After two kids, I hit the pillow and go straight to sleep.
— Cate Blanchett
I think it's so easy to be judgmental of other people's decisions.
Like any mum, I fear some mysterious illness befalling my children.
It is so interesting when you meet an actor in real life and they look completely different.
The more you can remove the obstacles between you and the world as a woman, the easier and simpler life becomes.
It took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea of being photographed by a moving or still camera.
Before having children, I think I probably approached work very differently, and you become much more economical and pragmatic about your relationship to it.
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 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.
No one wants to see me struggling to get a horse under control because I can't ride it. And no one wants to see me not knowing how to deal with the psychological makeup of the character.
I think the more you do as an actor, the more facility you have to switch on and off.
I've been mostly influenced by experiences in the theater growing up.
I think the atmosphere on set really comes from the material, but also the director.
I think if you're too embroiled in the need to relate too closely to the character, then you start to judge the character for the audience rather than to present it to the audience for their enjoyment and them to mull over the questions that the characters present.
I'm really lazy!
I think at the prospect of bringing children into the world, your mortality comes very much to the forefront, absolutely.
I'm very old fashioned.
The power of the story sheds a light and great perspective on well known facts. The power of cinema draws on that collective history.
People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar.
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.
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.'
I'm a much healthier person through my relationship with my husband. I've become a more fulfilled person - it's a great partnership.
I find that the skills and the muscularity required to be on stage, you need to keep those up - I do, personally, in order to maintain your ability to perform on screen. You don't want to always be working in the one medium.
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 remember the first film I did, the lead actor would, in between scenes, be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, 'How can you do that?' But it's so exhausting, you can't be 'on' 12-14 hours a day.
I think my understanding of different types of love has certainly deepened.
Once you get an offer from Steven Soderbergh, you just do anything you can to make it fit.
There's many things that you can do with your life. It doesn't necessarily - I think if you're in a creative sphere, or if you're hungry for experience, then those experiences don't necessarily happen like rungs of a ladder or in a linear way.
When I emerged from drama school, I had no expectation that I would ever work in film.
Obviously, if Woody Allen calls and says he wants you to read a script, of course you read it.
I think the height of ridiculousness was when I was playing Elizabeth in 'The Golden Age' while preparing to start shooting 'I'm Not There.' I literally finished filming Elizabethan grandeur on Friday, flew to Montreal, and started being Bob Dylan on Monday.
There is not a lot of separation between work and home life.
When I see daughters with their fathers I wonder what that would be like, although not in a way that immobilises me.
I discovered early on that some performers live their life in order to act, so all their relationships are simply an experience that they can feed back into their work. Which I find vampiric.
As an actor, I endeavor to find the reason in the unreasonable. Because no one thinks they are being unreasonable or unrealistic or demanding or behaving madly. We all see ourselves as being justified.
People who say, 'There's nothing to fear from spiders' have clearly never been to Australia.
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'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.
I feel very comfortable - literally and metaphorically - in my skin.
I suppose the more established one gets, you have what's called a reputation, and so you want to protect that and preserve that. And I think the bravery really comes in one's mid career where you then are constantly trying to move beyond that and move past that, because those so-called successors can become shackles.
I haven't got many anecdotes. Maybe I should do something scandalous.
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.
I have a very healthy relationship to my work, and I find that if a scene is working, no matter how intense it is, you have the catharsis on screen, and you can let it go. I think it's, if at the end of the day you feel like you haven't cracked it, that's when you go home and it's more difficult to switch off.
I've been pretty lucky in the leading men department.
I think the only thing I knew for sure is that I wanted to, whatever I did, I wanted to travel with my work, an adventurous spirit.
Playing the lead in a film where you shoot for three months away from home is not an easy thing for me when my children are in school and my husband is running a theatre company.
Woody Allen is a great dramatist and a great comedian.
Before I made a film, I thought it was easy.
Particularly at the moment, it's an incredibly optimistic thing to bring children into the world.
There are certain things in ancient practices that are not worth adhering to.
