With two Oscars in tow over the course of her 30-year-plus career — where she has played everyone from Queen Elizabeth I to fantasy heroes to an embattled maestro — Cate Blanchett said she is “serious” about stepping away from her craft one day.
The reveal came during a new interview with the U.K.’s Radio Times magazine, where the venerated actress is promoting her forthcoming and first-ever audioplay, BBC Radio 4’s The Fever, premiering this weekend. The adaptation of Wallace Shawn’s drama features a 90-minute monologue from an unnamed woman who travels to a civil war-torn country and becomes ill, realizing that her material comforts and privileges are bankrolled by oppression spurred by global capitalism.
While introducing herself for the tape, she hesitated to announce her title as actress, which co-director John Tiffany pointed out. She replied, “I did, didn’t I? It’s because I’m giving up.”
The Black Bag star clarified, “My family roll their eyes every time I say it, but I mean it. I am serious about giving up acting.” She added that there are “a lot of things I want to do with my life.”
Speaking to her experience of celebrity, she remarked that she doesn’t love the interview process: “No one is more boring to me than myself and I find other people much more interesting. I find myself profoundly dull … When you go on a talk show, or even here now, and then you see soundbites of things you’ve said, pulled out and italicized, they sound really loud. I’m not that person.”
Most recently, Blanchett wrapped her 6-week limited engagement of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in London’s Barbican Theatre, which is currently eyeing a 2026 Broadway run. Next up, she will appear in the star-studded alien invasion comedy Alpha Gang, from the Zellner brothers, which she is also producing, as well as previous colleague Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, a triptych feature film. Her latest movie, The New Boy, was just acquired by Vertical for a May 23 theatrical release.
