Australian’s golden girl Cate Blanchett boasts an acting career spanning over three decades, but her time in front of the cameras may come to an end sooner than you’d expect for the 53-year-old.
Blanchett has been tipped for an Oscar for her latest performance in the upcoming psychological drama Tár, but when speaking to The Sunday Project, Cate implied that she may bow out of the acting world due to the emotional and physical strain the role inflicted.
The two-time Academy Award winner explained that playing the fictional world-famous pianist Lydia Tár has had a lasting impact on her, saying, “I think it was because it was such a physical role, the echoes of it are still with me and I think I’m like a lot of audience members, I need time to process it.
“So I don’t ever want to work again …” she added, laughing.
But when interviewee and The Project panellist, Hamish McDonald, pushed Blanchett on this statement, she didn’t try to retract, “really?”, he asked.
“I think it’s time to stop,” Cate declared.
Tar director Todd Field also encouraged her to step away from the camera.
”He said ‘don’t work for a while’, and I probably should have taken the advice,” Blanchett told Vanity Fair.
Instead she went on to star in Alfonso Cuaron’s thriller, ”Disclaimer.”
But since then she has decided it’s time to ”be quiet,” admitting she has a persistent feeling of wanting to quit acting permanently.
”It’s not occasional – it’s continual,” she said.
”On a daily or weekly basis, for sure. It’s a love affair, isn’t it? So you do fall in and out of love with it, and you have to be seduced back into it.”
Blanchett, who was born in Melbourne, has also admitted she had been “profoundly homesick over the last four years”, after being based in Los Angeles from 2015 alongside theatre director husband Andrew Upton and their four children.
Prior to this they called Sydney home for over five years when the couple were the artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.
Detailing the specific reasons on why she wanted to return to Australia, water and gardening were revealed as big passions of the star.
“‘I’m very obsessed, as are most Australians, obsessed by water. I want to be by the water, in the water,” she said
“My grandmother was a wonderful gardener and my mother is likewise an excellent gardener and she lives with us, and I really want to spend time in the garden with my mum.”