Cate's up there with the legends

4:44pm Thursday 29th March 2007

OSCAR-WINNER HAS THE MAGIC OF HEPBURN AND BERGMAN

After winning her Oscar for playing Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, Cate Blanchett now gets to channel another classic Hollywood star for her latest film. In The Good German she finds herself paying tribute to Ingrid Bergman.

However, although she has been compared to these screen legends, Blanchett candidly admits she doesn't see it herself when she watches the finished product.

"I just see myself, really," she says with a mixture of disappointment and amusement. "I haven't been able to escape myself again. In a way, the outward transformation is the last thing on my agenda. And, hopefully, some kind of habitation happens.

"But from my end, from my perspective, it doesn't always. And I'm always bitterly disappointed when I see the end result. I think, 'bummer'."

The Good German, in which she co-stars with George Clooney, is an espionage thriller set in Berlin immediately after the Second World War. There are obvious references to Casablanca and Blanchett is flattered by comparisons with Bergman.

Director Steven Soderbergh wanted to shoot the film as if he was making it in the 1940s so there were no concessions to modern movie-making.

That also applied to the performances.

"The performance style - it's all pre-method," says Blanchett.

"It's much more forward and, I suppose, unashamedly melodramatic than what our sense of what is realistic and true now. But the internal life of the character, if you look at Ingrid Bergman's work, it's absolutely there."

In this film the Bogart to Blanchett's Bergman is Clooney, playing an American officer.

Blanchett has nothing but praise for Clooney who even, apparently, curbed his traditional habit of playing pranks on his co-stars.

"No, he was quite a gentleman," she says. "But he's the best dinner party guest in the world. Try and shut George up!" she laughs. "But he's hilarious.

"He's got such a great perspective on what he does, and thinks in such a unique way. And he's grown up with politics. It was absolutely fascinating to me, spending time with him, and just his insight, basically, into the American political system."

In the past year Blanchett has been seen as an enigmatic German in this film, an English art teacher in Notes on a Scandal, and an American tourist in Babel. Coming up later this year she reprises her role as Elizabeth I in The Golden Age.

In each of these roles she will sound completely authentic with an accent a million miles from her native Melbourne one. But the 37-year-old Australian says this sort of facility is essential for a successful career.

"I think if an actor is going to work globally, it's important for an actor to have a flexible voice anyway. I mean, when I play an Australian character, I don't necessarily assume they speak with the same accent.

"With an accent, you always want to feel like it's sitting in your body. You don't want to feel like it's something that's slapped on.

"So, it's important the process is an organic one. But it's always a matter of finding the way a character moves, the way they speak, their rhythm."

Appearing in The Good German made Blanchett consider her lot as a movie star, compared to some of her illustrious predecessors.

She came to movies through the now traditional route of drama school, theatre, and television. In the Golden Age of Hollywood it was very different.

"I was talking to someone the other day about this," she says.

"Before an actor or an actress actually got to screen test, they were put through deportment classes, speech classes, dance classes, so they came out as all-singing, all-dancing, all-acting, before they even screen-tested.

Now actors often have to get into a room, screen test themselves badly lit on a DVD, send it to a director who's not even necessarily interested.

"There was a greater investment in an actor (then)," she says.

"And so, when they got to the level of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and Ingrid Bergman, things were written for them. Great stories were written for them.

"What can happen now is that a woman can option a great biography because the person is fantastic, but the story around them might not necessarily be great.

"The character is interesting but the stories aren't always fantastic."

Blanchett is taking a brief break from film-making at the moment as she and her husband, the playwright Andrew Upton plan their first season as joint directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.

However this summer should see her back in front of the cameras opposite Harrison Ford in the fourth Indiana Jones film.

She says: "I think a healthy film culture is one that has a diverse array of films.

"And I'll go and see the piece of fluff as much as I will go and see the so-called 'worthy' picture," she says.

"I think it's the balance. When it tips too far in one direction, it's not good for the culture either way."

Editor's choice