These are photos from Cate Blanchett’s appearance yesterday on the cover of the New York Times’ Style Magazine. Lovely, beautiful, epic Cate. Cate makes every photo shoot special. Cate can pose her ass off. Cate looks unique and different in every photo, ever.

I haven’t gotten a chance to read every word of Cate’s interview with the mag – it’s a really long article! You can read it here, and I’ll probably get a chance to read the whole piece later today. I’m looking forward to it! Surprisingly, Cate is not really what I consider to be a “good interview.” She’s not dumb, and she doesn’t say stupid things because she can’t help herself. She’s not full of herself, and she consistently comes across as a normal working mom who is a bit eccentric. She doesn’t enjoy talking about herself, she’s not a self-obsessed narcissist, and she seems to insist on keeping areas of her life private. All of that makes her a good person, a role model, a wonderful actress, but a boring interview. Here are some quick highlights:

*She’s a dignified, pre-red-carpet star caught in a celebrity-tweeting culture, with the result that she’s learned how to promote her role of the moment — in this instance, that of a ruthless C.I.A. agent in the thriller “Hanna,” directed by Joe Wright — without seeming to be promoting anything, least of all herself. I dutifully bring up the subject of the film and mention that I found it beautiful looking but disappointing. Blanchett says she took “Hanna” on “because it was the best first 20 pages of any script I’d read — brutal, terrifying and suspenseful.” And then she’s happy to move on to other matters. It’s an art all its own, this straining toward the shadows of self-effacement when you’ve been shoved into the limelight, there’s no doubt about that.

*Blanchett does admit to liking clothes — “I love dressing up,” she says, “although that doesn’t mean necessarily on the school run”.

She goes through her paces like a trouper, despite her fatigue and having suffered through a spider bite, investing each shot with a narrative arc, calling on the skill she puts into delivering information on screen about characters as diverse as Queen Elizabeth I, Charlotte Gray, Veronica Guerin, the elf queen Galadriel, Katharine Hepburn and Bob Dylan. Blanchett seems patient and unfussy but also keeps at a slight remove from the proceedings in her regally self-possessed way. (When I asked her whether she felt nervous about giving an award at the Oscars, she answered with a simple “No.”)

So, over soft-boiled eggs (Blanchett orders a side of spinach) the next day, I bring up the biceps issue and the more general one of her svelteness. Blanchett doesn’t admit to dieting (wouldn’t it be nice if someone other than Carrie Fisher did?) but does avow how she doesn’t have a big sweet tooth. She also explains that she and her husband gave each other running shoes for Christmas and have renewed their commitment to exercise; Blanchett spends a half-hour on the elliptical trainer four days a week. “I don’t enjoy it,” she says, “but I certainly have more energy.” We go on to talk of other things, of the perils of performing versus writing (Upton is a writer as well as director), the limitations of psychotherapy (she’s never been in “very intensive” therapy), how death doesn’t solve anything (“I’m not interested,” she says, striking a rare note of annoyance, “in using my father’s death as some touch point for why I’ve become an actor — it’s grossly opportunistic”) and the crucial importance of timing, especially when it comes to romance. “Don’t you think like most things, like comedy, like sex, like anything, it’s about timing? I think we collided with each other,” she adds, referring to her husband, “at what turned out to be the perfect time. We knew each other socially and we didn’t get on and we played poker one night and I don’t know how we ended up kissing but we did and he asked me to marry him about three weeks later and we got together in the same spirit. . . . Maybe I’ve got a lack of consequence,” she adds, “a healthy lack of consequence.”

[From The New York Times]

Ooh, she works out! I would love to work out with her. I imagine she would be a cool workout buddy. And I love what she says about her father’s death – it’s so refreshing to see an actor who is unwilling to whore out personal tragedy for the benefit of their “craft”. I love her.

NYT Style photos courtesy of The Fashion Spot.