Cate Blanchett Says ‘Talented Mr. Ripley’ Was One of Her ‘Best Jobs’ Thanks to Pizza and a Stay at This A-Lister’s Place

Out of all the movies Cate Blanchett has made over the past few decades, The Talented Mr. Ripley stands out as a particularly memorable experience.

The two-time Oscar winner, 55, opened up about her career at the Toronto International Film Festival’s ‘In Conversation With…’ series on Sunday, Sept. 8.

In front of an audience at the Royal Alexandra Theater during her 90-minute talk with moderator TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, Blanchett fondly recalled filming the 1999 thriller.

“It was one of my best jobs,” she said of the movie based on the Patricia Highsmith novel. The story centers around Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) a murderous con artist who worms his way into the life of the wealthy Dickey Greenleaf (Jude Law) and Dickey’s girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Blanchett had a supporting role as Meredith, a socialite who thinks Ripley is Dickey because he has lied about his identity. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman played Freddie, a friend of Dickey’s who’s suspicious of Ripley.

The movie was largely set in Italy, and filming took place there, too.

“It was such a great — I had the best summer with Philip Seymour Hoffman… we went to a place called Fashion Pizza. We ate lots of pizza. And I got Matt’s fabulous apartment because he needed to be in the Four Seasons training every day whereas I got to luxuriate,” she said to laughter.

Blanchett, who shares four children — Dashiell, 22, Roman, 20, and Ignatius, 16, Edith, 9, with her husband Andrew Upton, a screenwriter and fellow Australian — was loose and cracked many jokes during the wide-ranging chat.

At the beginning of the discussion, when Bailey mentioned he’d be showing clips from her movies like The Aviator, Blanchett quipped that she doesn’t like to watch herself on screen.

“Is there a barf bucket?” she said to laughter. “These things are not — one is not meant to watch back.”

Blanchett was in Canada to debut two projects at the festival: The Apple TV+ limited series Disclaimer and the dark comedy film Rumours.

In Disclaimer, Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, investigative journalist who has built her career exposing others’ secrets.

Her life is upended when she receives an anonymous manuscript in the mail — a book whose main character seems to be based on Catherine, with a plot that reveals her own long-buried secret. Sacha Baron Cohen and Kevin Kline costar. 

Rumours features Blanchett as a fictional German chancellor who attends a G7 meeting of world leaders that spirals into chaos. Game of Thrones star Charles Dance plays the President of the United States.