100 Quotes by Cate Blanchett

If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously.

And perhaps, those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the center are niche experience, they are not. Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

I feel like I've been marinated in Australian theatre.

I'm not sitting on a soapbox telling women what they should and shouldn't do, but I know what works for me.

I love strange choices. I'm always interested in people who depart from what is expected of them and go into new territory.

I don't think about being beautiful or not being beautiful. It's more about feeling confident inside your own skin really and thinking about yourself as little as possible.

Someone might have a germ of talent, but 90 percent of it is discipline and how you practice it, what you do with it. ... Instinct won't carry you through the entire journey. It's what you do in the moments between inspiration.

I couldn't possibly have played someone with feelings towards a woman unless I had those feelings myself.

Some ideas, like what you're going to do with your life, take time to form.

Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you are. We all say a lot of things, don't we, about who we are and how we think. But in the end it's your actions, how you respond to circumstance that reveals your character.

The word 'circumnavigate' is quite a beautiful word.

Mind the gap - it's the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.

I love those moments on stage, on screen and in life when you dispense with language, when you sort of transcend it in a way, and certainly the experience of falling in love, I think, defies words, which is why poets, painters, musicians, actors have tried to describe that feeling, writers have just tried to put words to that.

The thing I love about live performance the most, is that the doors are closed, the lights are turned down, and the audience has to be reverential to what's happening onstage.

An actress once advised me, 'Make sure you do your own laundry - it will keep you honest.'

You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls - it's a bit scary, actually.

I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth.

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere.

I'm of the opinion that it's okay to be silent, to not speak if you don't have anything to say.

Art civilizes us and it connects us and activates us. And so it's really important to connect with compassion, with stories about people who are different from us.

Onscreen, babies and animals are my inspiration. They're so alive and there and not messed up in the head the way I am.

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.

You learn an enormous lot through failure.

Any industry loses its innovation and loses its access to creative juices if you don't have progressive thinking and diversity.

The less one can think about oneself, the more interesting and attractive one becomes.

My husband wasn't put off by it - he thought it was hilarious to see me dressed as Dylan! He didn't particularly want to kiss me with stubble all over my face - it felt a bit odd! But I think he's used to it [the make-up process].

My dreams tend to be like dog dreams. I'm usually so tired that I hardly dream at all. In a way, I do think that the zone one performs in - without getting too ooga-booga about it - it's like that moment when you wake up in the morning and you're emerging from a dream state but you're not quite up. Where are you? Can you hear the birds? Or is that the traffic? It's that zone in which I perform. It’s like one foot in reality and one foot in a dream state. I spend most of my life in that state!

Violence and racism are bad. Whenever they occur they are to be condemned and we should not turn a blind eye to them.

At the moment there are 1 in 8 people who have no access to clear drinking water, about a billion people worldwide, which can make you feel quite overwhelmed.

Actresses can get outrageously precious about the way they look. That's not what life's about. If you starve yourself to the point where your brain cells shrivel, you will never do good work. And if you're overly conscious of your arms flapping in the wind, how can you look the other actor in the eye to respond to them?

The interesting thing for me about the debate about same-sex marriage ... is that it's one of those issues where it has no impact on anyone apart from the people that it impacts upon. So I find it quite bewildering that it's - that it's so complicated for people.

What you're trying to do as an actor is somehow trick yourself into believing that these words have never been said, and so you've got to discover them for the first time.

To record something on your iPhone to be watched later, that's like the opposite of theater. The joy of being there is experiencing it with other people. It doesn't translate onto your phone. It's about being present.

The first thing is to accept that theater is an unknown. If you go to a concert, you know the music. If you go to an art show, you can literally see the art on your phone before you see it in person. But with theater, often times people aren't prepared to take risks, even though that's exactly what's great about it.

There is not a lot of separation between work and home life.

When you fall in love with someone, you're not really changing at all. You're really just reliving something that already happened at some point.

If you age with somebody, you go through so many roles - you're lovers, friends, enemies, colleagues, strangers; you're brother and sister. That's what intimacy is, if you're with your soulmate.

Film just chews up actors like nobody's business, and I'm not particularly interested in being chewed up. I think the camera can only look at somebody's face for so long. I guess you have to accept the roles you think are right at the time. You can build a career, but these days there doesn't seem to be that much interest in people being actors.

That's why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it's a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is.

I have the embarrassing thing where often if you're watching a film, you kind of go through the emotions and the thought stages that your character went through, but you sort of do it with Tourette's. So I end up often crying when I'm crying, and looking angry when I'm looking angry, so it's pretty ugly.

To become a painter or a sculptor or a graphic designer is quite an isolated way to spend your life.

I think marriage is all about timing. Getting married is insanity; I mean, it's a risk - who knows if you're going to be together forever? But you both say, 'We're going to take this chance, in the same spirit.

The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different

We talked about trying to create an image that would somehow, to an audience, create the sense of awe, wonder and shock that the troops must have felt that their monarch - and a female monarch - went to the frontline of battle and was prepared to lay down her life. This speech is so well known and has been done in virtually every version of the events of Elizabeth's life.

I think the terrifying thing is you see all these people who go to the same cosmetic surgeon, and they end up, after a while, looking like everyone.

Perhaps being a parent has changed career more in that you ask yourself how long you'll be away from home. My eldest child is approaching school age so that becomes more important. They're less portable.

I'm not interested in saying what people should and shouldn't do. It depends on how people feel about themselves. I suppose personally if you do anything out of fear or to mask who you are, then that's a bit scary. You've got to work with what you got.

You do get scrutinized in the digital age. You know they're zooming in on every pore, which you've got to forget about.

I'm one of those strange beasts who really likes a corset.

If you know why someone is doing what they're doing, why they're behaving the way they are, then that's your job to reveal that, and often that's situational. The storytelling does that, and then some of it's your job as an actor to make that subtext come to life.

You don't fully understand the meaning of a work until the audience responds to it. Because the audience completes the circle, and adds a whole other shade of meaning. Whenever you view something, and this is why great works of art survive decades and centuries, is because there's a door within the work that allows the audience to walk through and complete the meaning of the work. An audience isn't passive, nor are they unintelligent.

I'm old enough to remember the days when you spoke to one person from one outlet and that was the conversation. But now what happens is you speak to people and what you say gets translated into Portuguese, then into Mandarin, through a German prism and then back into English and bears little to no resemblance between - to the exchange or - that you had initially with the journalist or to what you originally said.

I think often women can feel isolated and feel like they get into a rut and don't quite know how to get out of it.

No, it’s very comforting actually, to know that you’re sitting in a long legacy of actresses who’ve played the role. I’m absolutely all for absorbing all of those influences, so you understand the pedigree of the part as much as you understand the figure in history… because you are playing the part. You don’t say: “Gosh, I want to play Peter Sellers…” because you can sort of do that in your own bathroom.

I'm not a big believer in linear paths. I would always have these sort of five-year plans and think, 'Ok, I wouldn't mind to try to get here in five years.'

That's definitely true! It was before my father died, so I can't attribute it to an obsession with death. When I was seven, I loved those old Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone. The Scarlet Claw was one of my faves. And I loved all the Halloween's and that film about the haunted house... Burnt Offerings, with Oliver Reed. Every birthday party was a slumber party and we'd watch horror films.

Fashion is one thing, you kind of can change your silhouette and try this and try that. But I think that with skin care, you know anything that you put into your skin goes into your body, so you want to know it's actually good for you. So I think I don't believe in fashion when it comes to skin care if that makes sense.

I'm scared of actors with a scheme.

There's an expression in Australia that's called 'Go Bush,' which means to get out of the city and relax. I try and 'go bush' to places where there's no cell reception. But, I don't get to do that often, so for the most part, it's just a state of mind.

I've reprised roles in the theatre, which is somehow more accepted, and where one can automatically go deeper and further into the role.

No matter how much research you do, or invention you do, whether it's a character from a novel, a completely invented character or someone who actually existed, it's a work of faction. By the very fact you only have an hour and a half or two hours to tell a story, you're telescoping events and it is, in the end, a work of imagination.

You can't be trying to make a film that pleases all people, you know, so it's not a concern of mine.

Personally, I prefer to play against the look: If a character appears particularly unhinged, with makeup running down her face, I like to play her as if she has it together. I think that juxtaposition makes it so much more interesting.

Every single pore - not on the men, but on the women - is scrutinized, so I am really grateful that I feel very confident in my own skin.

I much prefer a natural approach to beauty. You know, Coco Chanel always said to take one thing off before you leave the house, and I think that also applies to makeup.

When you go to a concert, part of being there is that you're all hearing the same thing. It's about being in a crowd. If you go to a gig and there are two people there, then it's not the same thing.

All cities do face similar, significant trends in the future... most importantly global warming and climate change.

My everyday beauty routine is always rushed and pretty simple.

I'm the age I am, but my skin is in pretty good condition because I've been consistent with my skincare.

Look, I live in the modern world as much as anyone else.

It seems like people increasingly just can't be by themselves because they're so used to having an epicenter on the Internet that actually exists for other people. Until someone clicks onto your Facebook page, it doesn't mean anything.

When you're onstage, you're acutely aware of the reaction of a particular group of people, because it's like a wave.

When you're a performer, of course you want an audience, but it's very, very different from courting fame.

I think when you have a character as richly drawn, I suppose then there are subconscious, mental notes that you've made.

Theater is all about foyers and conversation and digesting what you've seen.

Audiences want to see them, and in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

If I'm not good at acting, I'm not good at anything else.

I'm a horrible person. And it's just coming out in my work.

Lazy thinking is not creative or productive.

It's been a long time since universal suffrage, and I'm sick of the old white men running the show.

I've an enormous respect for my mother who at the age of 39 raised three children, and I grew up with my grandmother in the household. And so it was a really strong household of women - my poor brother! It was great growing up with so many generations of women.

I think when you fall in love, whether you're heterosexual, transgender, gay, lesbian, whatever, straight, you feel like it's happening to you for the first time.

The more you do it, the more you learn to concentrate, as a child does, incredibly intensively and then you sort of have to relax. I remember the first film I did, the lead actor would in between scenes be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, 'How can you do that?'

You can only desire something that you've already had in your life.

I'm not dressing for anyone else. I don't really subscribe to other people's idea of what is beautiful. I just want to feel good.

I'm not focused on what other people think of me.

Everyone gets obsessed with anti-aging but I'd rather look as good as I can at the age I am.
It's important to travel and move and have a continual set of experiences so you've got more to feed back into your work. For me, it's a natural thing.

People talk about the golden age of Hollywood because of how women were lit then. You could be Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and work well into your 50s, because you were lit and made into a goddess. Now, with everything being sort of gritty, women have this sense of their use-by date.

We're growing up with a very illiterate bunch of children who have somehow been taught that film is fact when, in fact, it's invention. Hopefully, an historical film will inspire people to go and read about the history but in the end it is a work of fiction and selection. As for the armour itself, no it wasn't particularly comfortable.

It was fantastic to be able to have my kids on set. Dash, my eldest son, who’s not quite five, was into knights and his godmother had given him a plastic Marks & Spencer knights’ outfit and [first assistant director] Tommy Gormley said that he could stand to protect me during the scene where Clive [Owen] is talking about the immensity of sitting on the throne. I’m actually looking through an archway at my son standing in his knights’ costume protecting me!

We have to band together, but the thing in America is that people are terrified of losing their jobs... Maybe California needs to secede. The only thing that'll make any difference is the money... Tax dollars and losing that amount of money. It's one of the most economically powerful states, isn't it? That's where it hurts.

To those who voted for me, thank you. And to those who didn't, better luck next year!

If you over plan New Year's Eve it's going to be a disaster so you have to be alive to changes.

With a role like Hedda Gabler, which is incredibly complicated, you often feel that you haven't even scratched the surface the first time around, so you relish the opportunity to do it again, particularly with an ensemble of actors and the company we assembled. But when you do that in films you somehow have to make some attempt to uncross people's arms and you have to justify why you're doing it.

The lack of racial diversity and gender diversity and the lack of female directors - those are not fashionable issues. And they're not issues that reside solely within the film industry.

Marriage is a risk; I think it's a great and glorious risk, as long as you embark on the adventure in the same spirit.

Particularly at the moment, it's an incredibly optimistic thing to bring children into the world.

I'm always without sleep. I've got two kids. I understand sleep deprivation on a profound level.

As an actor I suppose you're constantly observing. I don't sit in restaurants making notes, I don't live my life in order to then feed it into my work.

Culture civilizes us, and that's why every single despotic regime has tried to smash [the arts].

When I was younger, I was actually looking forward to getting older, to have more insight, more understanding.

After a run of several night events, you begin to appreciate the solitude and the quiet backstage.

My kids don't watch any TV, but they watch videos and films. I'm sure they watch it at friends' houses.

Don't you find that work, if you love it, is actually really invigorating?

I think probably winning these things [an Oscar] can be a bit of a curse depending on who you are and how you think. But I haven't been on a journey to get anywhere in particular, so that hasn't changed. And my criteria for choosing projects hasn't changed.

Becoming artistic directors is an enormous responsibility and not one that we take lightly.

The great thing about theater is that when it's great, you'll remember it for the rest of your life. But if you go see ten shows, you'll only get five - if you're lucky - that'll give you that experience. But the rest, at the very least, will be interesting.

Planning cities is a necessary but risky business.

Being on stage a lot is quite physical.

In the current climate, things that are true, brave human stories become political.

You will not leave the theater with nothing to talk about. For me, comedy and tragedy when you get them both in one evening, that's the most satisfying.

Maybe this is my morality coming in again but it was important to me that the actor [ in Notes On A Scandal] was above the age of consent. Although really, what's the difference between 15 and 16? It's the law, yeah, but he's very mature.

See the opportunity in the misstep.

I could do a thousand films that are easy for me to do-that's if I don't fall in the next year, because everyone's about to fall. What's so funny is you look at all us young guys and we're already thinking, Well, I'm going to branch out into directing, and it's all going to be this and that.

When I see daughters with their fathers I wonder what that would be like, although not in a way that immobilises me.

His [Gough Whitlam's] effect on the geo-cultural-political map of Australia is so vast that wherever you stick the pin in you get a wealth of Gough's legacy.

Inquiry and curiosity is really important in any profession, but definitely in what I do. And in parallel you also need to be confident enough to try things. So it's a tricky thing sometimes to balance those two states.

A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.

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.

There's a lot of anti-Semitism, and it's not just against the Jewish.

Oftentimes you walk on set and then suddenly you're in bed with someone who you've never met before.

You have to surrender less when you see a film than when you go and see something live.

Wouldn't it be nice if the internet blew up?

People love events - they love performances, they love music - and I think Australians are great entertainers.

You can't really watch a theater performance by yourself. You can watch a movie by yourself, though.

I think the downside of the Internet is that speaking-or writing-has become the point in and of itself.

There's not a long, entrenched tradition of theatergoing in Australia.

I'm incredibly lucky that my profession allows me to be where I choose, really.

When something is a vocation, you don't really make a decision about it.

One of my favorite moments is onstage, when you see a dancer leap, and you think they're flying, and then they fall. It's that moment of suspension that you look for, and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't.

You can't really achieve anything in three years.

I think at the prospect of bringing children into the world, your mortality comes very much to the forefront, absolutely.

If you only exercise your soloist muscles, the other muscles quickly atrophy.

Every director works differently.

When you're directing something, you absolutely have to be involved in all layers of the process.

The notion of fate and destiny is a very Greek concept. Working in the theater you do think a lot about that, because as a storyteller you do think, 'At what point was this always going to happen and what part have I got a hand in being able to change things?'

There are certain things in ancient practices that are not worth adhering to.