Cate Blanchett Quotes

Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it.

If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously.

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

And perhaps, those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the center are niche experience, they are not. Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people.

I'm not sitting on a soapbox telling women what they should and shouldn't do, but I know what works for me.

I love strange choices. I'm always interested in people who depart from what is expected of them and go into new territory.

I don't think about being beautiful or not being beautiful. ... It's more about feeling confident inside your own skin really and thinking about yourself as little as possible.

Someone might have a germ of talent, but 90 percent of it is discipline and how you practice it, what you do with it. ... Instinct won't carry you through the entire journey. It's what you do in the moments between inspiration.

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

I couldn't possibly have played someone with feelings towards a woman unless I had those feelings myself.

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.

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

The word 'circumnavigate' is quite a beautiful word.

I finally had a honeymoon with my husband in Italy.

An actress once advised me, 'Make sure you do your own laundry - it will keep you honest.'

The thing I love about live performance the most, is that the doors are closed, the lights are turned down, and the audience has to be reverential to what's happening onstage.

Mind the gap - it's the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.

I love those moments on stage, on screen and in life when you dispense with language, when you sort of transcend it in a way, and certainly the experience of falling in love, I think, defies words, which is why poets, painters, musicians, actors have tried to describe that feeling, writers have just tried to put words to that.

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 don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth.

I think you need to have a healthy sense of doubt because I think doubt leads to inquiry.

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere.

If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness.

I'm of the opinion that it's okay to be silent, to not speak if you don't have anything to say.

I'm partial to a nice cup of vodka. I normally just drink it really simple with a little bit of lemon.

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.

Onscreen, babies and animals are my inspiration. They're so alive and there and not messed up in the head the way I am.

Art civilizes us and it connects us and activates us. And so it's really important to connect with compassion, with stories about people who are different from us.

I like to put perfume on my pulse points, but I also love the way you can sense it - there is an atmosphere that comes from releasing a scent in to the world - it's a primal thing. I spray around me, not just on me, and it lingers in the room after I leave.

I think Pilates is great, especially when you can do it with a trainer who keeps you on track.

You learn an enormous lot through failure.

Any industry loses its innovation and loses its access to creative juices if you don't have progressive thinking and diversity.

If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life - that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment - that would be the perfect state.

I remember when I was 26. My father died when I was young and my mother didn't have a lot of money, so I thought, 'I want to own a flat by the time I'm 26.' So I worked towards that, literally trying to scrimp and save. But sometimes those plans don't go as you expect.

My dreams tend to be like dog dreams. I'm usually so tired that I hardly dream at all. In a way, I do think that the zone one performs in - without getting too ooga-booga about it - it's like that moment when you wake up in the morning and you're emerging from a dream state but you're not quite up. Where are you? Can you hear the birds? Or is that the traffic? It's that zone in which I perform. It’s like one foot in reality and one foot in a dream state. I spend most of my life in that state!

Violence and racism are bad. Whenever they occur they are to be condemned and we should not turn a blind eye to them.

My husband wasn't put off by it - he thought it was hilarious to see me dressed as Dylan! He didn't particularly want to kiss me with stubble all over my face - it felt a bit odd! But I think he's used to it [the make-up process].

The less one can think about oneself, the more interesting and attractive one becomes.

At the moment there are 1 in 8 people who have no access to clear drinking water, about a billion people worldwide, which can make you feel quite overwhelmed.

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

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

When you’ve had children, your body changes; there’s history to it. I like the evolution of that history; I’m fortunate to be with somebody who likes the evolution of that history. I think it’s important to not eradicate it. I look at someone’s face and I see the work before I see the person... You’re certainly not staving off the inevitable. And if you’re doing it out of fear, that fear’s still going to be seen through your eyes. The windows to your soul, they say.

I am the age that I am and I am trying to do the best with what I got.

What you're trying to do as an actor is somehow trick yourself into believing that these words have never been said, and so you've got to discover them for the first time.

The interesting thing for me about the debate about same-sex marriage ... is that it's one of those issues where it has no impact on anyone apart from the people that it impacts upon. So I find it quite bewildering that it's - that it's so complicated for people.

To record something on your iPhone to be watched later, that's like the opposite of theater. The joy of being there is experiencing it with other people. It doesn't translate onto your phone. It's about being present.

I think when something is apolitical and it gets politicised, then it's incredibly disappointing.

I think referendums are fantastic as long as the question is phrased in a way which is not meant to deliberately confuse or confound people.

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?

Actresses can get outrageously precious about the way they look. That's not what life's about. If you starve yourself to the point where your brain cells shrivel, you will never do good work. And if you're overly conscious of your arms flapping in the wind, how can you look the other actor in the eye to respond to them?