Cate Blanchett is the cover girl for the June issue of W Magazine, probably to promote Robin Hood (which only came in #2 at this weekend‘s box office, having been beaten by Iron Man 2). She’s photographed by Craig McDean (slideshow here). What do you think? I think quite a bit of Cate’s ethereal beauty, and I think she could make a burlap sack look interesting and high-fashion. But does this photo shoot do her any favors? She could easily pass for a woman ten or even fifteen years younger, sure. But I think they’ve styled her to look like Tilda Swinton on a normal day. As far as the interview goes, if you already love Cate, you’ll enjoy it. Cate’s not really the best interview, but she’s far from the worst. To me, she always comes across as really normal and well-adjusted. The full article is here, and here are some highlights:

Cate Blanchett on her inaccurate public perception: “I’m so misunderstood! I’m not focused on what other people think of me. Some people get you and some people don’t, and to spend your life trying to make people understand how deep and complex and varied you are—I think that way lies madness.”

Blanchett on her husband’s influence: “My husband keeps me really honest. I remember him saying to me after I made Elizabeth, ‘Sweetheart, you’ve probably got about about five years.’ He was preparing me for the time when the work dries up, as it invariably does.”

Blanchett’s husband, playwright Andrew Upton, on his wife as a coworker: “She challenges, but she’s not aggressive. I can tend to be a bit scattergun. She’s quite practical in the end, so I often just fire off, and she’ll sort of pick up the pieces or choose the best bits. She would be the first and pretty much only person I would seriously seek counsel from. We’re fairly brutal with each other.”

Blanchett on working with her husband: “We’re really open. I have friends—she’s an actor/writer married to a director—and she was horrified when we said we were going to work together. She said they don’t talk about work because they don’t want to venture into the territory of being criticized by you partner. But I know what to do with the criticism.”

On having all boys: “Everyone says, ‘Oh, you must have [been trying] to have a girl,’” she says, adding that she’s open to having another child, regardless of gender. “If the next one was a boy, then that’s just our lot! It’s true you do get a bit demented [with three boys].” But, she adds, “the chaos of it is great.”

On taking a break from film acting: “Before I made a film, I thought it was easy,” she says. “I thought, They all get so much time, so they can get a perfect moment, and then assemble a series of perfect moments. Then you get on set, and you realize it’s a completely different form of concentration [from theater], because you are used to the grand arc of a story and a film is made so piecemeal. To hold the whole story in your head—I found that kind of impossible and terrifying at first.” She managed to master it obviously, but she grew weary of making back-to-back movies. “It was thrilling for a while, but to maintain that pitch and momentum, I just couldn’t do it,” she says. “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.”

Backpacking in the Middle East when she was 19 years old: “I’d love to see if the Oxford Hotel in Cairo is still around—some pretty dodgy things were going on there! There was one guy there who’d been in bed for three years just waiting for a package to arrive from Pakistan.” Her giggling becomes uncontrollable. “I don’t know if the package ever came! He had to have gotten bedsores!”

[From W Magazine]

See? She’s interesting, but it’s not in any kind of tabloid way. She says nice things about Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, but makes a point of saying her favorite actors are Geoffrey Rush and Judi Dench and Hugo Weaving. She’s funny and interesting, but we really don’t know much about her, which is a cool way to go considering her fame and talent.

W Magazine photos courtesy of W online.