Cate Blanchett calls for diversity in portrayal of gay people on screen
Hollywood star Cate Blanchett has called for more diversity in the portrayal of gay characters on screen.
Speaking of her new role in ‘Carol’, in which Blanchett plays a woman in a same-sex relationship, she said it can be frustrating because many people expect their own relationships to be represented.
“The problem is that when you represent a character in a same-sex relationship, it’s like you have to represent them all, ” Cate Blanchett tells The Guardian.
“You become a spokesperson, which really isn’t the point. When the time comes that we have a diversity of same-sex couples in film, then the problem is solved, I don’t have to stand for everyone,” she went on.
Blanchett recently said she was misquoted when it was widely reported she had said she had had sexual relationships with women.
She said of her character, Carol: “I read a lot of girl-on-girl books from the period. I think there are a lot of people that exist like [Carol] who don’t feel the need to shout things from the rafters.”
The Hollywood star made the comments in an interview with Variety about her new film ‘Carol’, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel ‘The Price of Salt’.
Blanchett’s character, an older woman in 1950s New York, has an affair with a younger woman, who is played by Rooney Mara.
The Highsmith novel, also published under the name ‘The Price of Salt’, was groundbreaking in its portrayal of a romance between two women.
At a time when most lesbian love stories were resigned to pulp fiction with doomed characters, the characters in ‘Carol’ are given a realistic relationship and a chance at a happy ending. The story itself, in which young department store worker Therese becomes infatuated with a wealthy wife and mother, was based on an incident in Highsmith’s own life.
Carol opens in cinemas on Nov 27.
