There are many words that come to mind when you think Cate Blanchett. Ethereal, maybe. Fantastically talented, certainly. Agreeably antipodean, even. "Butch" is not one of them. But that's what Blanchett recently told us we could expect of her character in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
“Oh, it’s so much fun,” she says of working on the franchise's fourth movie, “I’ve been having a ball. I went on set [recently] and Steven said, ‘I’ve got five really macho things for you to do today.’ He was so excited about butching me up. And I was such a fan [of the Indiana Jones movies], I grew up on them. I was completely in love with Harrison Ford, and still am. He’s a hottie, he’s definitely stood the test of time. And it’s fantastic to be working in a genre that Steven and Harrison know like the back of their hands. They grew up making these films together; it’s like a family, all the people who’ve worked on this franchise. And they’re so welcoming; it’s a really happy set to be on.”
Spielberg has been doing an admirable job of keeping plot points under wraps, but this certainly adds credence to the rumours doing the rounds that Blanchett's playing a villainess, possibly a Russian. One with a touch of androgyny about her, apparently.