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Cate Blanchett at the premiere of "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" held at Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, Calif. on October 1, 2007. |
Reprising the roles they originated in seven-time Academy Award-nominated Elizabeth (1998), Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush return for a gripping historical thriller, laced with treachery and romance, in Universal Pictures’ Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Aware of the changing religious and political tides of late 16th century Europe, Queen Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) finds her rule openly challenged by the Spanish King Philip II (Jordi Molla), who along with his powerful armada, is determined to restore England to Catholicism. Preparing to go to war to defend her empire, Elizabeth struggles to balance ancient royal duties with an unexpected vulnerability, in her love for Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). As a queen who has sworn body and soul to her country, Elizabeth is unable and unwilling to pursue her forbidden love, encouraging her favorite lady-in-waiting, Bess (Abbie Cornish), to befriend Raleigh to keep him near. While she charts her course abroad, her trusted advisor, Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), continues to help shape Elizabeth’s campaign to solidify absolute power.
Talking to MediaBlvd Magazine, Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett spoke of what convinced her to return to such an iconic historical figure.
MediaBlvd Magazine> What changed your mind about doing this movie, 10 years after making the first Elizabeth?
Cate Blanchett> I think what really convinced me was time. The minute we finished the first film, Shekhar was talking about not only my playing Elizabeth again, but hundreds of other ideas. And, we’ve remained friends and have talked about various projects. Then, Tim Bevan from Working Title just said, “Look, let’s just work a script up, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.” And, I found that the notion of the love triangle, and the very structure of the narrative, was quite different. I had always said that, if they did another one, that Elizabeth shouldn’t be the central character. Because the structure of the romance, as it’s an unabashedly romantic film, was cut different, it didn’t feel like treading the same ground. So yeah, time, I think, in the end. Also, it helped to know that Geoffrey Rush and Clive Owen were onboard, and that Remi Adefarasin was going to shoot it, and that we would be working with Alexandra Byrne again, who did the costumes.
MediaBlvd> What was it like, the first day you returned to the character?
Cate> It was quite organic. We had long discussions about where to start and, obviously, in the end, no matter how much research you do, you’re telling the particular story that the script and the director prescribe. The great thing about Shekhar and I working together is that I’m fascinated by history, and he’s utterly disinterested, so I think we temper one another really well. We did a lot of research, but in the end, she’s starting off at a point where we left her in the last film, except she was at a point of utter rigidity in the end of the last film. How does one exist within that rigid place? So, we had to open that up a little bit. It felt strange. It was like there was an echo in the room, but yet it felt very fresh. Shekhar and I watched the first film with Abbie, because I don’t think she had seen the first one, just before we started to film, and I was incredibly uncomfortable thinking, “Oh, God, it’s 10 years later. Have I aged that much?” Being an actress in film is a bit like you’re aging in dog years. It’s quite confronting. But, I was surprised at how well it stood up. And, I was excited by the fact that this film was at once an echo, in that you’ve got the same creative team and a few of the same characters, but it was its own creature. It’s a much more internal, interior film, despite the kind of epic backdrop. So, it was a bit like a homecoming. I was uncomfortable in a healthy, useful way.
MediaBlvd> One of the interesting things about your portrayal of Elizabeth is the subtle changes in your face that convey her moods. What do you do to distinguish each little look?
Cate> I think it’s tricky, but vital, as an actor working in film, that you have a sense of the third eye, in that you can be aware of what you’re projecting, but not in a self-conscious way. So, if you’re internally engaged with the set of feelings and emotions, and also the actions that you’re trying to play on the other actor, because it always has to be active, then that will externally take care of itself. I hope I wasn’t mugging too much. I didn’t really think about that, on the day. When you’re getting into hair and make-up, it is a form of masking up. But, even when you’re in your Elizabethan war-paint, you don’t want that mask to be opaque. It has to be transparent. So, hopefully, there was a transparency to it.
MediaBlvd> This film takes license with the facts. Do you see this as fictionalized history, historical fantasy, or the exploration of a legend?
Cate> I think it’s all three. In the end, when you only have a couple of hours to tell an incredibly dense period of history, by the process of selection, you’re automatically telescoping the events and saying, “This event has more significance than the one that’s been omitted.” It’s never going to be like reading the letters and the court documents, or reading Alison Weir’s biography of Elizabeth. It’s not the same experience. But then, going to see a film shouldn’t be. You are being told a fable, through the eyes of that director. Filming is very temporal, too. Hopefully, the film has a contemporary quality. Like all good stories, it should be able to connect to the current collective unconscious, what we’re all thinking about, and what it means to be female now, as much as what it meant to be female then.
MediaBlvd> Elizabeth and Raleigh have a critical romantic chemistry. Was their timing just off?
Cate> Timing is everything, isn’t it? What interested me about the relationship between Raleigh and Elizabeth, in this particular incarnation and set of events, was that there was a vicariousness to it. That happens in a lot of circle of love relationships, where you almost want to be the person, as much as you want to possess the person. I think that there were a lot of male courtiers that Elizabeth had strong connections with, over the years. And, I think she was probably fascinated by the freedom that was afforded, not only an adventurer like Raleigh, but also the men in the court who could travel a lot more freely than she could. She never left the shores of England.
MediaBlvd> You have great chemistry with Clive Owen. Is he a professional charmer in real life?
Cate> I think every woman who works with Clive has incredible romantic chemistry with him. He’s very frank and open, and not at all self-conscious. That’s incredibly attractive when somebody is as attractive as he, but seemingly as unaware as he is of it.
MediaBlvd> Do you think women in power today have an easier time finding happiness in a relationship?
Cate> I was reading Joan Didion’s book The Year of Magical Thinking, again the other day, and she referred to various psychologists who were analyzing the notion of grief and the grieving process, saying that, somewhere along the way, in the last century, there became this notion that we all need to be happy. And so, nobody fully grieves anymore because we can’t be seen to be unhappy. So, the notion of happiness, for someone in Elizabeth’s position, is a strange one. It’s a very modern concept that happiness is something that we not only have to strive for, but can achieve, in this lifetime. Elizabeth’s situation was entirely different. The reasons for getting married were deeply unromantic then. It had to do with securing a nation, and it was a political tool. Women were used as part of the political negotiation process between countries. The fact that Elizabeth claimed that political mechanism for herself, and was able to use it herself, meant that the prospect of finding love was very elusive for her. The history books, which were written by courtiers at the time, say that the closest she came was the Duke of Anjou. But, in Shekhar’s first film, the Duke of Anjou was a raving transvestite. So, everything is up for grabs in these films.
MediaBlvd> How much did you play with the idea that Elizabeth suffered from madness?
Cate> I didn’t think about that a lot. I did it in about three or four scenes, one of which was cut because it was talking about Mary Stuart, and I think they decided there was a bit too much discussion about Mary Stuart, so they cut it out. I also tried to keep in mind that she was self-medicating with herbs and was physically unstable. At the time that I was playing her, I thought that she would have been quite menopausal, going through “the change.”
MediaBlvd> Was she in her 40's?
Cate> At the time, I kept telling Remi, who shot it, to take off the
12 denier stockings that he was shooting me through, to show a few more wrinkles. But, Shekhar likes women to look beautiful. So, in terms of that madness, it was what was not only going on for her psychologically, but what was going on for her physically.
MediaBlvd> Do you think that, if it wasn’t for Elizabeth, England would be speaking Spanish today?
Cate> Quite possibly. It’s really interesting to look at the history of failure. If we analyzed the failures that took place, rather than the victories, they have influenced us incredibly, the way we’ve ended up where we are today. Absolutely, England would have been a very different place.
MediaBlvd> Was there ever talk of a fictional scene between you and Samantha Morton?
Cate> I would have loved that. I think Samantha Morton is incredible. She’s such a dangerous, exciting, unusual, unpredictable presence on screen. I so admire her work. If anyone is ever going to do the Schiller, I’d be there with her, absolutely.
MediaBlvd> It seems daunting to play someone like Elizabeth. What attracts you to a project?
Cate> There’s a long and glorious legacy of actresses who have played Elizabeth I, including Flora Robson, Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson, Helen Mirren and Anne-Marie Duff. She’s constantly reinvented. One of my favorite plays is the short play, Mary Stuart, about a fictitious meeting between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I. She’s ripe for reinvention because she’s such an enigma. And also, if you think about the Elizabethan age, when the English culture, as we know, it was crystalized, it’s a fascinating period of history. There will be many more Elizabeths, long after this film, because she’s a fantastic point on which to leap off, for a story, particularly for a director like Shekhar.
MediaBlvd> What made you want to tackle someone iconic, like Bob Dylan?
Cate> Elizabeth I is iconic, as well. Look, I think I run a hundred miles an hour away from projects every single time, and in the end, the ones that stick are the ones that sort of pursue you and you can't say no to. And the idea of playing Bob Dylan was just so utterly ludicrous that of course I had to say yes. [laughs] And it was very daunting. And yeah, I was a bit nervous about returning to a character, I suppose, that had allowed me to walk into a door to an international film career. You don't ever want to feel like you're going backwards. So once I perceived that I could actually progress forwards through playing it, then it became exciting to me.
MediaBlvd> What makes you a believable actress?
Cate> Oh, God, I am utterly the wrong person to answer that question. I have no idea. Hopefully, a rich set of life experiences that I’m able to draw on. But, at the same time, I’m not at all interested in playing myself or imposing my own value system onto a character. It’s like continually having conversations with like-minded people. You get a very skewed perception of the way the world works. I like having conversations with characters who can convey very different sets of experiences to me.
MediaBlvd> How do you juggle your various commitments to your family and the theatre company with your acting?
Cate> My husband, Andrew Upton, and I, officially take over as co-artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company on the first of January. Andrew has been there all year, as an artistic associate, and I’ve been coming and going. There are some projects, which we’ve already begun to set up. We caretake Robyn Nevin’s season next year. Officially, we don’t actually start until January 1st.
MediaBlvd> Can you talk about your involvement with Indiana Jones 4?
Cate> I can’t. I’ll be shot. And so will you. It’s no joke. There are FBI people on the set.
MediaBlvd> What’s it like to be part of such an iconic franchise?
Cate> It’s such a well-oiled, iconic franchise, and one that I grew up with. On the first day of shooting, it was extremely surreal. I was watching the monitor as Steven Spielberg set up the frame, and I knew the iconography of it. I knew the trucks, the layout and the way these things were lit, but yet, when I was meant to enter the frame, it was a real zelig moment. So, it’s been fantastic, and so much fun. My boys have had an absolute ball, on set.
MediaBlvd> Are they sworn to secrecy, too?
Cate> Yeah, absolutely.
