WITH her two Oscars, four children and long-standing marriage, Cate Blanchett is the woman who has it all.
But the Australian actress insists it is still a struggle as a woman to juggle a career with being a mum.
The 51-year-old, who made her name as Queen Elizabeth I in 1998 historical drama Elizabeth, has been home-schooling her kids while also putting the finishing touches to her latest TV show during lockdown.
Cate says: “I know, as a working mother who identifies as a feminist, it’s a constant juggle between following your personal and professional passion, and trying to give yourself over to and serve your family.
“It’s a very rare partnership where the men also accept that responsibility in making things work.”
And her man, husband Andrew Upton, 54, could probably do with some feminist tips — as Cate revealed he bought her a vacuum cleaner for their first anniversary.
Andrew, an Australian playwright, has also given her a mixer and an ironing board — gift-wrapped — to mark their time together.
Cate quips: “It used to be silver and gold but now that list includes coffee makers and irons and gone is the sense of getting to the gold and diamond anniversary. Now it’s the microwave anniversary.”
The struggle for gender equality is at the heart of Cate’s new TV series, Mrs America, coming to BBC2 next month.
The drama tells the true story of Phyllis Schlafly, a 1970s political activist who campaigned AGAINST women’s rights.
Such was her standing as a poster girl for the Republican party that when she died in 2016, President Donald Trump spoke at her funeral.
In 1972, she successfully opposed the Equal Rights Amendment — which aimed to enshrine equal rights for all US citizens regardless of sex — fearing it would force women out to work rather than staying at home to look after their children.
Cate, who plays Phyllis, explains: “She really did sell this notion that it was going to be the Equal Rights Amendment that would break apart the American family.”
Cate met husband Andrew on the set of a TV show in 1996.
She thought he was arrogant, and he thought her aloof. But three weeks after their first date, Andrew proposed — and they have now been married for 22 years.
The couple have sons Dashiell, 18, Roman, 16, and Ignatius, 12, and in 2015 they adopted baby girl Edith.
Cate describes Edith, five, as an “extraordinary blessing” and the daughter she always wanted.
After living in Brighton and then Australia, the family returned to Britain in 2016 because Cate “missed the rain”.
They now live in a £4million mansion in East Sussex, where Cate grows vegetables and helps look after their pigs and chickens. But being so hands on does have its drawbacks.
Last week the actress, who recently took a career break to help her oldest son through his studies, revealed she cut her head with a chainsaw while tending to the garden.
Cate won a Golden Globe for playing the ultimate strong woman, Queen Elizabeth I, in her break-through role.
And the Melbourne-born actress can trace her feminist ideals right back to childhood and her inspirational mum June.
After dad Bob died from a heart attack when Cate was ten, June was left to raise her and her two siblings. So June quit teaching and took on a more lucrative career in property development.
Cate recalls: “Growing up, I always identified as a feminist.
“But I grew up in a backlash when you were considered a man-hater in the 1980s, and that you wanted to prevent men from doing things, simply because you were identifying as someone who had equal possibilities in the world in which you were emerging.
“I couldn’t understand how, even as a teenager, the notion of equality was so difficult for people.”
She feels it is sad women’s rights have not progressed as much as she would have hoped in her lifetime.
But she is hopeful the #MeToo movement, which began in 2017 in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and campaigns against sexual harassment, could finally change things.
She says: “I, for one, became increasingly sad, but also really galvanised by the fact that, week by week, as we were filming, all the issues the feminists were talking about, like the traditional women’s movement that is really big in the UK, and all of these issues that feminists were locked in time and space, back in the 1970s and 1980s, were erupting, each week, as if they were up for grabs again.”
These are themes she can explore further in Mrs America, which also stars Rose Byrne and Tracey Ullman.
Her character Phyllis was not just anti feminist, but also anti abortion and anti gay rights — despite her son John being homosexual.
The “family values” activist, however, did not think there was any contradiction in opposing gay rights while also supporting her son.
Cate says: “She thought it [being gay] was like a sickness. That her son had a sickness or a disability, and that he was vulnerable.”
Another seeming contradiction is how Phyllis championed stay-at-home mums even though her own mother had been the bread-winner when her dad was unemployed.
Cate says: “I found her role models as a child fascinating. Her mother worked 24/7 to put her and her sisters through a very exclusive Catholic girls’ school.”
The drama, which has already started airing in the US, has received critical acclaim.
But it is less popular with Trump supporters. Cate says: “My father was American, so I have a deep connection to America, but I didn’t grow up there.
“I think Schlafly really does personify this notion of individualism in America, a fear of centralised government, and a love of tradition, hierarchy and order, but also the abhorrence of being told what to do.”
Cate certainly is not one for conformity herself. She portrayed singer Bob Dylan in the 2007 indie movie I’m Not There and was Marvel’s first female baddie in 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok.
And she hopes Mrs America will help continue her quest to break down gender barriers for women.
She says: “To me, the importance of the series is to keep that conversation alive. What is so frightening about equality?”
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
