Just about all of Cate Blanchett’s movie costumes appealed to her husband, Andrew Upton — except one.
In an interview with Vogue for the outlet’s “Life in Looks” series, she looked back at her red carpet outfits and costumes of films past. The actress shared that her look from I’m Not There — in which she played Jude Quinn, a persona embodying a particular stretch of Bob Dylan’s life — was the only one her husband wasn’t into.
The full costume included unruly, curly brown hair, an array of structured blazers, a cigarette in most frames and Dylan’s iconic shades. It was a big change from the film she had completed just prior — Queen Elizabeth: The Golden Age — for which she had wrapped filming just the week before.
“But it was so liberating. I had fantastic eyebrows and sideburns,” she said. “It was the only time my husband hasn’t wanted to kiss me.”
The 2007 film saw a range of stars assuming different aspects of the singer’s public life. Ben Whishaw played Arthur Rimbaud, Dylan as a cryptic 19-year-old, with Marcus Carl Franklin as Woody Guthrie, Dylan at 11 as he freighthopped around the Midwest.
Jack Rollins, played by Christian Bale, took on the folk music scene in Greenwich Village, N.Y., with his protest songs, while Heath Ledger was Robbie Clark, who embodied the singer at age 22 as he fell in love with a French artist.
Billy McCarty — Billy the Kid — played by Richard Gere, is an outlaw who lives in seclusion in rural Missouri, while Blanchett’s Jude Quinn shot to stardom and must grapple with accusations of selling out.
“Todd had divided Bob’s personas — ‘Bob,’ like I know him — Dylan’s personas into many different characters,” she said. “And the late great Heath Ledger was one of them, and Christian Bale, and I played this electric silhouette.”
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Blanchett said she’s grateful to have worked with the film’s director, “the great Todd Haynes,” and hopes there’s more chances for collaboration in the future.
“I think he wanted a woman inside this period of Dylan’s musical career. It meant that there was a separation between how iconic this period and this look of Dylan’s was and the character playing, because you know there’s a woman inside that.”
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