As random and as subjective as this award is, it means a great deal in a year of extraordinary, yet again, extraordinary performances by women ... An… - Cate Blanchett

Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you are. We all say a lot of things, don't we, about who we are and how we think. But in the end it's your actions, how you respond to circumstance that reveals your character.

For me, the roles are the secondary part of the whole process to me strangely. It's about who you're being directed by and who the other actors are. Whenever I read a script, I think, 'wow, that's a great story,' and invariably I want to play one of the other characters, and the process of working out how to play the character you're offered is to work out why you aren't playing the other characters in a way. Maybe that's why I play roles of various different sizes. The challenge is not necessarily always the lead role, but in this case [Blue Jasmine] it was all those things combined.

The world’s changed. It’s very difficult to know where to be. Because sometimes life is so fast and so absolute that the only way you can change things is by actually shifting your life utterly and totally to a different hemisphere. You can’t partially change. There’s no semi-revolution.