Cate Blanchett’s Maestro Moment in ‘Tár’

Time tends to stand still in the presence of Cate Blanchett. Martin Scorsese realized as much after spotting her 20 years ago at the Golden Globes. He didn’t know her personally, only her work. But as he watched her stride across the crowded ballroom—her floral dress and statement necklace shimmering—he had an epiphany. Scorsese, who was developing his next film, The Aviator, turned to his wife, only to find that she’d had the epiphany too. “We both looked at each other and said, ‘Katharine Hepburn—there she is,’ ” he says. 

A few years later, on the set of Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There, in which Blanchett played a renegade mid-60s version of Bob Dylan, Bruce Greenwood had his own memorable sighting, this time in a cavernous warehouse. It had to have been 50 or 60 yards high and four times as long. He wandered the dark space, a little lost, and found some crew gathered around a white light. He saw a striking silhouette of Blanchett, in costume as Dylan, cigarette in hand. Greenwood inched closer as if zooming in on an iconic photograph. “Everybody was as still as she was, transfixed by the stillness that she created,” he says. “And that was my introduction to Cate Blanchett.”

Talk to colleagues about Blanchett, and you hear a lot of stories like this. “She’s like these Renaissance portraits, where the light comes from inside,” says Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who directed her in 2006’s Babel. David Hare, who cast Blanchett in a 1999 London production of his play Plenty, says, “There is no possibility of ever being in a room without knowing if Cate Blanchett is in it.” 

I meet Blanchett for lunch on a brisk January afternoon in Beverly Hills. We’d previously said hello at industry events as she made the global rounds for her acclaimed Oscar contender, Tár. (It’s since been nominated for six Oscars, including best picture and best actress for Blanchett.) But here—settling into a corner booth, removing her hot pink spectacles and adjusting a gray scarf—her effect is particularly vivid. Around us, a few diners’ faces angle toward our table. She doesn’t seem to notice; it’s a situation, no doubt, she’s gotten used to.

Blanchett has another screening of Tár later tonight, she tells me as we get going. Well, a screening or something else—it’s hard to keep track. In the film, she plays a revered orchestra conductor facing a public reckoning. Blanchett has promoted it tirelessly since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, which is not typical of an actor of her status, with two Oscars to her name and a profile hardly at risk of declining. But she loves this movie. She worked very hard on it, and she’s compelled by its thorny, prescient provocations. On opening night in October, I joined her for a public Q&A at the AMC in Century City, Los Angeles, and when I asked how she felt about the tricky ending, she threw the topic to the audience in an instant, engaging with and validating diverging theories. She couldn’t stop smiling through it all. 

I initially took this as pure actorly enthusiasm; the long-gestating Tár had finally been released, and people had strong opinions. But speaking with her three months later, it’s obvious she’s had her own itch to scratch, an uncertainty yet to morph into clarity. “I found Tár the most all-consuming, confronting, joyous, life-affirming endeavor that I’ve ever been involved in,” Blanchett says. “I don’t know what exactly it is, but I know it’s something. So I want people to tell me what it is because I’m still figuring it out for myself.”