Blanchett struggling with Hepburn voice

Cate Blanchett has been struggling to precisely capture the late Katherine Hepburn's distinctive voice in order to portray the late actress in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.

“I’m playing the young Hepburn and I think the Hepburn we know is when her voice begins to calcify, as an older person,” she told journalists at the Toronto Film Festival.

“Because she hardly gave interviews we know her performance voice, which is very different from her private voice. So it’s finding that balance between performance and private moments.”

Blanchett, who is in Toronto to promote Veronica Guerin, in which she plays the crusading Irish journalist who was murdered by drug-dealers, added: “Learning an accent is always a technical exercise but it’s like a child learning to walk. There’s no excuse for not getting it perfectly.”