Cate Blanchett arrives in Venice and declares: Don’t call me an actress

Cate Blanchett backs a controversial push to axe gendered prizes, and a recent move to hand out only a best actor award.

Cate Blanchett arrives for the opening ceremony and the screening of the film Lacci on the first day of the 77th Venice Film Festival. Picture: AFP

Cate Blanchett has arrived at the opening of the Venice Film Festival wearing a face mask and declaring that she would rather be called an actor than an actress.

The Oscar-winner is president of the Venice festival jury and is among the few Hollywood celebrities in attendance because of the pandemic.

She gave her backing to the Berlin festival’s controversial decision last week to do away with gendered prizes and only give a best actor award.

“I have always referred to myself as an actor,” Blanchett said after being asked about the move towards gender-neutral prizes.

“I am of the generation where the word actress was used almost always in a pejorative sense. So I claim the other space,” she said.

Actress Tilda Swinton at the Venice Film Festival. Picture: Matrix Pictures

The Venice festival was once slammed by feminists for the “toxic masculinity” of its selection of films, but this year the number of women directors vying for the top prize has quadrupled to eight.

“I think a good performance is a good performance no matter the sexual orientation of who is making them,” Blanchett said.

“The hardest thing as a jury member is to sit in judgment of other people’s work. That’s the hardest thing not the (gender) demarcation,” she added.

Venice was heavily criticised for selecting only one female filmmaker to compete for the Golden Lion in 2017 and 2018.

And there was still greater fury last year when Roman Polanski — who was convicted of the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977 — was selected and went on to win the festival’s second prize for his historical drama, An Officer and a Spy.

In the run-up to the festival — the first major film gathering since the coronavirus struck — Blanchett told Variety the record eight women directors this year was “a direct response to the positive advances that have been made”.

Playwright Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett. Picture: AFP

The 51-year-old has become a major player in Hollywood gender politics since the #MeToo movement sparked by the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

She led a red-carpet protest for equality by an army of female stars and directors at the rival Cannes film festival two years ago where she was also president of the jury.

The star of Carol and Elizabeth has also been a prominent supporter of the Time’s Up and #50/50 movements for gender parity and against sexual harassment in the industry in the wake of Weinstein’s disgrace.

Veteran French director Claire Denis, who is heading Venice’s Horizons sidebar competition, gave Blanchett her support.

“Cate and I were supposed to work together once on a project and I wanted her to be the leading man in the film,” she said.

The Cannes Film Festival protest in 2018. Picture: AFP

The maker of High Life and Beau Travail said the limits of gendered prizes was clear when you have to “give a prize to someone who has played the role of a man or a woman and who is transgender.”

But some stereotypes are slow to die. Blanchett was asked at one stage during the press conference before the festival’s opening gala whether she had asked her husband, playwright and director Andrew Upton, if she could go to Venice, given the risk of a second wave of COVID.

“My husband said I had permission to leave,” the actor replied dryly. “My children not so much.”

AFP