NEW YORK, N.Y.--Cate Blanchett tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Leslie Bennetts that in terms of plastic surgery, "I haven't done anything, but who knows. Andrew said he'd divorce me if I did anything. When you've had children, your body changes; there's history to it. I like the evolution of that history; I'm fortunate to be with somebody who likes the evolution of that history. I think it's important to not eradicate it. I look at someone's face and I see the work before I see the person.... You're certainly not staving off the inevitable. And if you're doing it out of fear, that fear's still going to be seen through your eyes. The windows to your soul, they say."
"I'm not a spokesperson against the world of injectables," Blanchett tells Bennetts. "If you grow up in an environment where your mother gets you a boob job when you turn 18, what hope is there? But I didn't grow up in that world. The reason I went to train as an actor was that I was interested in it for the long haul. You can become very self-obsessed, but you've got to keep looking outward."
Blanchett tells Bennetts that she has always kept a careful distance from Hollywood, and that acting is only part of the picture for her: "I don't exist in that world. I observe it, but there's so much else to be thinking about. Maybe it's because I'm with someone who's not with me because of that; I'm not a trophy. He likes the vessel, but he also wants to make sure the vessel is full. The world of film can be so noisy, but the other aspects of my life are actually the noisiest parts of my life. My best friends are a social worker and a visual artist."
Blanchett's father died at the age of 40, and she tells Bennetts that the loss left her with a sense that "the presence of death can coexist in life. I just don't take things for granted. I know that time is very short." She does not believe in an afterlife: "I wish I did; it would be really comforting. But I don't think we're that important." She does, however, ponder "that whole notion in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, that life is paving the way for a good death.... I hope it isn't a car park."
Blanchett admits to Bennetts that as her own husband, Australian playwright, screenwriter and director Andrew Upton, approached 40, "I was obsessed. Has he had his medical checkup? He needed to go to the doctor; he needed to go to the dentist. Any little cough, I was really on him. Then he turned 40, and I thought, Maybe that's why I've been so obsessed with his health!"
Blanchett tells Bennetts that her husband is "the strongest man I know. He's got a very strong sense of self. He's married to a woman who, at the moment, is in a noisy phase in her career. But he's also been with me when it's not that noisy, and he knows there's not a lot of difference in me, or in us. I'm incredibly lucky to be with someone like that. Because my face is more recognized than his, there's a reverse sexism; somehow his career path is seen as more dispensable, less important. That's just garbage. I have deep respect for what he does, and likewise."
Blanchett doesn't rule out having more children, telling Bennetts: "Who knows? Don't close those doors. The world is very overpopulated, but we do make nice ones. They all look like Andrew. To say he has dominant genes would be an understatement."
When Bennetts asks Blanchett what she'd like to do when the pace of her work finally slows down, she says: "I think I just want to garden--or kill some plants, in my case."
The February issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on December 31 and nationally on January 6.