MovieChat Forums > Cate Blanchett Discussion > Quotes about Cate (Post your favorite!)

Quotes about Cate (Post your favorite!)


We used to have a really good thread here full of quotes about Cate by her fellow actors and people she knows and/or has worked with, but it appears to have been lost because IMDb randomly decided to purge this board recently.  I thought I'd restart it with some of my favourites that I've saved over the past few years. I'll be adding more, please feel free to add your own if it's not here!

For more, there's a great tumblr devoted to the topic here -> http://quotesaboutcateblanchett.tumblr.com

"I saw Cate in Streetcar Named Desire on Wednesday night. Liv Ullman directed it. I will say right here that it was perhaps the greatest stage performance I have ever seen."
- Jane Fonda

"That performance was as naked, as raw and extraordinary and astonishing and surprising and scary as anything I've ever seen, and it didn't have anything to do with what clothes she took off, you know what I mean? She took the layers of a person and just peeled them away. I thought I'd seen that play, I thought I knew all the lines by heart, because I've seen it so many times, but I'd never seen the play until I saw that performance."
- Meryl Streep (after seeing Cate on stage in A Streetcar Named Desire)

"She’s an actress that is not only gifted and talented. Cate Blanchett is above all a brave actress. One has to be brave, for example, to play in A Streetcar Named Desire in Broadway. I really admire her enormously, and I’d really love to resemble her."
- Meryl Streep again

"I always say everyone was lucky enough to be in a Cate Blanchett movie."
- David Fincher

"No, Cate Blanchett is. I'll be her lady-in-waiting."
- Nicole Kidman (when asked in an interview if she's the Queen of Australia)

"Cate is incredibly intuitive, highly intelligent, physically free and playful. She has good theatrical sense and she keeps her feet on the ground. And, of course, she's just gorgeous."
- Hugo Weaving

"I’m, what, probably the 200th person to say that Cate is a fantastic talent. I’m not comparing two people or two actors, but it’s evident to me that Cate is undertaking today the roles which 15 or 20 years ago would have been offered to Meryl Streep. They’re both tremendous talents, each among the biggest and best not only of today, but I think in screen history. And I love it that Cate’s willing to join in with Indy. Some actresses or actors on that level of acclaim would think it beneath them to participate in this. I actually know of some performers who are snobbish enough to want to appear in things that are not big hits."
- Harrison Ford

"Working with Cate Blanchett, on and off the screen, has always been a highlight for me. She embodies the perfect combination of consummate actor and world-class fashion icon.''
- Giorgio Armani

"I'm not surprised at all at the level of her success with acting, but she would've been equally successful if she'd chosen to run the World Bank. She was always going to be a sensational human being and a great woman, whatever she chose to do."
- Felicity Donnoli (Cate's high school drama teacher)

"Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing. I don't know why. It's beyond my understanding. Why we all want to work with her is she elevates the rest of us. She's just got some ethereal grace and elegance that's beyond me, and an acute understanding of human nature. She's just exquisite. She's otherworldly."
- Brad Pitt

"In this world where celebrity trumps talent, Cate, God bless her, is an actress."
- Dame Judi Dench

"She's the best actor working today. Not actress, actor. Intimidating, in a way, to work with an actor that good."
- George Clooney

"She is the woman of a thousand faces and I find it as paranormal as some of our premises that she can so utterly transform herself into the character she is playing and then the second that I say ‘cut’, she is back with her Australian accent and kids on her knees being a mom and wife, and a really good mate for the other cast members and the crew."
- Steven Spielberg

"Once you have her, you already know that you’re moving away from the one-dimensional, the two-dimensional and you’re into the multi-dimensional. She’s an absolute thoroughbred as an artist. She has a skill level just off the charts."
- Kenneth Branagh

"Do I think Cate Blanchett is the most spectacular creature that ever walked the planet? Yes, I do."
- Russell Crowe

"Her husband doesn't know but she and I are going to get married quite soon. Which will surprise a lot of people."
- Ian McKellen (a.k.a. the openly gay Ian McKellen, lol)

"Cate Blanchett. Oh my God. I may turn."
- Ian McKellen again (he really loves Cate, it's adorable)

Philippa: "It was the first time that Cate had worked with Ian and Ian had worked with Cate."
Peter: "And Ian fell in love."
Philippa: "They totally fell in love. They have to do a play, I think. It would be extraordinary, they work so brilliantly..."
Peter: "Ian was trying to get back in the closet as fast as he could. It was quite incredible, he was absol... I've never seen somebody so much in love."
- Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens in the commentary for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey talking about the Cate/Ian lovefest

"I love Cate. I’m in awe of Cate. At the time, me and Emily Mortimer were pathetic little wannabes of Cate. We heard that she would go out jogging in the morning, so me and Emily, who were both smoking 40 a day, went too. We’d make it to the second lamppost along from the hotel, wheezing."
- Kelly MacDonald (Elizabeth co-star)

"She just has this chameleon-like ability to inhabit other people in a way that's somehow more striking and alarming to me, as a professional actor, than anybody else I watch."
- Matt Damon

"I had to do this one big scene with her and I was really nervous. She is so beautiful... but she's married dammit."
- Elijah Wood

"For her high profile and everything else she does, she is one of the most down-to-earth actors I have ever met. She is divine."
- Lee Pace (as a sidenote, between this and Elijah Wood and Ian McKellan above and Richard Armitage, Evangeline Lilly and Craig Parker also admitting they have crushes on Cate, was there anyone on the LoTR/Hobbit sets that wasn't in love with her? )

"She is one of the best actresses out there at the moment. She is beautiful, but at the same time she’s very powerful — she doesn’t seem like the person who would be told what to do."
- Ellen von Unwerth (Fashion Photographer)

"There's a reason someone like Cate is a massive movie star, and it's not just because she's a really good actor. It's also how she conducts herself. I was really taken aback by that. She is so compassionate, but she also has such an awareness of every person around her. You can meet lots of actors who are in their own world and do their own thing, and they have no idea what’s going on and they don’t know anyone's name around them. Cate has a real awareness of everyone around her. She wants to know that everyone else is doing all right. That's really refreshing. She's fearless. She's not afraid to do anything, but she's got such a physical grace that it's really special to watch how she holds her body and moves on set."
- Richard Madden

"Cate Blanchett. After working with her, I can say she is actually the image of feminine perfection. She has her really lovely kids on set, is super professional, incredibly intelligent and nice to everyone. I think she might actually be a perfect human being."
- Holliday Grainger (after being asked 'Who is your acting inspiration?')

"I don’t think the glamour girl is necessarily the actress who makes it. I think movies are far more interesting and there is a certain type of girl who is quite strong – like Cate Blanchett, who is very individual and a striking-looking woman."
- Angela Lansbury

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More:

"Who DOESN'T have a crush on Cate Blanchett?!"
- Evangeline Lilly

"If I'm ever in doubt, I envision the career choices of artists I admire like Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett and Viola Davis. They are all fearless actresses who approach every role without ego or vanity. They have a fierce commitment to the moment and the role, whether it's the lead or a character we see for just one scene. They give it their all, and it shows. The thought of having a career that in any small way might resemble theirs excites me."
- Lupita Nyong'o

"She's special. Brilliant. She takes on roles and is brave and takes risks and is truthful. Absolutely superb."
- Ciarán Hinds

"I was the one who fought for Cate. I wanted to make a contemporary film that is also historical and Cate has an amazing face, it's almost translucent. You don't quite know what age it belongs to. It belongs to then, it belongs to now. Her beauty is regal."
- Shekhar Kapur (on casting a then virtually unknown Cate in Elizabeth)

"Cate is gorgeous and you could watch her forever. I just love woman that are strong and are not afraid to play a character, flattering or not."
- Jennifer Aniston

"Cate has no ego. She just wants to investigate life, create incredibly rich layers, and make the work as good as it possibly can be. I believed every single moment of her as Jasmine and being so close to it, just saw this woman completely trapped and lost and alone. It was a highly tuned performance — it's like the strings on a guitar being tightened, tightened, tightened, until she snapped. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to take that character home with you at night."
- Sally Hawkins

"I guess I was surprised at how much she reads and how knowledgeable she is about current issues. What is very interesting about her is on the one hand she is living this incredibly glamorous life, you know at Cannes in an Armani gown one minute and then the next minute she is back in Sydney driving her kids over to a chess tournament and having a kids' sleepover at her home. She doesn't live the star life in the way other actors do... She's incomparable and extraordinary."
- Anne Summers

"It was just mind-blowing to be able to observe her level of skill and dedication and rigorousness and passion and discipline. She's an absolute machine and master at what she does."
- Robin McLeavy (A Streetcar Named Desire co-star)

"The scene with Galadriel in Rivendell. A chance to get to know Cate Blanchett and gaze into that beautiful face all day long."
- Ian McKellen (when asked what his favourite scene in LotR/The Hobbit was to shoot)

Skip to 30:10 of the below video of four LotR/The Hobbit cast members (Billy Boyd, Craig Parker, Jed Brophy and Adam Brown) at Dragon Con in 2014 and they talk about Cate briefly, it always makes me laugh. 

Host: "Was there anything from set you wish you could have kept?"
Craig Parker: "Cate Blanchett!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qGkvUUVfIA

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