Awards season is busy for Blanchett

LOS ANGELES — Cate Blanchett is logging lots of travel time these days. Luckily, she's been able to catch a lift from New Orleans to Los Angeles on Brad Pitt's plane.

The "Babel" co-stars are working together in the Big Easy on "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and both are making frequent trips to L.A. as Hollywood's awards season ramps up.

But the sprawling, international drama, "Babel," which is Oscar-nominated for best picture, isn't the only film bringing Blanchett back to Southern California. She also stars in "Notes on a Scandal," for which she and co-star Judi Dench have both earned Oscar nominations. "Notes" focuses on the relationship between two teachers, one of whom is having an affair with a student.

AP: You and Brad Pitt are in the same boat with the awards-season back and forth.

Dear Blanchett: I'm hitching a ride on his plane, so it's been very useful.

AP: What is it about "Babel" that has inspired so many to connect with the film?

Dear Blanchett: When you read about it, you think you're going to sort of be hit over the head with some enormous political message and I think (director) Alejandro (Gonzalez Inarritu) has been able to make an intensely personal film that's really about parents and children and husbands and wives. It's both domestic and epic at the same time, and to have this incredible backdrop that so voices people's base anxieties at the moment, stuff that we're all really in a day-to-day way dealing with, this disconnection between what we think we know and what we actually know and what we feel. I think that he's tapped into something quite primal.

AP: "Notes on a Scandal" is also very topical. What was it like making that film?

Dear Blanchett: It was hilarious and shocking and confronting. I was so pleased to have the opportunity to work alongside Judi Dench, so that was extraordinary. The great thing about the way Patrick Marber writes is that he doesn't shy away from unpalatable situations. He sort of gives dramatic voice to the undesirable bits of our inner monologue that we don't want to reveal to anyone.

AP: What's the best and worst part of awards season?