Cate Blanchett Thanked Woody Allen
As expected, Cate Blanchett won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Blue Jasmine. And she did thank her director, Woody Allen.
As the Oscars approached, the question of what Cate Blanchett should do if she wins—her win was all but set in stone from the start of this awards season—became a topic of interest. Writers pondered over whether or not she should mention Woody Allen. Allen, of course, gave Blanchett her winning role, but has since been the subject of renewed allegations of sexual assault from adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow.
Blanchett did not dwell on Allen in her speech, saying: "Thank you so much Woody for casting me. I truly appreciate it.” The applause in the room was muted. "That was some impressively muffled applause for Woody Allen," The Hollywood Reporter tweeted. Vulture's Jesse David Fox joked: "That post-Woody pause was more pregnant than Cate in Life Aquatic. (I just watched that movie.)"
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Blanchett then focused her speech on the wide appeal of movies focusing on women. "The world is round, people," she said. "Solid job dancing around that Thank You and then saying, 'Look over there! Let's talk about women in movies,'" the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum tweeted. At BuzzFeed, Kate Aurthur wrote tonight that she "ended up only glancingly thanking" Allen at the awards.
Though the allegations against Allen stem back to the early 1990s, Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter published on Nicholas Kristof's New York Times blog earlier this year that brought them to national attention once again. In Farrow's letter she wrote: "What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett?"
In Salon last month, Daniel D'Addario wrote that "perhaps Blanchett’s refusal to thank Allen could be the first step toward artists reevaluating why it is they want to work with someone against whom allegations have existed for decades, an acknowledgment that to accept a role because it helps one’s career, even as further career success for Allen obfuscates whatever may be the truth, is problematic." Amanda Hess at Slate suggested: "Perhaps the best way for her to navigate all of the pressures of the spotlight is to step out of it as quickly as she can."
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Blanchett is certainly in the spotlight tonight, but she did not use the opportunity to make a statement, nor did she seem to want to give too much attention to Woody Allen.
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/03/cate-blanchett-thanked-woody-allen/358705/
