Cate Blanchett named her favourite books of all time
Cate Blanchett garnered widespread acclaim in 2021 with her performances in high-profile, Oscar-nominated projects such as Don’t Look Up and Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. Beyond that, she has already moved on to other alluring prospects such as an adaptation of the popular video game series Borderlands as well as a new Pinocchio adaptation by del Toro.
Including the likes of David Fincher, Wes Anderson and Steven Spielberg among others, Blanchett has worked with some of the greatest filmmakers of our time. Due to her work on films like I’m Not There and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Blanchett is often regarded as one of the most talented acting stars of her generation.
Over the course of her career, Blanchett drew inspiration from a variety of sources for her acting work. In addition to being moved by cinematic masterpieces, she has also incorporated the wisdom in noteworthy literary works into her own domain in order to improve her craft and take it to the next level.
In an interview, Blanchett was asked to cite some of her favourite literary works and she included David Mamet’s Oleanna. Blanchett commented: “Mamet has taken all the extraneous stuff away and left you with just this searing, polemic essential battle to the death. Geoffrey and I keep saying Oleanna is an inkblot test, because your reaction to it reveals to you your own sense of politics.”
She also mentioned the famous The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, adding: “It’s about preparing for a good death, and I’ve found that in having a child, you’re confronted by your mortality each day as the child grows and blossoms. But every single element in our Western society is a denial of death. We don’t want to think about it, which compounds the terror we feel about it. This book helps one to navigate one’s way through the terror.”
Check out the full list below.
Cate Blanchett’s favourite books:
- The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim
- The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Voss by Patrick White
- Oleanna by David Mamet
- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche
One of the books that had a huge impact on Blanchett was Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. “This novel was handed to me on a silver platter by my husband, who said, ‘You cannot die without reading this.’ I keep coming back to it because it’s so detailed in recording the inner life of Dick Diver, the central character,” the actress said.
Elaborating on the relationship between Dick and his mentally unstable wife: “The word I think of with this story is ‘fragile.’ I was utterly struck by the fineness of Fitzgerald’s writing and the timelessness of Dick and Nicole’s failures.”
