One of the reasons to love Cate Blanchett: she will never be Norbited. Norbit was the Eddie Murphy film that was released in the middle of his Oscar campaign for Dreamgirls – Norbit was such “trash” to the Academy voters that Alan Arkin ended up winning the Oscar that year. I’m just saying, that would never happen to Blanchett. She’s run a quietly effective Oscar campaign for Blue Jasmine and now, smack-dab in the middle of her campaign, she gets to promote The Monuments Men with George Clooney, Matt Damon and Bill Murray. If anything, this film promotion should HELP her Oscar chances.

So, Blanchett has been giving interviews on behalf of her supporting part in The Monuments Men. It’s clear that the men all love her and view her as one of the boys, but not in that cloying, center-of-attention way that Julia Roberts is “one of the boys.” During the first press conference for the film, Cate shaded the crap out of Matt Damon, complaining that Clooney didn’t tell her that she’d have to film all her scenes opposite Matt: “Can you imagine my disappointment? I thought I was going to be working with Bill Murray … I think we’ve aged relatively well. The last time we were together was in [The Talented Mr. Ripley], which was an entirely different endeavor, then in-between times he went and made Behind the Candelabra. Fortunately I hadn’t seen that before we started working.” Classic. Cate also has a great new interview with The Telegraph, which you can read in its entirety here. Some highlights:

On winning the Golden Globe: “Unfortunately my category came up rather late in the evening so I was a couple of sheets to the wind. Once your name is read out it’s a high like no other so I can’t remember a lot. I hope I didn’t do too many things I’ll regret. The Globe is in the hotel room and my sons made a little shrine for it with all the flowers that I have been receiving for the past week that are now dead.”

On the success & awards: “Look, when you are proud of something you have done and you have made a film you feel has merit and it’s found an audience, and is critically well received, that’s a pretty pleasurable place to be. I mean, you don’t want it to end up gathering dust at the bottom of someone’s DVD collection.”

Why she agreed to work The Monuments Men: “I knew a lot about the works of art but I didn’t know much about this particular pocket of the history of the war,” she says. “What George and his producing partner Grant Heslov have done is used so much iconography of the war – the vats full of glasses and shoes and gold fillings, all those things that we know are the horrors of the holocaust – to open the door to the history of the Second World War in a particular way. It follows a group of men and a woman who are fighting for something that is infinitely more noble and greater than themselves. That was something I was very interested in being a part of. I was very struck by the courage and conviction and fortitude of Rose Valland, who performed incredible, quite lonely acts of heroism.”

Working with Clooney on another WWII film: “My husband said, ‘What is it with you and George and the Second World War?’”

Working with Matt Damon again: “We talked a lot about the intervening years, during which I have been raising three sons and he has been raising three daughters. There are several arranged marriages waiting to be put into action.”

Her future work: “I have three boys so I take things on a case-by-case basis. There are a couple of things I am interested in directing, and there’s a novel that I am trying to bring to the screen, so we’ll see if that comes to pass. I also have something in development with HBO at the moment which I’m hoping to do with Julie Delpy, whom I greatly admire, so hopefully that will come to fruition. But these things take time.”

How she really feels about winning: “It’s a joy and I’m enjoying it immensely,” she confesses. “Probably disproportionately and indecently so.”

[From The Telegraph]

I feel like Cate is a very sharp person – she’s clever, she’s fast, she’s always got a good withering quip, sometimes about herself, sometimes about someone else. It’s refreshing. It’s interesting to see that kind of woman – a woman who still has some hard edges and doesn’t see the need to soften – in the middle of an Oscar campaign. La Blanchett will never beg for your approval. La Blanchett will never Goop all over you. She will give you a withering glance, tell you to suck it up and go about her business. This, surprisingly, is a winning strategy.

Photos courtesy of WENN.