are—I think that way lies madness.”

Well said, Cate Blanchett. We should all mount your words on the bathroom mirror. Anne