One day while researching her role in The Gift, Cate Blanchett met with a Savannah-based psychic. When Blanchett produced a tape-recorder to document their session, the woman told her that electrical machines tended not to work in her presence.

"And it wouldn't work," Blanchett recalled. "So I [took out] another tape recorder, and that wouldn't work. I thought maybe it was the socket, because I was staying in a really old house. But when she left, I plugged it into the same socket, and it worked!"

[Blanchett's first brush with filmmaking came while she was traveling in Egypt. In need of some quick cash and food, she worked as an extra on the set of an Arabic boxing film. (movieclub.com)]