Here’s a photo of Cate Blanchett backstage after she watched the smash Broadway musical Hamilton. Incidentally, Hamilton’s writer/director/star Lin Manuel-Miranda just won a MacArthur Genius Grant last week (HUZZAH!). Cate was in NYC for another reason though – she attended a pop-up shop for SK-II, the skincare and beauty brand that she represents. She chatted with People Magazine about skincare – which I actually found interesting because Cate usually doesn’t bang on and on about her endorsements – plus she discussed something that amused me to no end: apparently, Cate never throws out old underwear.

On her underwear: “[People] would be horrified if they could see my underwear drawer. I swear to God, the only reason I take jobs and do photoshoots is so I can get more underpants. I still have underpants my mother made me in high school. I just — something about going to the lingerie section, I don’t know what — I get overwhelmed, I never know what to buy. So I have the most embarrassing, embarrassing underwear. It’s so old at this point, it’s like, ‘prison gray’.”

She used to try to get a tan: “I have such fair skin and I used to go onto the rooftop covered in baby oil to try and tan. I did it for one summer and my mum said, you’re never going to be that girl, you’re only going to damage your skin. She was talking to me about skin cancer. So I then went goth instead. I went the other way: dyed my hair — the whole thing.”

What she learned on the set of ‘Carol’: “I love a girdle.”

[From People]

Is the underwear thing gross? I’m really asking because my frame of reference is skewed. Mostly because I still have underwear from my college days. It’s not that I still WEAR underwear from my college days, I just have difficulties throwing out articles of clothing that are still “good” (i.e., not completely falling apart). I still have t-shirts and pants from that era as well. Those old articles of clothing hang out in the back of the closet, or in the case of more-than-a-decade-old underwear, at the very bottom of the underwear drawer. My rationale (which makes no sense, I know) is that YOU NEVER KNOW when you’re going to have an underwear emergency and need your cheap panties from when you were 20.

Additionally, Cate is going to receive the BFI Fellowship at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. From what I can tell, the fellowship is like a lifetime achievement award. THR had a good write-up about how this year’s London Film Festival was going to be dominated by female filmmakers and films about women. Here’s hoping!

Here are some photos of Cate at LAX over the weekend. Those are some really frightening pants.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.