My love for Cate Blanchett and her unbelievable acting skills has been an intense and long term thing. From her turn as Galadriel in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to Queen Elizabeth in Elizabeth to Daisy in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I love her work uniformly, no matter the role, no matter the movie. But whilst giving her acceptance speech for the SAG Awards, Cate Blanchett scoffed at Matthew McConaughey's speech, and in doing so, came off like a bit of a dick. I mean sure, it would suck to have your speech cut short when millions of people listened to McConaughey riffing on Russians and boats and Neptune, but that's not really his fault, merely an issue created by whomever was running the SAG Awards. Cate Blanchett might be an accomplished stage and screen actress, but looking down on other people in the same trade just makes you look like a snob, not a professional.
I mean hey, Matthew McConaughey has not always starred in the most illustrious of movies, so I sort of understand her ire....sort of. The thing is that it's not like he won an award for How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, he won it for a well-respected movie, Dallas Buyer's Club, and he won it over other very well-respected veteran actors like Tom Hanks and Forest Whitaker. So instead of moaning about how McConaughey got to talk when she didn't, she should've respected the fact that he earned his way to the SAG Awards, and for whatever reason, he was unfairly given more time than her, but through no fault of his own.
Her snobbery only lent itself to giving her an air of the the bitchy theatre actress, which is a trope that is prevalent, but really unflattering on everyone who works it. The truth is that we expect more from Cate Blanchett than cheap swipes at fellow thespians, so her McConaughey diss made us feel cheap, and made her look that bit less classy. For an actress who has always conducted herself with grace and poise, Cate's bitchiness at the SAG Awards felt like a bit of a confusing departure from her usual behavior, one we hope to see less of in the future. I might not have always thought his work inspirational, but gosh darn it, no one puts Matthew McConaughey in the corner.
