Cate Blanchett says putting a sock down her pants helped her to play Bob Dylan role

‘It absolutely helped,’ actor said of advice she received

Cate Blanchett has recalled putting a sock down her pants to play her role as Bob Dylan in the 2007 film I’m Not There.

The actor was discussing her time filming while being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.

I’m Not There is an unconventional biographical film about the life of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, directed by Todd Haynes.

Blanchett was one of six actors to play an era of Dylan for the film. The actor played the musician from 1965-1966.

“I played him at the time when he went electric, when he was really giving the finger to the audience and saying, ‘I’m not a folk singer’,” she told host Lauren Laverne on Sunday’s episode (11 December) of the podcast and radio show.

Asked what it was like to play a male character, Blanchett recalled some key advice she got from a friend.

“A friend of mine who’s a make-up artist said to me a few days into the shoot: ‘Put a sock down your pants!’” she explained.

“I said: ‘What?!’ She said: ‘You’re on the bed, put a sock down your pants,’ and I said, ‘Oh, OK’ and I did! And I didn’t look back. It absolutely helped,” Blanchett laughed.

"But playing a man... was it a man or was it a sort of a musical force?” she questioned.

“You realise that in that particular film the character was made up of many different parts,” the actor added.

Blanchett discussed her role in the 2007 film while being interviewed on Desert Island Discs (Getty Images)

During the episode, Blanchett discussed the music that shaped her life, as well as her childhood years and the sudden death of her father.

Blanchett said that she had stopped playing the piano after he died due to a guilt associated with his death.

“There was a lot of dancing in my house, a lot of music actually, but it became quite silent after my dad died,” she said.

“I actually remembered the last time I saw him. I was playing the piano and he was going off to work – he was in advertising – and I waved goodbye and I stayed at the piano,” she remembered.

“I just didn’t go back to it,” she said, “and I wonder now as I put myself on the couch, I wonder if it was because I associated it with the guilt of not getting up from the piano and kissing him goodbye?”

Blanchett’s latest film Tár, in which she plays musician Lydia Tár, will be released in January.