Cate Blanchett reiterates desire to quit acting: “I mean it”
Two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett says she’s serious about giving up acting in favour of other pursuits. Rather than continue to star in movies and television series for the rest of her life, she plans to retire early to allow her to accomplish the other things she’s had on her to-do list.
This is surprising given how many projects she has appeared in lately. In the past decade, Blanchett has averaged four films or television series per year, a breakneck pace that most actors would shudder to contemplate.
It hasn’t been quantity over quality, either. In that period, she’s earned two more Oscar nominations, one for Todd Haynes’s Carol in 2016 and the other for Todd Field’s Tár in 2023.
In a 2024 interview, Blanchett said that after only a couple of months of lockdown during the pandemic in 2020, she was so desperate for work that she agreed to take a role in Eli Roth’s disastrous videogame adaptation Borderlands.
“I was spending a lot of time in the garden, using the chainsaw a little too freely,” she remembered. “My husband said, ‘This film could save your life.’”
Still, in an upcoming interview with Radio Times, Blanchett insisted that she might be ready to leave it all behind. “My family roll their eyes every time I say it, but I mean it,” she said. “I am serious about giving up acting. [There are] a lot of things I want to do with my life.”
This isn’t the first time she has threatened to retire, but the more she says it, the more likely it seems. Although she didn’t specify when she might leave the profession or what she’s looking forward to doing next, Blanchett fans might want to prepare themselves for a future in which she is not a top awards contender every year.
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