In a crackling profile in the new issue of GQ, Cate Blanchett gets candid (and increasingly tipsy) with writer Zach Baron. The portion of their conversation that focuses on gender in the film industry—a topic Blanchett is ready to move beyond—is particularly worth reading:
In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine she reprimanded those in her industry who are “still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are niche experiences,” so now she’s constantly invited to symposiums on gender inequality in Hollywood. (“It just feels like the industry has the same conversation every year and I think that’s a fabulous conversation,” she says. But also, kinda, enough. “We’ll be back here like Groundhog Day next year having the same fucking symposium. It just has to shift.”)
This is a problem not just in acting, but in any profession in which you become a figurehead or activist for a cause. We at Jezebel deal with it all the time: People want to know our take on particular women’s issues—issues that we’ve written about endlessly—and we’re ready to let our previous body of work speak for itself and move onto new things. (Basically, what I’m trying to say is that Jezebel is the Cate Blanchett of the internet.*)
The interview covers a lot of ground—her family history, the Sony hacks (“I don’t read that shit”), her ambivalence towards acting, etc.—and entertains the whole way through. Blanchett is sharp as a knife and funny, too:
[Blanchett is] just trying to get it all over with and go back to Sydney, where she and her husband and four kids live, and where it is very hard for studio publicity departments to get her to do things she doesn’t want to do. “The wonderful thing that I have is I live in Australia. ‘What?? The phone line’s really bad, sorry I can’t—’ “ She makes a phone-static sound. “That’s when you resort to every cliché: ‘I’m really sorry, a kangaroo just got run over outside our house.’”
We’ve all used the ol’ “kangaroo just got run over outside our house” excuse.
*If Cate Blanchett was widely complained about and a lot less rich.
Image via Getty.