Cate Blanchett has come out in support of Emma Watson’s HeForShe campaign, while expressing anger over the subsequent threats to release nude photos of the Harry Potter actress.
“I was so fucking proud of Emma Watson’s speech at the UN,” said Blanchett in an interview in the latest edition of Porter magazine. “It was brilliant, such an incredible use of her airspace, and really passionate.”
She called the nude photos threat – later revealed as a hoax – “horrendous, but there is hope.”
Blanchett, herself a vocal spokeswoman on climate change issues, cited Hillary Clinton, Christine Lagarde and Julia Gillard as role models for young women. In October, Blanchett and Gillard co-authored an article for Guardian Australia about “the unfinished business of giving girls a great education”.
“Millions of girls throughout the world are today denied the opportunity to meet their full potential,” they wrote. “This is not a situation any thinking or feeling person can stand by and tolerate.”
In the Porter interview, Blanchett expressed optimism that tides were turning for gender equality. “There are enough women with enough clout to make those shifts happen,” she said. “And I hope the Emma Watsons of this world are going to say: ‘Fuck it’.”
The Oscar-winning actor also spoke of her life as a working mother, the realities of the Sydney school run and the judgment she sometimes faces from other women.
“They assume you have a nanny and a driver and a chef,” she said. “Who gives a shit whether I do or not? The fact is, I don’t, but you know there is a certain circle of people – and we all get insecure – who then ask: ‘Why can’t she brush her hair?’ You just have to shrug that off.”
Blanchett is currently in Sydney filming Truth, based on Mary Mapes’ memoir of the Killian documents scandal that saw CBS broadcast an unverified report about George W Bush relying on family connections to avoid fighting in the Vietnam war.
“The only thing that culture can do is spit the facts back at people and provoke discussion,” Blanchett said of the film.
In snapshots of her own cultural tastes, Blanchett also talked about the art she collects with her husband Andrew Upton, artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company, including a graphic Stanley Spencer drawing which hangs in the couple’s bedroom, and of buying Donna Tartt’s novel, The Goldfinch, “not just because people were saying it’s a good read, but because it was so fat. I thought: ‘I’m going to finish that fucker.’”
