Cate blanchett quotes

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

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.

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.

I think Pilates is great, especially when you can do it with a trainer who keeps you on track.

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.

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.

Women have been doing very, very strange things for centuries. I mean ancient Egyptians were already doing that, but I don't necessarily judge people who do. I don't really think it makes people look better; they just look different.

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

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

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.

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

When you’ve had children, your body changes; there’s history to it. I like the evolution of that history; I’m fortunate to be with somebody who likes the evolution of that history. I think it’s important to not eradicate it. I look at someone’s face and I see the work before I see the person... You’re certainly not staving off the inevitable. And if you’re doing it out of fear, that fear’s still going to be seen through your eyes. The windows to your soul, they say.

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.

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

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

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

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

I think part of the disappointing failure of the political process in America today is that it's asking us to forget countries' historic connections to other countries, or to the laws that have been made. They're willfully asking people to forget their country's history, and focus only on the present. It's bizarre.

I think we should stop drinking bottled water. There's no need to be drinking it if you're living in western communities. The other thing I would suggest - and I feel it particularly here in Australia, because we have very severe drought - is to be aware of how much you're actually consuming. Right now, it's very rainy, but that doesn't mean we can drink all the water we want. Conserving and constantly thinking, "how much do I really need?" should definitely be part of our vocabulary.

I think that's what I love about my life. There's no maniacal master plan. It's just unfolding before me.

I certainly think that when I flick through all the magazines at the hairdresser's I like to see and am drawn to images that have an intelligence and mind at work behind them.

You learn an enormous lot through failure.

Of course one worries about getting older - we're all fearful of death, let's not kid ourselves. I'm simply not panicking as my laugh lines grow deeper. Who wants a face with no history, no sense of humor?

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

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.

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.

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

I think it's always good to take on things that at first seem bigger than you. Then you just try and surmount them.

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

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

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

I never really think about my gender, first and foremost - until a door is closed to you. Until you can see a parallel opportunity with a man in a similar place in his career and you think, That opportunity is not open to me or my fellow actresses. That's interesting.

I'm so misunderstood!

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

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?'

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?

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.

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 went through a mod and goth-phase when I decided that I wouldn't ever be the bronzed beach-bunny. I started going as pale as I possibly could.

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 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.

If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life - that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment - that would be the perfect state.

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.

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

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.

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.

Lazy thinking is not creative or productive.

It's not just women in film, 18-year-old girls feel pressure to do preventative injecting. I see someone's face, someone's body who has had children and I think, they're the song lines of your experience, and why would you want to eradicate that? I look at people sort of entombing themselves and all you see is their little pin holes of terror... and you think, just live your life, death is not going to be any easier just because your face can't move.

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.

I think you need to have a healthy sense of doubt because I think doubt leads to inquiry.

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.

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.

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.

I think we should all feel lucky and blessed that people are still, in this day and age, getting in their cars with other people and driving to a location and paying money to sit in a theater and watch a play.

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 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.

I am the age that I am and I am trying to do the best with what I got.

I was quite shocked at the tone I took and the judgements I had of the relationship that she embarked on, you know, sex with a minor. But it's the stuff of great drama.

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!

If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness.

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I was but three when he passed by, but I shall be grateful until the day I die.

I like to put perfume on my pulse points, but I also love the way you can sense it - there is an atmosphere that comes from releasing a scent in to the world - it's a primal thing. I spray around me, not just on me, and it lingers in the room after I leave.

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.

I don't understand a way to work other than bold-facedly running towards failure.

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

Some days I'm very lazy, and some days I'm more inspired. I've got things I've had since I was fifteen - I don't throw anything away. I prefer to give it to a friend so I can wear it again...The way I dress doesn't necessarily have to do with fashion, or what is current, or what is in right now, it's more about rediscovering things.

The emoji still doesn't really speak to the complexity that actually - or the subtext that goes on between when people actually speak face-to-face.

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.

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

You know, when you see yourself on a big screen, I tend to watch from behind my hands. There is absolutely the regret. You always get that at the end of every project. That's what's great about theater: at least every night you get the chance to go out and re-offend. I'm endlessly disappointed, which is what propels me into the next project, probably, not to repair the damage but to kind of hopefully keep developing. Otherwise there's no reason to keep doing it, is there?

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 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.

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.

Oh god, I wish. I really wish. If I'm time-poor, which I usually am, that's the first thing to go. And I know it shouldn't be, I know I should be really regular, but I like to get it done as quickly as possible.

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

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

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.

I just don't see myself as the heroine in my own narrative.

It was only when I realized how actors have the power to move people that I decided to pursue acting as a career.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The word 'circumnavigate' is quite a beautiful word.

For me, I think the bigger something is, the more difficult it is to make it nimble and fleet afoot.

Germany is a country that has absolutely had to since the Second World War ask itself massive moral questions. And it's reforged its identity based on culture. I mean, the amount of artists living and working in Berlin is unparalleled. It's one of the strongest economies, not only in Europe, but globally, and it's because of its understanding of the importance of culture.

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 partial to a nice cup of vodka. I normally just drink it really simple with a little bit of lemon.

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.

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

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.'

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.

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.

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

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

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.

Well, I've never looked upon myself as being a beauty, per se.

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.

I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people.

o 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.

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.

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

I don't have a sense of entitlement or that I deserve this. You'd be surprised at the lack of competition between nominees - I think a lot of it's imposed from the outside. Can I have my champagne now?

Everyone gets obsessed with anti-aging but I'd rather look as good as I can at the age I am.

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.

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.

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 remember when I was 26. My father died when I was young and my mother didn't have a lot of money, so I thought, 'I want to own a flat by the time I'm 26.' So I worked towards that, literally trying to scrimp and save. But sometimes those plans don't go as you expect.

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