Cate Blanchett Quotes

In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall.

At the end of the day, acting is all about telling lies. We are professional imposters and the audience accept that. We've made this deal that we tell you a tale and a pack of lies, but there will be a truth in it. You may enjoy it, or it will disturb you.

We want to create these dramatic situations, whether they are real or not, to entertain audiences.

Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops.

Acting and singing are actually very similar because they're both telling a story.

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time.

The point of theatre is transformation: to make an extraordinary event out of ordinary material right in front of an audience's eyes. Where the germ of the idea came from is pretty much irrelevant. What matters to every theatre maker I know is speaking clearly to the audience 'right now.'

With acting, I started very young, and I'd performed for a lot of children in boarding schools, late at night after the dormitory lights were out. I'd have a flashlight, and I'd be Count Dracula, or Shakespeare, or Yogi Bear, and leap from bunk to bunk. I loved the laughter; I liked the way it made people feel.

People always make that mistake when they talk about theatre - the notion of the 'theatrical' meaning something separate from life. If it doesn't relate to life, it doesn't relate to anything.

We actors do this to pretend, to go into imaginary circumstances, so when the imaginary circumstance is of a different time, that just compounds the joy of doing what we do.

I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

I became an actress to provoke people and move people and to tell the stories.

It's like fiction - the fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind. You go through heavy emotional responses to these stories, and wrestling is a similar thing - but it's happening in real space.

Songs are like movies to me, and so you put yourself in the movie. You become a character in the movie.

What made me fall in love with acting, which is my life, was watching other people perform. It made me hunger to do that.

The energy of live theater is indescribable. You are just in the moment for an hour and a half.

Theater is about surprises and things that you haven't seen before on stage.

Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

Once in awhile, there's stuff that makes me say, That's what theatre's about. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn't happen very often.

We all go to the theater and cinema to be inspired and moved on an emotional level, sometimes to laughter, sometimes to tears. Once I discovered that acting could have such an effect, I was sold. It has been one of the most rewarding discoveries I have ever made.

I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful in literature, when a reader lives the experience of the characters. So if the characters are human and real enough, then readers will feel empathy for them.

I like making people feel things. Acting doesn't seem like lying but like storytelling.