Top 110 Cate Blanchett Quotes

When you’re directing something, you absolutely have to be involved in all layers of the process.

I don’t know, maybe my sons will be gay.

The word ‘circumnavigate’ is quite a beautiful word.

You can’t really achieve anything in three years.

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

My everyday beauty routine is always rushed and pretty simple.

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.

Once you get an offer from Steven Soderbergh, you just do anything you can to make it fit.

I am happiest when I don’t know what’s coming next.

When I see daughters with their fathers I wonder what that would be like, although not in a way that immobilises me.

I always dressed as a man when I was at school. I loved wearing a tie and a shirt, and I was always wearing suits. Annie Lennox was my hero. I was always playing men in high school.

When a gift is difficult to give away, it becomes even more rare and precious, somehow gathering a part of the giver to the gift itself.

People are always saying they loved me in ‘Titanic.’

I miss Brighton enormously, enormously. There is so much I miss, including rain. I miss the verdant countryside.

Who would want a face that hasn’t seen or lived properly, hasn’t got any wrinkles that come with age, experience and laughter? Not me, anyway.

I feel very comfortable – literally and metaphorically – in my skin.

You can’t be trying to make a film that pleases all people, you know, so it’s not a concern of mine.

People love events – they love performances, they love music – and I think Australians are great entertainers.

I’m not interested in playing characters who see the world through my prism; I think the journey of understanding any character is to see how they tick and how they differ from you.

Happiness is fleeting – I think that’s the main lesson I have learned.

When you’re a performer, of course you want an audience, but it’s very, very different from courting fame.

I feel like I’ve been marinated in Australian theatre.

I guess I prefer to be quite private. It’s a myth that actors are exhibitionists.

You have to surrender less when you see a film than when you go and see something live.

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

Inhibition is something I notice in hamstrung actors all the time. They can be wonderful up to a point and then become very self-conscious.

I love ‘Annie Hall,’ but then I adore ‘Hannah and Her Sisters.’ Dianne Wiest is amazing in ‘Bullets Over Broadway,’ but her in ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ I absolutely loved it.

There are certain things in ancient practices that are not worth adhering to.

Woody Allen is a great dramatist and a great comedian.

Look, I live in the modern world as much as anyone else.

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 there is a long exploration in American drama of women in particular who, by force of circumstances or because they are predisposed to, choose fantasy over reality.

I think I just want to garden – or kill some plants, in my case.

There’s not a long, entrenched tradition of theatergoing in Australia.

I don’t feel like, ‘Now I’m a great actress.’

Like any mum, I fear some mysterious illness befalling my children.

I never feel particularly comfortable holding a gun, but when you’re playing somebody who lived in the frontier southwest, guns are a part of their life. Anyone who lives on land has a gun.

I don’t like a heavy mask of make-up day or night – mascara and a bit of bronzer.

People had always vaguely mentioned that when you have children, how part of your life would stop. But they don’t say that some other extraordinary part of your life opens up.

I think it’s so easy to be judgmental of other people’s decisions.

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.

I remember thinking, when I was playing Hedda Gabler, that several sequences of the play were utterly absurd.

You have to know how to evolve with age without trying to hang on to your younger image of yourself from the past.

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?

Suddenly, my friend’s daughters are becoming my best friends. I have so many 12-year-old girlfriends.

I’m very fast.

I never want to work. Even when you’re presented with these great opportunities, I think, ‘I really love being in my pajamas with the kids.’

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

No one is ever who they purport to be.

My husband went through a phase of giving me vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and Mixmasters. It’s ironic. He is encouraging me to develop a hobby, I think.

There is a societal cost of increased pollution, and that’s what I’m passionate about as a mother.

I’m constantly humbled.

In my career, I thought I’ve never wanted to get anywhere in particular. I just wanted to work with interesting people on interesting projects.

I cook a mean Sunday lunch. My idea of Heaven is a lunch outside on a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon. It’s the time to gather everyone together.

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

I don’t consciously think of how parenthood has changed me but I’m sure it must have.

I would really have liked to have gone to Broadway with ‘A Streetcar Named Desire.’ I was proud of that.

You know, you do have a self-awareness as an actor.

I want to be able to follow the example of those extraordinary British actresses who move effortlessly from film to TV to theatre roles.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I have to write everything down.

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

Being in Australia, I was really sun conscious. For a couple of summers there, I did the baby oil thing, and my my mom said, ‘Just don’t. You’ll regret it.’

When you’re onstage, you’re acutely aware of the reaction of a particular group of people, because it’s like a wave.

What happens a lot in film, though not so much in the theatre, is that you get stroked and sort of massaged, like a little guinea pig.

I’ve known the panic of financial struggle. I didn’t grow up with money at all, and my family has certainly known the panic of, ‘Oh, gosh, where’s the next bit of money coming from?’

Before I made a film, I thought it was easy.

I don’t like to reduce a role to fit me. The challenge to me is to expand to it. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s the challenge of it.

I look forward to the holiday season every year.

I want to see a connected and progressive future for Australia, where we harness our greatest natural resources: sun, wind, and brain power.

You do not want to be in a creative organisation with everybody being like-minded and stroking each other’s creative egos. You want differences of opinion… constructively.

I think that the benefit of playing someone like Queen Elizabeth is that so much has been written about her, and there’s so much speculation about her – was she a hermaphrodite? She’s so mythologised, and there are a lot of images of her.

There are very few issues that lie specifically in one region now. Polio in Syria doesn’t affect Syria alone. I don’t think any issue can ever be isolated into local politics these days, because we all know too much.

I said to Martin Scorsese, ‘When are you going to make another film with a woman at the center?’

I grew up listening to music and going to the theatre.

You’re always more critical of your own country. People will talk about stuff in Britain, and I’ll go: ‘Aw, it’s not that bad,’ but at home, it’s different. It’s inside you.

I’m not particularly needy, and I’m not particularly anxious. I don’t look for a director to tell me I’m doing a good job or that I’m great. I don’t need to be stroked. It’s more my own yardstick.

I think my understanding of different types of love has certainly deepened.

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

I applaud Women in Film – not only for celebrating the successes of women, but for providing a safety network to mentor women and to discuss the particular issues that arise in a very male-dominated industry.

A lot of people are frightened by old age – by being around people who are, basically, on their way out – but I’m fascinated by it. It’s an amazing thing to be around someone who has had a life well lived.