Come Monday and Carol stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara will vie to take home an Oscar each —  Blanchett for Best Actress and Rooney for Best Supporting Actress — for their stirring acts in Carol, that releases today. The film, directed by Todd Haynes and based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 semi-autobiographical novel The Price of Salt, focuses on the romantic relationship between homemaker Carol Aird (played by Blanchett) and a younger woman and aspiring photographer Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara). A chat with the two powerhouse performers on the film that The New York Times hails as “a study in human magnetism”….

CATE BLANCHETT

You’ve had a great 2015 with Cinderella, Truth and of, course, Carol…
Yes, it’s funny. Truth we made really quickly… it was like a freight train. I made Cinderella two or three years ago, and Carol I made at the beginning of last year. So it’s sort of everything coming out at once.
 
You and Rooney Mara are so great together in Carol…
She and I gravitate to similar filmmakers. She’s had such a great creative relationship with David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh and Todd (Haynes, the director of Carol) and she just worked with Joe Wright. So I felt like we were very sympatico creatively.

Is there any difference in shooting a romantic scene with a woman?

I think taking your clothes off is taking your clothes off. I mean, you take your clothes off psychologically and emotionally…. There was a lot of trust on the set between Rooney and Todd and Todd and I and he was very clear about how he wanted to shoot it and what parts he was going to use so we all felt very safe.

Carol is a love story between two women set in the early ’50s. That’s an interesting period in our history, isn’t it?
What’s interesting about the film that Todd’s made, and also about Patricia Highsmith’s novel, is that in the end it’s about falling in love. And it’s as much about the age gap between the women (Carol is 30, Therese 19) as it is about the outsider nature of their love. And so he’s made a beautiful film about falling in love and heartbreak and maturity.
There were times when we barely had time to do one take. Todd is like no other director Ive ever worked with. He’s a master making a student film, in the sense that he has that sort of danger and hunger that a student filmmaker has, but this incredible finesse and expertise and facility and insight that an auteur has. And the intersection of those two atmospheres is really unique.

Actors are the only artistes who can’t be nominated twice for an Oscar in the same category. You are a member of the actor’s branch of the Academy and you have more than one great performance this year…
I’m not a lobbyist, so I don’t get tied up in those machinations. Perhaps that stuff matters more to producers than it does to me. To simply be in that dialogue is more than enough, and, I mean, it seems a bit hubristic to be having this conversation. The first port of call is that the films find an audience. So that’s the bit that I feel a responsibility towards. The rest is outside.
 

ROONEY MARA

How do you keep the emotional momentum going when talking about a film?
Fake it till you make it? (Laughs) I’m obviously very proud of the film, so it’s an easy film to talk about, but it definitely gets hard. Obviously, other people are hearing the answers for the first time, but you always feel weird. It’s always challenging to try, but you kind of have to submit to it and just give the same answers to the same questions and just do it.

The awards chatter must also add another level of stress...
There’s been talk about it that has been stressful, but none of those decisions are mine... it’s above my pay grade, and I leave it to the people whose job it is to talk about that and worry about that. Obviously, that kind of talk is great because it means more people will see the movie at the end of the day. Those kind of awards things can be a great platform for a small movie like this, and it’s a movie I really want people to see.

Cate Blanchett says the film is more about falling in love and that the sexuality and gender issues are secondary. Is that how you felt?
I think that’s how we all felt. At the core of this film, it’s a love story between two humans. Yes, they are women, but there’s also a lot of other elements working against them besides the fact that they are two women. I don’t think the film is a political film in any way. I don’t think it’s a film that has an agenda or that’s preaching to the audience. I think because of that, it really allows the audience to go into it without any defences up and they can experience these two people falling in love.

Do you think the film has the power to change the perspective of viewers who aren’t especially progressive when it comes to same-sex relationships?
I think that it has a shot because it’s not a film with a political message. People who aren’t as open-minded or open-hearted aren’t going to feel defensive, because we’re not telling them what’s right or what’s wrong. I think that there’s a chance for people to watch it and to see these people as humans that they can relate to. There’s so much about Therese that girls that age will be able to relate to and there’s so many things about Carol that women that age will be able to relate to about being a mother, going through divorce.

Therese is going through a huge romantic change, but she’s also finding herself in terms of her 
professional passions. That much is still relevant. It’s really hard coming of age in today’s society, where society wants you to make the decision of what you want to do with your life by the time you are 16. Most kids don’t know what they want to do. How could they? They haven’t lived in the real world yet. I think what’s happening with Therese is she’s living the life that society wants her to live. She has this boyfriend (Richard, played by Jake Lacy) who, on paper, seems perfect and it’s all heading in the right direction and she has this group of friends and she has this sort of run-of-the-mill job... but she’s not fulfilled by her life. She feels very lonely. 

You apparently considered quitting Hollywood early in your career. Is that true?
When I said that, I was referring not so much to leaving Hollywood, but it was because I didn’t feel fulfilled by the work that I was lucky enough to be getting. I would rather have done something else. If I want to do this, I only want to do stuff I’m inspired by and that fulfills me, and that wasn’t the case for me at that time. I thought, ‘If I’m not lucky enough to do the things that I really want to do, I’m just going to find something else because I don’t feel happy doing this’. Now, I’m just so lucky I get to work with the people that I have been working with. It’s too good to be true. 

Is there anyone currently working in Hollywood who has a career you really admire?
Cate. I think Cate is kind of everybody’s benchmark with everything she does. She does incredible work and always has. Daniel Day-Lewis —  I really admire his work. Marion Cotillard is one of my favourite actresses.