Cate Blanchett and the legend of the Egyptian boxing movie: “You can say that I was in it if you want”
It doesn’t take the best actors too long to reach the top, and Cate Blanchett was merely the latest in a long line of mercurial talents to live up to that notion when she landed her first Academy Award nomination for what was only her fifth feature and just her second leading role.
Not only that, but Blanchett had only made one movie outside of her native Australia before she was cast as the title character in Shekhar Kapur’s sweeping historical drama Elizabeth, which won her a Bafta and a Golden Globe in addition to her recognition from the Oscars.
As far as star-making performances go, it was a belter, with Blanchett 29 years old and almost completely unknown to international audiences when Elizabeth premiered. Of course, these days it might be an understatement to call her one of the best in the business, considering she’s spent the last quarter of a century displaying her chops as one of the most effortlessly versatile and consistent talents of the modern era.
Even the finest thespians and the most radiant stars have to begin somewhere, and for Blanchett, it quickly became an accepted part of her backstory that her screen debut came under the unlikeliest of circumstances and long before she’d officially decided to dedicate her life to acting.
Her official big screen debut came in 1996’s Parklands, with her small screen introduction unfolding in an episode of the TV series Police Rescue three years earlier. However, when she was a teenager in the midst of an international adventure, the future Oscar winner is said to have played an American cheerleader in 1990’s Egyptian boxing flick Kaboria.
Translating as Crabs, the film stars Hassan Hodhod as a boxer from dire financial circumstances with dreams of becoming a champion. As fate would have it, his wish is granted when he’s invited to participate in a fight being held at the palatial estate of a wealthy family, only to discover that he’s being used as a puppet and plaything.
For a long time, Kaboria has become best known outside of home shores for marking Blanchett’s first foray into cinema, but is that really the case? Straight from the horse’s mouth, apparently not. “No,” she said when asked by The Guardian if she was in the film. “But you can say that I was if you want. Print the legend of the boxing movie.”
Seems fairly straightforward, apart from the fact that because nothing is ever truly forgotten in the internet age, there’s footage that shows what certainly appears to be a fresh-faced Blanchett cavorting in the background of a scene from the movie she said that she wasn’t in.
Seeking to clarify, Blanchett told the story from her perspective. “This random Scottish guy came up and said they were looking for English-speaking extras and that I’d get paid five Egyptian pounds and a falafel,” she said. “At the time, I didn’t have enough money to pay my room for the week. I went along and there was an Arabic guy with a megaphone, like something out of a silent movie, and it was so hot and so boring that I left.”
As it turns out, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Blanchett is adamant she wasn’t in Kaboria, and she left before completing a day’s work, but she’s right there in the finished film. Presumably, she hasn’t felt compelled to track it down in the three decades since and comb through each frame, but the evidence to the contrary is compelling.
