Here’s what I’ve observed about how people in Hollywood perceive Cate Blanchett over the last 17 years I’ve spent working as an entertainment reporter. I’ll always remember Mark Ruffalo walking out of a junket suite at TIFF jokingly exclaiming to an entire hallway of journalists that he was tired of “f-cking Cate Blanchett taking all the good roles and being so great at them”. That was when she played Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. 

 

Or Guillermo Del Toro basically levitating when someone asked him about being around Cate on set, and talking about how the entire cast and crew, himself included, sometimes got so mesmerised by her performance they’d have to shake themselves out of the trance so that they could do their jobs and not waste her time. 

And Rose Byrne once at a junket for another movie talking about how grateful she was to be working on a project with Cate, like it didn’t matter what her own role was, just the opportunity to be in the same environment would make her a better actor… 

My point is, Cate Blanchett is revered. And that reverence has only increased in magnitude with her performance as Lydia Tár. Her peers are basically obsessed with her, which is basically the thesis of her new Vanity Fair profile, released just in time for Oscar voting. They’ll be even more obsessed when they read the piece and her thoughts on developing the character, on what went into playing her (it sounds like she might have been in a trance-like state, and coming from her, it somehow doesn’t sound annoying but all her imitators are going to make it annoying), and general ideas about acting – there’s a suggestion here that she’s thinking about quitting, and naturally this has been clickbaited online and taken out of context. What she’s actually saying is that you “fall in and out of love with it, and you have to be seduced back into it”.

 

With all of this in mind, here’s Cate at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon yesterday. She is the frontrunner to win Best Actress with Michelle Yeoh behind her. There is video of them greeting each other during the event. 

 

These two have spent a lot of time together this award season. It’s respectful, it’s considerate, they are clearly fond of each other, they obviously admire each other. And they both wore the sh-t out of their pantsuits. But there can only be one winner. And the way the Hollywood community talks about Cate, I wonder if Michelle can close that gap. 

Also attached – Michelle Williams, rounding out the three Best Actress nominees at the luncheon. Ana de Armas and Andrea Riseborough were both absent. Ana is filming and Andrea might be filming too, although given the controversy surrounding her nomination, she may also just be keeping a really low profile. How low though? Andrea was not nominated for a SAG or a BAFTA so the next big event is the Oscars themselves. Will she even walk the carpet or head straight into the theatre?