It was Cate Blanchett’s second time climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. She couldn’t really say why she wanted to do it, or what it is about heights that appeals to her. She has no interest in skydiving or bungee jumping or parachuting. She’s not especially sporty or athletic. It’s not thrills she likes; it’s control. She once drove her children to the edge of Mount Yasur, an active volcano on the island of Tanna.

这是凯特·布兰切特第二次爬上悉尼海港大桥(Sydney Harbour Bridge)。她说不上来自己为何这样做，也不知道攀高的吸引力从何而来。她对跳伞或蹦极没什么兴趣，也不是特别健壮或富有运动细胞 。她想要的不是刺激，而是控制。她有次开车载着孩子直至亚苏尔火山(Mount Yasur)的边缘。这是一座位于塔纳岛(Tanna)的活火山。

“It was fantastic to be able to say, I’m deciding to do this,” she said. “I’m deciding the level of safety for my children without someone telling me what to do.”

“能理直气壮地说，我就决定要这么做，这种感觉太棒了，”她说。“我自己决定什么对我的孩子是安全的，而不是让别人告诉我该做什么。”

She was wearing a baggy blue and gray flight suit — baggy enough to slip over a pair of loose leather pants and leave room to spare. It wasn’t that she looked good in the suit so much as she made the suit irrelevant. A strap hanging off the belt connected to a cable that ran inside the thousand feet of stairs, catwalks and steel beams of the bridge.

她身着宽松的蓝灰色飞行服，衣服大得可以轻易容下一条宽松皮裤。与其说她穿这身衣服很好看，还不如说她让衣服变得无关紧要。扣在腰间的绳带和大桥内部的钢缆相连。这条钢缆贯穿了数千英尺长度的阶梯、走道和钢梁。

“I love to climb high things,” she said. We were standing on the midpoint of the exterior archway, with a sniper’s vantage on the opera house. She wanted to go even higher, up a short ladder that led to a rotating red light, but Nick, the climb guide, said it wasn’t allowed.

“我喜欢登高，”她说。我们站在大桥外拱道的中点，这是观望悉尼大剧院的绝佳位置。她还想走得更高，爬上一段短梯到达旋转的红灯处，但攀桥教练Nick表示那样做是不允许的。

Nick had seen a fur seal in the harbor on his morning run, and Blanchett wanted to know all about it: how big it was, and if it was furry. She had questions about Shark Island. She pointed to Cockatoo Island. “It was a prison for convicts and then it was a reform school for wayward girls, so you can imagine what goes on there.” She pointed and pointed — to ports, to mountains, to secluded spots of green. To mangrove beaches where you can wander and never meet another soul. “People go to the usual places,” she lamented. Then she laughed and her voice dropped into sarcasm. “Like this, for instance. It’s the insider’s Sydney you’re experiencing today.”

Nick说晨跑时看到了一只海狗，布兰切特一点细节都不放过：有多大？是不是毛绒绒的？她对沙克岛(Shark Island)也很有兴趣，然后又指向了鹦鹉岛(Cockatoo Island)。“之前那个岛是关犯人的监狱，后来又成了叛逆女孩的管教所，你可以想象上面的情景。”她的手指向不同的地方——港口、群山、偏远的绿地，还指向人迹罕至的红树林海滩。“人们都跑去那些寻常的地方，”她感叹道，然后笑了起来，用讽刺的语气说，“比如攀桥，你今天体验的是最不为外人所知的悉尼。”

Blanchett had descended to the interior archway and was deploring the gentrification of Brooklyn when a line of identically blue and gray flight-suited figures above began clamoring for attention. They were leaning over the bars, whooping and clapping.

布兰切特下到了内拱道，一边还谴责着布鲁克林的士绅化现状。这时，站在高处的同样身着蓝灰色衣服的几个攀登者开始呼叫，他们身子伏向栏杆外，呼喊拍掌。

“They’re waving at you,” I said.

“他们在向你挥手，”我说。

“I don’t know,” she said.

“这个可不好说，”她说。

“It’s like when you’re on a boat,” Nick said helpfully.

“这情景就像在船上一样，”尼克帮着圆场。

Blanchett agreed that this situation was like when you’re on a boat. She half-waved at the admirers, a motion at once friendly and plausibly deniable, and continued the descent. She paused on a slip of the bridge that sits between two sets of train tracks to remember when Kevin Spacey pushed somebody — she couldn’t remember who — in front of a train on “House of Cards.” She wished that a train would pass us — better, that two trains would pass us, in opposite directions, at the same time.

布兰切特同意此刻的情景就像在船上。她向追随者们微微挥手，动作友好但又仿佛是摇手拒绝，然后继续往下走。走到位于两段铁轨之间的位置时，她停了下来，想起了《纸牌屋》里的凯文·史派西(Kevin Spacey)把某人（她忘了名字）推向铁轨的一幕。她希望这时候有列车驶过，如果是两列车同时相向而行就更好了。

“What if it went, ‘Choom! Choom!’” she said. “We could have the double action!”

“如果两列火车呜呜驶来，”她说。“刺激就翻倍了！”

Then she laughed. “Oh my god, I’m getting hysterical.” Through the open steps the water of the harbor glittered green and jewel-like below.

她笑了起来。“天啊，我有点疯了。”往两脚之间俯瞰，悉尼海港的海水在脚下泛着宝石一样的绿色光辉。

“Transport!” she yelled giddily and threw her arms in the air. A train sped by, granting half her wish. “It’s amazing.”

“火车来了！”她大声疾呼，手臂在空中挥舞着。一列火车加速驶过，满足了她一半的愿望。“太神奇了。”

The vibrations from the train faded into the noise of automobile traffic as we proceeded single-file toward the climb base. Blanchett was shouting about Chekhov. She especially likes the way he does silences. Chekhov’s silences, she said, are like the moments at a dinner party when everyone stops talking — “stupid silences,” the Hungarian director Tamas Ascher calls them. It’s not that people are thinking of something to say, or motivated by some particular desire. They’re just — there. Just — between.

火车驶过的震动逐渐被车流声淹没，我们排着纵队向起始点移动。布兰切克大声谈论着契诃夫。她尤其喜欢契诃夫笔下的沉默。她说，契诃夫的沉默就像晚宴上所有人都停止说话的时刻，被匈牙利导演Tamas Ascher称之为“愚蠢的沉默”。这种沉默并不是人们在思考该说些什么，也不是出于某种特别的动机。它就这样发生了，介于行动之间。

Blanchett, who is 46, is currently starring in her husband Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Present” at the Sydney Theatre Company. She and Upton moved home to Australia in 2008 to take over the company as co-artistic directors. (Her first-ever professional acting job was at the Sydney Theatre, as an understudy in Caryl Churchill’s “Top Girls.”) They live with their four children — biological sons Roman, Dash and Iggy, and newly adopted baby Edith, from America — in a suburb of Sydney. Blanchett officially stepped down as co-director of the theater in 2013, but Upton will run the company through the end of the year, and in practice she remains involved; as she put it, “We do everything together.”

46岁的布兰切特目前在丈夫Andrew Upton的新剧中担任主演，该剧改编自契诃夫的《普拉托诺夫》(The Present)，在悉尼剧院演出。她和丈夫在2008年把家搬到了澳大利亚，在悉尼剧院公司担任联合艺术总监。（她的第一份专业表演工作也是在悉尼剧院，在Caryl Churchill的作品《顶尖女孩》一剧中充当替角。）他们现在和四个孩子一起生活在悉尼郊区，包括三个亲生儿子Roman、Dash和Iggy，还有新领养的Edith。布兰切特在2013年正式辞去剧院联合总监一职，但丈夫Upton会继续任职到今年年底。实际上她还一直在参与剧院的工作，正如她说的，“所有事情都是我们一起做。”

Back at the base, Blanchett signed photos for the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb’s celebrity wall and we walked to a nearby restaurant for dumplings and salad. She sat with her back to the window and removed the sunglasses that had obscured half her face all morning. A fine wrinkle cut a shallow line into the side of her jaw, which somehow made her look younger.

回到起始点后，布兰切特为名人墙的照片签了名，随后我们步行到旁边的一个餐馆，吃了点饺子和沙拉。她背靠窗户坐着，摘下遮挡了半张脸的墨镜。此前，她整个上午都带着墨镜。一条细纹在她的下巴侧方留下了浅浅的一道印记，反而让她显得更年轻一些。

She explained that running the theater company had been transformative. It wasn’t only that she shepherded productions she was proud of, including “The Secret River,” based on a novel about Australia’s racial history; “The Long Way Home,” which was performed by servicemen returned from Iraq and Afghanistan; and Botho Strauss’s forgotten “Gross und Klein,” which afforded her the “personally liberating” experience of working with director Benedict Andrews. She also became an advocate for the theater community as a whole. She had to think bigger than just her own company: A healthy “theatrical ecology” means that lots of companies are thriving and everyone’s audiences are growing. This required her to take the microphone, come out of her shell a bit.

她表示，管理剧院的事务给她带来了很大的转变。这期间她负责出品了很多引以为豪的作品，包括根据澳大利亚种族史小说改编的《秘河》(The Secret River)；由从伊拉克和阿富汗归来的现役军人出演的《漫漫归乡路》(The Long Way Home)；德国剧作家Botho Strauss已被遗忘的作品《大与小》(Gross und Klein)，她有幸在此剧中和戏剧导演Benedict Andrews的合作，这段经历让她“释放了自我”。她还提倡打造一个剧院社区的有机整体，而非仅考虑自己的剧院：一个健康发展的“戏剧生态体系”意味着每家剧院都在壮大且观众越来越多。这需要她拿起麦克风，从自己的壳里钻出来。

“I learned to not feel responsible to other people’s perceptions of who you are,” she said. “I suppose I’ve gone through a process of maturation, in a way, because running the company is a public position.”

“我学会了不去在意别人对你的身份的看法，”她说。“我觉得自己在一定程度上经历了一个成熟的过程，因为管理这么一个公司是个公共职位。”

I said that I would have thought that being a Hollywood actress would have felt like a public position. Blanchett has appeared in 48 feature films. My in-flight entertainment system had offered seven of them.

我说，在我看来好莱坞女演员也是一个公共职位。布兰切特出演了48部影片，我乘坐的航班提供的电影中就有七部有她出演。

She frowned, and her eyes clouded. She did not like the phrase “Hollywood actress.” “That’s what they say about you when they want to insult you,” she said.

她皱起了眉头，眼神有些失焦。她不喜欢“好莱坞女演员”这种说法。“别人想侮辱你时就会这么说，”她说。

She ignores the trappings of celebrity as best she can, and advises younger actresses not to go on social media, which “creates a culture of self-consciousness.” She is drawn to figures who “have utterly shedded self-consciousness but are completely masters of their technique, like Louise Bourgeois and Georgia O’Keeffe. They’ve got that raw, wrought intelligence.” She also admires Pina Bausch. “If I had my time over, I would have loved to have been in her company,” she said. “She was an incredible, incredible creature — fierce.”

她尽可能地忽视明星身份带来的那些东西，也建议年轻的女演员们不要玩社交媒体，因为社交媒体“制造了一种自我意识文化”。而吸引她的人物“彻底摈弃了自我意识，完全掌握了自身技能，如法裔美国艺术家路易丝·布儒瓦(Louise Bourgeois)和美国艺术家佐治亚·欧姬芙(Georgia O’Keeffe),她们有着经过锻造的鲜活才情。”她也很崇拜德国现代舞编舞者皮娜·鲍什(Pina Bausch)。“如果时光能倒流，我特别想进入她的舞蹈团，”她说。“她是一个不可思议、难以置信的人物，生猛。”

She ran her hand across her hair smoothly, turning in profile with her chin slightly angled down. It’s a gesture she makes repeatedly in “Blue Jasmine” — a moment of putting yourself back together, preparing to meet another.

她的手穿过柔顺的发丝，露出侧脸，下巴微含。她在《蓝色茉莉》(Blue Jasmine)中经常做出这种姿态——把自己收敛一下，为下一刻做好准备。

Consider how many of Blanchett’s most notable characters have struggled with these very issues — the burdens of recognition and fame, or the shame of being watched or hunted. Bob Dylan, Katharine Hepburn, Jasmine, Queen Elizabeth, even the art teacher who sleeps with the high school student in “Notes on a Scandal” — they are all tortured by their awareness of other people’s perceptions, and, in the process, lose their composure. Blanchett is especially good at performing this state of just-barely-holding-it-together, that veneer that cracks to reveal an unhinged or demented person inside. Yet her performances grant refinement to the most degraded or distressing situations. She telegraphs something regal and elite; even when her characters are not financially well-to-do, they are never “ordinary.”

回顾一下，布兰切特最为人所知的角色中有多少人被这些问题困扰：成功成名的负担，或是被审视被追赶的耻辱。鲍勃·迪伦(Bob Dylan)、凯瑟琳·赫本(Katharine Hepburn)、茉莉(Jasmine)、伊丽莎白女王、甚至是在《丑闻笔记》(Notes on a Scandal)里和高中学生有染的美术老师。这些角色都因太在意别人对自己的看法而备受折磨，而不再冷静。布兰切特尤其擅于扮演这种崩溃边缘的状态，这种美好外表撕裂后所显露的精神错乱人格。但她的表演给最不堪、最痛心的场景赋予了一丝优雅。她向四周辐射出一种尊贵和精英的感觉；即使她的角色在经济上并不宽裕，但无一“平庸”。

This winter she will add another elegant woman under surveillance to her repertoire of roles, playing the title part in Todd Haynes’s beautiful new film “Carol.” (She is also starring in “Truth,” as the CBS producer who approved the “Sixty Minutes” investigation into George W. Bush’s National Guard service.) “Carol” is adapted from “The Price of Salt,” the 1952 Patricia Highsmith novel widely regarded as the first lesbian novel with a happy ending (i.e., nobody dies). The plot concerns an affair between young, unsophisticated ingénue Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol, a glamorous older woman. Readers of the novel will know the famous road trip sequence — it’s said that Nabokov copied it for “Lolita” — in which the lovers are pursued by a private detective hired by Carol’s ex-husband to build a child custody case against her.

今冬，布兰切特将在她的角色库里再添一个审视下的优雅女性角色。她将在陶德·海恩斯(Todd Haynes)的新片《卡萝》(Carol)中扮演片名角色。（她还会在《真相》(Truth)一片中扮演CBS的一名制片人，批准调查节目《60分钟》找出乔治·W·布什在国民警卫队服役的真相。）《卡萝》一片改编自派翠西亚·海史密斯(Patricia Highsmith)1952年的小说《盐的代价》(The Price of Salt)，该小说被广泛认为是第一部以喜剧结尾（就是没有人死掉）的女同题材小说。情节是年轻单纯的少女特芮丝（Therese,由鲁妮·玛拉扮演）和美丽优雅的中年贵妇卡萝之间的恋情。小说读者一定记得书中著名的公路之旅，据说纳博科夫(Nabokov)在《洛丽塔》(Lolita)中借鉴了这一段：卡萝的前夫雇了一名私人侦探去追踪这对恋人，目的是为了获得对卡萝不利的证据，以争取女儿的监护权。

Blanchett has admired Haynes since they first worked together on “I’m Not There.” She compares him to Klausner, a character in the Roald Dahl story “The Sound Machine,” who can hear the clouds moving in the sky and the grass screaming under the blades of a lawnmower. “Todd is a good person, and a wild person, and a responsible person,” she said. “You could probably tell him anything.”

布兰切特自首次和海恩斯合作《我不在那儿》(I’m Not There)之后就对海恩斯充满了敬佩。她把海恩斯比作英国儿童文学作家罗尔德·达尔(Roald Dahl)短篇小说《声音机器》(The Sound Machine)中的Klausner，这个人物可以听见云在天上飘动的声音和割草机下小草发出的尖叫。“陶德是一个好人，一个狂野的人，也是一个负责的人，”她说。“你可以对他无所不谈。”

As for Highsmith, she first discovered her novels in the late 1990s, when she was cast in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

而关于海史密斯，她是在90年代接触到她的小说，当时她出演了《天才雷普利》(The Talented Mr. Ripley) 。

“She writes so fearlessly — and often ambiguously, but often ferociously — about human relationships and the human heart,” Blanchett said. “I always have this terrible sense of foreboding, like a thrilling sense of foreboding, like something terrible is going to unfold. Like you never feel safe.”

“她无所畏惧地书写人与人之间的关系和人心，经常隐约其辞，但又凶猛激烈，”布兰切特说。“读她的书，我一直有一种不祥的预感，一种惊悚的预兆，好像马上会有可怕的事情要发生，一直觉得有危险。”

The key to suspense, of course, is control. The knowledge that someone is in control makes danger pleasurable. So much of Blanchett’s life and work revolves around a very careful calibration of control and chaos. Control is what makes ferocity effective rather than only cruel. Control is what makes it fun to visit a volcano. As for her occasional, well-documented eruptions — her facetious comment to a reporter who queried her sexuality, her punch-drunk interview on a “Cinderella” junket in the spring — they would mean something different were it not for their divergence from her usual poise.

然而，悬疑的关键当然是控制。知道有人在控制全局会让危险变成一种乐趣。布兰切特的大部分生活和工作都是在控制和混乱之间寻找精确的平衡。控制能让凶猛产生不错的效果，而非只有残酷。控制也能让火山之行变得趣味横生。布兰切特偶尔出格一次都会被媒体大写特写——在回答记者关于性取向的问题开个玩笑，今年春天在影片《灰姑娘》(Cinderella)的媒体招待会上做的无厘头采访。如果不是她当时的表现和平时的镇静姿态相去甚远，这些事根本不会引起如此大的关注。

The conversation returned to the peculiar problem of theater acting: how to be in and out of the flow of the moment, how to practice and prepare and bind together all the “Eureka moments” that recapture the spark of a first reading. The way she explained it, when a scene is working, the actors are equally aware of the person unwrapping a snack in row G and the other bodies on the stage.

我们的谈话又回到了戏剧表演的特有问题上：如何进入和走出那一刻的节奏，如何练习、准备、然后把所有“顿悟时刻”连接起来，重新找回初读时的火花。布兰切特这样解释：当一场戏产生效果时，演员们能觉察到坐在G排的某个观众在开零食包装，同样也能觉察到舞台上其他人的行动。

She hates monologue. For her, everything interesting is in collaboration. “That’s the dangerous side,” she said. “You really don’t know where you’re going to go.”

她很反感独角戏。对她来说，一切有趣的事都是在协作中完成的。“这也是危险的一面，”她说。“你真的不知道你会往哪儿走。”