captioning funded by cbs and ford >> the russian regime is a criminal regime. we are dealing with a nuclear country run by a bunch of mafia crooks. >> pelley: that's a serious charge, but bill browder says he has the facts to back it up. browder is an american-born businessman who made a fortune in moscow after the fall of communism. but he claims his business was crushed by russian corruption, and that his lawyer was murdered in a cover-up. his fight to expose it all has torn a rift in relations between moscow and washington. you think your life's in danger? >> my life is definitely in danger. >> martin: the f-35 joint strike fighter is the pentagon's newest warplane and its most expensive weapons system ever.

it is supposed to replace virtually every other jet fighter in the united states military. >> this is a fighter that has amazing capabilities in a lot of ways. >> martin: the f-35 is a supersonic computer, the most complex fighter jet ever built. it's also seven years behind schedule and $163 billion over budget. >> stahl: cate blanchett is a favorite to win the academy award for best actress for her role in "blue jasmine," about a park avenue socialite married to a con man. >> you know, someday, when you come into great wealth, you must remember to be generous. >> stahl: she has played a queen, an elf, an albino, and a man. >> i guess i've got one of those faces that's not particularly beautiful, not too ugly, you know. i can look... >> stahl: come on. >> ...a bit masculine, i can look a bit feminine, depending on how you're lit, how you're shot.

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you'll see younger looking skin in just one week. one week? this one's a keeper. rapid wrinkle repair. and for dark spots rapid tone repair. from neutrogena®. >> pelley: russia has been showing the world glistening scenes of the winter olympics. it's a rare opportunity to brighten a national image that often skates on the thin ice of corruption. one authority estimates that 20% of the russian economy is skimmed by graft, and a lot of that by government officials. it may be that no one knows more about this than american-born businessman bill browder. browder tells a story of thievery, vengeance and death worthy of a russian novel. he's a thorn in the side of

vladimir putin, and he has torn a rift between moscow and washington. when you hear what he has to say about russia, you'll know why russia thinks of bill browder as an enemy of the state. >> bill browder: the russian regime is a criminal regime. we're dealing with a nuclear country run by a bunch of mafia crooks. and we have to know that. >> pelley: bill browder wanted us to know he's dedicated his life and his wealth to putting certain russian officials in prison. in russia, there's a warrant out for browder's arrest, but that is not what worries him. you think your life's in danger? >> browder: my life is definitely in danger. >> pelley: why do you say that? >> browder: we've gotten numerous death threats by text, by email. >> pelley: what do the texts say? >> browder: things like, "what's worse, prison or death?" >> pelley: those weren't the two options browder imagined he would face back in 1996 when he first landed in moscow. the new russia was then a vast

opportunity where business invested its money and russians invested their hopes. the government was selling off relics of communism, big state- owned companies that were inefficient and corruptly managed. browder invested in those companies and pushed to throw out the crooked management. how did it make sense to you to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into these companies if you knew that the management was stealing from the bottom line? >> browder: we said to ourselves, if we can own them cheap on a profit-after-stealing basis, and we can stop the stealing, then they'll be even cheaper and therefore we can make a lot of money. >> pelley: stopping the stealing was a way of padding your bottom line? >> browder: i had the best job in the world, which was making money and doing good at the same time. there's very few jobs that you can actually do that in. >> pelley: in those days, billionaires were grabbing companies. rules were loose and lines were crossed, but it was a world that browder navigated well. he earned a reputation as a tough negotiator with sharp elbows when he needed them.

he made enemies and a spectacular fortune. >> browder: by the top of my career, we were the largest investment fund in russia, with more than $4.5 billion invested in the country. if you had put your money in and then took it out when i left russia, you would've made 35 times your money investing in the fund. >> pelley: it was lucrative and dangerous. hundreds of billions of dollars were sloshing around in what was essentially a new country, where neither the government nor the courts had come of age. browder says he learned what that could mean in 2005. after a flight from london back to moscow, his charmed life was suddenly crushed under the stamp of a passport inspector. >> browder: i was stopped at the airport detention center for about 15 hours, and then they deported me from russia and declared me a threat to national security. >> pelley: what was dawning on you as you sat in that detention area? >> browder: i could only think that somehow... this must be a mistake because i couldn't have

imagined, at that point, that i didn't think that i'd gone against the government. i thought i was going against some crooked guys. >> pelley: according to browder, it turned out there were some crooked guys in the russian tax service, their version of the i.r.s. 19 months after browder was deported, a squad of police raided his office and the offices of his lawyer. the police left with the ownership documents for browder's companies. those documents were then used to reincorporate the companies under new owners. browder says it was part of a scheme by an organized crime group consisting of tax service bureaucrats, police, bankers and lawyers. wait a minute-- the ownership of your company was transferred to someone else without your knowledge or participation? >> browder: exactly. >> pelley: the company was stolen? >> browder: our company, our three companies were stolen using the documents seized by the police.

>> pelley: then, browder says, the new, phony owners applied to the russian tax service for a refund that wasn't due. >> browder: they basically took our companies, and then applied illegally for a $230 million tax refund, which was approved in one day on christmas eve 2007. >> pelley: "merry christmas." >> browder: "merry christmas." it was the largest tax refund in russian history, approved in one day, no questions asked. >> pelley: how does that happen? >> browder: we weren't sure. we thought there... this certainly must be a rogue operation with high-level people involved because, to get a tax refund of $230 million, it involves a minister-level person to approve it. >> pelley: bill browder says he needed an honest man to investigate, and found him in sergei magnitsky, a moscow tax attorney who colleagues said had never lost a case. >> browder: sergei was the kind of person that everybody should want to have in their life. he was a man of principle, a man of competence, and a true friend

and a true person. >> pelley: magnitsky was one of those who had invested his hopes in the new russia. he'd married his high school sweetheart and they were raising two boys. >> browder: he believed in the new russia. he was the new russia. >> pelley: magnitsky believed in the rule of law? >> browder: he believed in the rule of law and he thought the law would protect him. >> pelley: magnitsky went to work, unraveled the theft and identified suspects. one of them, he believed, was a lieutenant colonel with the police, artem kuznetsov, the man who led the raid on browder's office. magnitsky took his evidence to prosecutors, testified and demanded an investigation. he got one, but not the one he expected. in an extraordinary turn of events, the police raided magnitsky's apartment; his arrest warrant had been ordered by the same artem kuznetsov. tell me about the moment he was arrested. what did the police officers tell you? magnitsky's wife, natalia, says

that he was arrested for tax evasion. >> natalia ( translated ): they didn't tell me anything. sergei tried to calm me down. he said to me, "i will be back tomorrow." and we expected that he would be back the next day or the day after that. and he was in prison for about a year. >> browder: they put him in pretrial detention, and then they began to torture him to get him to withdraw his testimony. >> pelley: what do you mean torture him? >> browder: they put him in cells with no windows and no heat in december in moscow, so he nearly froze to death. they put him in cells with no toilet, just a hole in the floor where the sewage would bubble up. and after about six months of this, his health started to really break down. >> pelley: instead of being hospitalized, magnitsky was transferred to butyrka, a jail with limited medical facilities. he wrote hundreds of complaints, and there's even a prison record of a beating that the guards gave him. in all, he was held for nearly a year without trial. >> browder: he and his lawyer

desperately applied in writing on 20 different occasions for medical attention. all of his requests were either ignored or rejected. >> pelley: this is magnitsky, in the light jacket, in the prison in 2009. he was being transferred to a medical facility. he was 37 years old and would be dead in a few hours. prison officials called it a heart attack. magnitsky's hands and wrists tell a story which is less clear. his mother natalia wanted an independent autopsy, which the government denied. >> natalia magnitskaya ( translated ): in the photos, we saw deep, deep wounds, suggesting that violent force was used against him, and that he was defending himself or they were pulling him by his arms, because those kinds of marks couldn't be just from wearing handcuffs. >> pelley: magnitsky's death was something of a sensation. to citizens weary of corruption, he was a martyr.

in america, browder brought magnitsky's mother, wife and son to capitol hill. >> nice to see you again, my friend. >> pelley: browder told his version of magnitsky's death to congress, and in 2012, convinced members of the senate and house to pass the magnitsky act. >> browder: we'll never be able to bring sergei back... >> pelley: the act bans 18 russians from entering the u.s., including artem kuznetsov and other police and tax officials allegedly involved in the theft of browder's companies. days later, in retaliation, the russian parliament banned american adoption of russian children. u.s./russian relations haven't been the same since. in a news conference, vladimir putin, who has run russia for 14 years, insisted magnitsky's heart had failed. and he added, "do you think no one dies in american jails? of course they do.

so what?" how did you hear of his death? >> browder: it was november 17, 2009. i got a phone call from our russian lawyer. and it was by far the most unexpected and horrible news that i could ever have gotten. it was like a knife being plunged right into my heart when i got that call. >> pelley: that was a knife that russian authorities would twist. last year, prosecutors put magnitsky and browder on trial. empty benches sat in the court as the defendants-- one deported, the other dead-- were tried for tax evasion. why should we believe it isn't true? look, you went to business there in the early period after the fall of the berlin wall when everything was possible. and you went in there and you made spectacular amounts of money. now, the russians say one of the ways you did that was by beating russian taxes. >> browder: well, one possibly could believe that, if you didn't look at the circumstances of events.

if the person who organized the criminal cases against us was the person who stole $230 million and then we exposed; then, they killed my lawyer and now they're putting him on trial. it kind of destroys the credibility of any allegations they make. >> pelley: bill browder has turned part of his london office over to his own group of investigators, who have followed the money from the theft. >> browder: this tells you who's in the organized crime group. >> pelley: the results of the investigation are on his web site. his evidence includes titles for $81,000 cars owned by police officers, and deeds for three vacation homes and a mansion owned by a midlevel tax service bureaucrat. and the estimated value of that house is what? >> browder: $20 million. >> pelley: $20 million? >> browder: $20 million. and just to remind you, these are people on a joint family income on $38,000 a year. i can even show you their tax return. >> pelley: where do you get all this stuff? how is it that you have their tax return?

>> browder: in this particular case, we were approached by a russian whistleblower, a guy who decided that, you know, murder was beyond what he was comfortable being involved with. >> pelley: what's happened to these people now that you've exposed them? >> browder: a number of them received state honors. they're still valued people, no matter what anyone says about them abroad. >> pelley: what does that tell you? >> browder: that tells me that this goes right up to the president of russia. >> pelley: why do you say so? >> browder: because the president of russia has basically gone on record, and he's denied that there was any crime that was committed by any official. he's on the record saying sergei magnitsky was a crook, and he's gone on the record saying that i'm a crook. he's clearly involved in the cover-up. >> pelley: putin denies browder's allegations. lieutenant colonel kuznetsov did not respond to our calls, but a lawyer has denied wrongdoing on his behalf. just last summer, the moscow court convicted the two empty benches and issued a warrant for bill browder's arrest. >> browder: what they didn't

anticipate was that, after sergei died, that i would make it my life's work to make sure that this information saw the light of day, and that the people who killed sergei didn't get away with it. >> pelley: your life's work? why? >> browder: sergei worked for me. they arrested him for working for me. they tortured him for working for me. and they killed him... basically killed him as my proxy. and i... i owe him, his memory and his family justice. >> pelley: in the latest development, the u.s. department of justice has filed suit against 11 companies, alleging that they used manhattan real estate transactions to launder some of the money stolen from the russian treasury through that tax refund. the putin administration acknowledged last december that a lack of confidence in russian justice is causing many investors to take their money out of the country.

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>> pelley: now, cbs news correspondent david martin on assignment for "60 minutes." >> martin: the f-35 joint strike fighter is the pentagon's newest warplane, and its most expensive weapons system ever, nearly $400 billion to buy 2,400 aircraft. to put that in perspective, that's about twice as much as it cost to put a man on the moon. this at a time when the white house and congress are fighting over ways to reduce the federal deficit, and cuts in defense spending are forcing the pentagon to shrink the size of the military. the air force, navy, and marines are all counting on the f-35 to replace the war planes they're flying today. if it performs as advertised, the f-35 will enable u.s. pilots to control the skies in any future conflict against the likes of china or russia.

but the f-35 has not performed as advertised. it's seven years behind schedule and $163 billion over budget, or as the man in charge of the f-35 told us, "basically, the program ran itself off the rails." >> chris bogdan: good morning. >> martin: lieutenant general chris bogdan is the man in charge of the f-35, and every morning starts with problems that have to be dealt with a.s.a.p. this morning, it's a valve that's been installed backwards and has to be replaced. >> bogdan: how long does it take? >> it's about a seven day operation. >> bogdan: okay. and now, you know what i'm going to say next. >> yes, sir. >> bogdan: what am i going to say next? >> you're going to say, "we're not going to pay for it." >> bogdan: that's right. we're not going to pay for it. long gone is the time where we will continue to pay for mistake after mistake after mistake. >> martin: when bogdan took over the f-35 program a year ago, it was behind schedule, over budget, and relations with the

plane's manufacturer, lockheed martin, bordered on dysfunctional. how would you characterize the relationship between the pentagon and lockheed martin? >> bogdan: i'm on record, after being in the job for only a month, standing up and saying it was the worst relationship i had seen in my acquisition career. >> martin: these planes coming off the lockheed martin assembly line in fort worth cost $115 million apiece, a price tag bogdan has to drastically reduce if the pentagon can ever afford to buy the 2,400 planes it wants. >> bogdan: i know where every single airplane in the production line is on any given day. you know why that's important? because lockheed martin doesn't get paid their profit unless each and every airplane meets each station on time with the right quality. >> martin: so if this plane doesn't get from that station to this station... >> bogdan: on time with the right quality, they're going to lose some of their fee. you've got to perform to make

your profit. >> martin: they must love you at lockheed martin. >> bogdan: i try and be fair, david, and if they want what i call "winner's profit," they have to act like and perform like winners, and that's fair. >> martin: although the f-35 won't begin to enter service until next year at the earliest, pilots are already conducting test flights and training missions at bases in california, florida, maryland, arizona, and nevada. it's supposed to replace virtually all the jet fighters in the united states military. there's one model for the air force, another for the navy-- designed to catapult off an aircraft carrier-- and a third for the marines, which seems to defy gravity by coming to a dead stop in mid-air and landing on a dime. >> david berke: this is a fighter that has amazing capabilities in a lot of ways. >> martin: lieutenant colonel david berke says there's no comparison between the f-35 and today's jet fighters. >> berke: i'm telling you, having flown those other airplanes, it's not even close

at how good this airplane is and what this airplane will do for us. >> martin: we have planes that are as fast as this. >> berke: you bet. >> martin: and can maneuver just as sharply as this one. >> berke: sure. >> martin: so why isn't that good enough? >> berke: those are metrics of a bygone era. those are ways to validate or value an airplane that just don't apply anymore. >> martin: you can see from its angled lines, the f-35 is a stealth aircraft designed to evade enemy radar. what you can't see is the 24 million lines of software code which turn it into a flying computer. that's what makes this plane such a big deal. >> berke: the biggest big deal is the information this airplane gathers and processes and gives to me as the pilot. it's very difficult to overstate how significant of an advancement this airplane is over anything that's flying right now. >> martin: without the f-35, says air force chief general mark welch, the u.s. could lose its ability to control the air in future conflicts. >> mark welch: air superiority

is not a given, david. it never has been. and if we can't provide it, everything we do on the ground and at sea will have to change. >> martin: today's enemies, al qaeda and the taliban, pose no threat to american jets. but welch is worried about more powerful rivals. >> welch: we're not the only ones who understand that going to this next generation of capability in a fighter aircraft is critical to survive in the future of battle space, and so others are going-- notably, now, the chinese, the russians-- and we'll see more of that in the future. >> martin: and this is what the competition looks like-- the russian t-50 and china's j-20 stealth fighter. according to welch, they are more than a match for today's fighters. >> welch: if you take any older fighter, like our existing aircraft, and you put it nose to nose in... in a contested environment with a newer fighter, it will die. >> martin: and it will die because? >> welch: it will die before it even knows it's even in a fight.

>> martin: in aerial combat, the plane that shoots first wins, so it all comes down to detecting the enemy before he detects you. the f-35's combination of information technology and stealth would give american pilots what marine lieutenant general robert schmidle describes as an astounding advantage in combat. >> robert schmidle: i shouldn't get into the exact ranges, because those ranges are classified, but what i can tell you is that the range at which you can detect the enemy, as opposed to when he can detect you, can be as much as ten times further when you'll see him before he'll ever see you, and down to five times... >> martin: i want to nail that down here. if the f-35 was going up against another stealth aircraft of the kind that other countries are working on today, it would be able still to detect that aircraft at five to ten times the range. >> schmidle: you would be safe in assuming that you could detect that airplane at considerably longer distances

than that airplane could detect you. >> martin: the f-35's radar, cameras and antennas would scan for 360 degrees around the plane, searching for threats and projecting, for example, the altitude and speed of an enemy aircraft onto the visor of a helmet custom-fitted to each pilot's head. it is so top-secret, no one without a security clearance has ever been allowed to see what it can do... >> alan norman: if you want to head up to my office, come on up. >> martin: ...until lockheed martin's chief f-35 test pilot alan norman took us into the cockpit for a first-hand look. >> norman: so, if you put that over your face... >> martin: that blindfold is to make sure i can see only what cameras located in different parts of the plane project onto the visor. >> sot norman: you're looking through the eyeballs of the airplane right now. and you can even look down below the airplane. so you're looking actually through the structure of the airplane right now. >> martin: we've positioned "60 minutes" cameraman tom rapier underneath the plane so we can test the system. so now i look, and there's tom

rapier and he's giving me one finger up. >> norman: you're the only person in the world that can see him with that imagery right now. >> martin: we're not allowed to show you what's on the visor, because much of it is still classified. but wherever i turn my head, i can see what's out there. >> bogdan: so there's a lot riding on that helmet, david, there's no doubt. >> martin: how much does it cost? >> bogdan: the helmet itself, plus the computer system that is used to make the helmet work, is more than a half-million dollars. >> martin: but there have been problems with the helmet, and when we visited the marine corps station in yuma, arizona, a malfunction caused a scheduled flight to be scrubbed. in fact, on any given day, more than half the f-35s on the flight line are liable to be down for maintenance or repairs. bugs and glitches in the plane first reveal themselves in testing at edwards air force base in california, where every test flight is monitored and

recorded as if it were a space flight. the plane has to go through 56,000 separate tests, everything from making sure a bomb will fall out of the bomb bay to seeing what happens when it is dropped at supersonic speeds. >> rod cregier: of course, you never like to lose an aircraft. >> martin: colonel rod cregier runs the test program. >> cregier: you're taking an aircraft that's unknown, and you're trying to determine does it do what we paid the contractor to make it do. does it go to the altitudes, the air speeds? can it drop the right weapons? we're trying to get all that stuff done before we release it for the war fighter, so that they can actually use it in combat. >> martin: so, are you basically the guy who has to deliver the bad news about the plane? >> cregier: sometimes, it's hard to tell folks that their baby is ugly, but you have to do it because, if you don't get it done, who else is going to do it? >> martin: a number of surprisingly basic defects have been uncovered. the f-35 was restricted from flying at night because the

wingtip lights, shaped to preserve the plane's stealth contours, did not meet faa standards. >> bogdan: when you hear something like that, you just kind of want to hit your head like this and go, "multibillion dollar airplane? wing tip lights? come on! >> martin: and then there are the tires, which have to be tough enough to withstand a conventional landing and bouncy enough to handle a vertical landing. we found out that the tires were wearing out two, three, four times faster than expected. tires. >> bogdan: tires aren't rocket science. we ought to be able to figure out how to do tires on a multi- billion-dollar highly advanced fighter. >> martin: lieutenant general schmidle remembers the day one of the planes delivered to the marines had gaps in its stealth coating. >> schmidle: they sent me the pictures within half an hour of the thing landing, and i then sent them on to lockheed martin and said, "so, talk to me." >> martin: i got a feeling you said more than just "talk to me."

>> schmidle: um... ( laughs ) >> martin: did you say, "what the hell?" >> schmidle: you know marines tend to be relatively direct in the way that we try to help people understand what our... what our particular concerns are. >> martin: executives at lockheed martin declined our request for an interview, and instead sent us this email saying, in part: "we recognize the program has had developmental and cost challenges, and we are working with our customers, partners and suppliers to address these challenges." that stealth coating was repaired and the problem with the running lights fixed. but, so far, not the tires. with about 35 planes a year coming off the lockheed martin assembly line, it seems awfully late to be discovering such basic flaws. that's because, early in the program, the pentagon counted on computer modeling and simulators to take the place of old- fashioned flight testing. >> frank kendall: an old adage in the... in this business is, "you should fly before you buy." make sure the design is stable and things work before you actually go into production. >> martin: frank kendall is the

under secretary of defense for acquisition, the pentagon's chief weapons buyer. >> kendall: we started buying airplanes a good year before we started flight tests. >> martin: so you buy before you fly? >> kendall: in that case, yes. >> martin: just saying, it doesn't sound like a good idea. >> kendall: i referred to that decision as "acquisition malpractice." >> martin: this may 2010 pentagon memo detailed the "flawed assumptions", "unrealistic estimates," and "a general reluctance to accept unfavorable information" that put the program seven years behind schedule and more than $160 billion over budget. to stop the bleeding, kendall pumped an extra $4.6 billion into flight testing and froze production. >> kendall: we need to face the truth in this business. we need to understand what works and what doesn't. >> martin: is this f-35 program now under control? >> kendall: yes, it is. >> martin: shortly after he spoke with us, kendall issued this memo, stating "progress is sufficient" to increase production next year.

but, he warned, the plane's software "is behind schedule" and "reliability is not growing at an acceptable rate." still, the pentagon plans to buy as many as 100 f-35s a year by 2018. has the f-35 program passed the point of no return? >> bogdan: i don't see any scenario where we're walking back away from this program. >> martin: so the american taxpayer is going to buy this airplane? >> bogdan: i would tell you we're going to buy a lot of these airplanes. >> could this flying computer be hacked? go ask alice-- she's the digital brain of the f-35-- on 60minutesovertime.com. sponsored by pfizer. [ male announcer ] it's simple physics... a body at rest tends to stay at rest... while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can actually ease arthritis symptoms. but if you have arthritis,

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>> stahl: the oscars are just two weeks from now, and a lot of people think cate blanchett has a lock on winning best actress for her leading role in woody allen's "blue jasmine." blanchett grew up in australia, where she started her career in the theater. she's a movie star who does shakespeare. she's first and foremost a theater actor, winning wild praise for her hedda gabler and blanche dubois on the stage. this doesn't mean she can't take a joke, or a fun role in blockbusters like indiana jones. it seems she can do it all, playing americans, russians, germans, skinheads, albinos, and men! "vanity fair" called her "a character actress in a leading woman's body." so, you've played the queen of england, you've played an elf,

you played an italian immigrant... >> cate blanchett: albino. >> stahl: albino. >> blanchett: and that's just before breakfast this morning. ( laughs ) i have pink eyes. like a putano, huh? like the devil, eh? >> stahl: the range is extraordinary. >> blanchett: i guess i've got one of those faces that's not particularly beautiful, not too ugly, you know. i can look... >> stahl: come on. >> blanchett: ...a bit masculine, i can look a bit feminine, depending on how you're lit, how you're shot. i don't mind not looking conventionally, you know, attractive, if that's what the part requires. >> stahl: so she can be gorgeous and regal as the elf queen in "lord of the rings"; not so much when she played bob dylan. >> blanchett: you just want me to say what you want me to say. i don't feel like, "now, i'm a great actress." i never feel that. you always think, "okay, i've learned that. well, now what if i did that?" golly!

>> stahl: they call her a chameleon, the way she almost molts into her characters, as when she played katharine hepburn in "the aviator," for which she won an oscar for best supporting actress. >> blanchett: you're not extending enough on your follow- through. follow-through is everything in golf, just like life... ( laughs ) don't you find? >> stahl: she spent weeks with a voice coach perfecting hepburn's distinctive accent. can you speak katharine hepburn? >> blanchett: no, i can't do anything. i'm terrible. i'm the worst dinner party guest in the world. people say, "oh, do... do your scottish," and i'll go, "okee, i'll do me..." i sound like i'm a cross between sort of from new delhi and boston. ( laughs ) it's terrible. >> stahl: in "blue jasmine," she plays a desperate park avenue socialite who loses her life of status and luxury when her husband turns out to be a swindler like bernie madoff. >> blanchett: uh, i was forced to take a job selling shoes on madison avenue. so humiliating.

friends i'd had at dinner parties at our apartment came in and i waited on them. i mean, do you have any idea what that's like? she was monumentally deluded. and like a lot of us, i mean, we... our lives are built on a fictionalized sense of self, who we would... who we aspire to be, rather than perhaps who we actually are. >> stahl: you do a lot of research. you're known for reading, watching videos, getting... >> blanchett: it's enjoyable. it's enjoyable. >> stahl: is it true that you watched the "60 minutes" morley safer interview of ruth madoff? >> ruth madoff: if i could change things, at least if i had tried, i would have felt a little better. >> stahl: ...bernie madoff's wife? >> blanchett: yes, absolutely. >> stahl: did that help you? did it? >> blanchett: it did. i think that what i really got from them, that madoff interview, was the sense of shame. and i found that very useful. >> stahl: one critic called it "the most complicated and demanding performance of her movie career." >> blanchett: you know, someday,

when you come into great wealth, you must remember to be generous. >> stahl: but for blanchett, woody allen's notoriously minimal direction was unnerving. you really love to talk things out. and as i understand it, that's not his style. >> blanchett: ( laughs ) no. he's monosyllabic at best. i don't know how to do this thing unless it's in conversation with somebody else. i can't... monologue is... terrifies me. ( laughs ) >> stahl: but that's what you got. >> blanchett: first day, he said, "it's awful. you're awful." >> stahl: to you? >> blanchett: yeah. >> stahl: he said "awful"? >> blanchett: "it's awful." >> stahl: but he didn't say what to do? he just said, "it's awful"? >> blanchett: no. no. >> stahl: so then, you did it again... >> blanchett: and it was still awful. but... >> stahl: it was still awful? >> blanchett: well, obviously, it got a bit better because it didn't... you know, people have gone to see it. >> stahl: her breakthrough role came in 1998 as the queen of england in "elizabeth." >> blanchett: i am married to england.

>> stahl: after that performance, she was offered other big parts, but went for characters who stretched her, rather than ones that would make her famous. even though she's often on the red carpet these days, blanchett never sought to be a movie star, nor did she think she'd ever be one. she's the middle child of a school teacher mother and transplanted texan father, who died when she was ten. she dropped out of college to study theater. what she wanted was to be was a great stage actress, and got her first major role in a play here at the sydney theater company. >> blanchett: there's a photo over here... >> stahl: in 1993, she co- starred with fellow aussie geoffrey rush in david mamet's "oleanna." look how into it you are. you are so inside. >> blanchett: it was one of those plays. you can look at yourself and you can see those things that i see. and you can find revulsion equal to my own. good day!

>> stahl: you were a triumph in it. people were dazzled. >> blanchett: yeah, the director actually almost sacked me. and that was probably a big motivator for me to... to do a better job. >> stahl: are you one of those people... are you one of those people that... >> blanchett: likes to be terrified? >> stahl: likes to be terrified? >> blanchett: i think it's the only way to work for me. >> stahl: it motivates you? >> blanchett: yeah. i'm much better with truth. >> stahl: even if it hurts? >> blanchett: even if it hurts. >> stahl: well, i think you've talked about the whole process as the "trapeze effect." you're flying up there, and you could fall. >> blanchett: yes. >> stahl: it's fear. >> blanchett: when you're stretching yourself, as a role like "blue jasmine" did for me, you risk falling flat on your face. >> stahl: she applies that same risk-taking to her personal life, as when she and andrew upton, a playwright and director, decided to get married on a whim. they were both part of the sydney theater crowd. how did you meet? how did the sparks start? >> andrew upton: the sparks started slowly, i think, personally.

>> blanchett: we didn't like each other. >> upton: we didn't get on at all at first sight. >> stahl: really? >> blanchett: and then, all of a sudden, we played poker... poker one night, and you were telling me about how you were in love with a friend of mine, and then... we kissed. >> stahl: and all of a sudden, you're asking her to marry you, real fast, as i understand it. >> upton: i think it was about 21 days. >> stahl: and you said yes right away? three weeks? >> blanchett: yeah. but you leap off at the same time. and i think it's all about timing. >> stahl: she says their marriage is a partnership-- in the raising of their three sons, ages five, nine, and 12-- and in their careers. upton has been her collaborator and sounding board. and they share a love of their country. she's australian through and through, down-to-earth, and happy to be 18 time zones away from hollywood. >> blanchett: i adore australia. i mean, i live and work here. and i'm buoyed up by it. i'm inspired by it. >> stahl: as she took us for a

walk along the sydney coast, she talked about her private life. except for her husband, the only member of the family we'd be allowed to film would be the dog, fletcher. her home and her children were off limits. in the late '90s, she and upton moved to england, and her movie career took off. but in 2006, the sydney theater company invited them to come back and take over as co- artistic directors, and they jumped at it. >> blanchett: it was one of the quickest decisions i think we made, once the offer had come our way, apart from how quickly we got married. ( laughter ) maybe in the same spirit, strangely. >> upton: yeah, i think it was in the same spirit of adventure. >> stahl: it's a job they shared for six years. it kept cate in sydney, allowing her to spend more time with their children, and to return to her first love, theater. so this is wardrobe. while she acted in some of the productions, she also became an

administrator, overseeing things like wardrobe and props. she and upton hired big name directors, and brought the company international acclaim with ambitious productions like "streetcar named desire," which they took to new york in 2009, with cate as blanche dubois. it is so intense. it was so intense. how long does it take you to come down from an experience on the stage like that? >> blanchett: at the time, you just... you do eight shows a week, my hair was falling out by the end, and i mean... >> stahl: your... is that true? >> blanchett: yeah. it was not... >> stahl: your hair was falling out, because you put so much into it. >> blanchett: but i think i was just so exhausted by... by it. >> stahl: she's known for being low maintenance, her dramas strictly onscreen or on stage. when we met her before a performance of "uncle vanya," she was doing her own makeup. >> your life should not be to grumble and moan. >> stahl: well, what's she like after a performance?

does she stay in the role? >> upton: no. >> stahl: she comes home, and she's still blanche dubois that night... >> blanchett: don't answer that, andrew. ( laughter ) >> stahl: she comes home and she's cate...? >> upton: yeah. >> stahl: after these emotional, powerful... >> upton: yeah. quite calm and chirpy. >> stahl: she says she's not a "method" actor who "mines" her inner self to unlock a character. >> blanchett: it has nothing to do with me and the fact that my dog died or my father died with my... when i was ten, and making the grief small and personal and inward. and so therefore you don't carry it home, because you're not going through some personal, inward self-analysis every night that could eat you away. you're giving it away to the audience and hopefully, if it works, then, it's their... they have... it's their problem. >> stahl: they take it in. well, yeah. >> blanchett: they can take it home. >> stahl: in december, cate decided to leave the sydney theater company and a job she loved. what went into that decision? >> blanchett: the children.

you could feel their school needs beginning to grow. they actually need that attention and, at a certain point, you have to make a decision about that, and that's not something we want to outsource. >> stahl: now, her decisions about what roles to take in movies include how long she'd have to be away from home or whether she can take the boys with her on location, as she did with "blue jasmine," her comeback to the movies, which she has done with a roar. you're 44 years old. >> blanchett: am i? we don't need to discuss that. >> stahl: yeah, you are... >> blanchett: we don't need to rub that in. let's not... >> stahl: i'm not rubbing it in. i think it's great to be 44, frankly. but it can be a tough age for an actress. at least, that's the myth, i guess. because for you, it's been a fabulous age. >> blanchett: well, i came to the film industry, i mean, in actress years, i was pushing 80, because i was in my mid-20s when i made my first film.

>> stahl: now, her movie career is so hot, she's already signed up for seven films. she's booked solid through at least 2015. what is the hardest part of your job? the thing you struggle with the most? >> blanchett: oh, look. is it hard? i don't know that it's hard. i'm an actress. i think the most complicated thing-- it's the military maneuver of getting two careers, three children, but that's a working mother's problem, working parents' problem, that's not the challenge of work. i think, in relation to the work, the trickiest thing is beginning. i think it's quite a tricky neuro-linguistic process actually to try and make something that another... that a

character has said, to make it come out through your body and make it seem like that's natural. it's kind of tricking yourself; the confidence trick. like an athlete does, you have to just say: "i'm just going to start. i'm ready. i'm open. let's go." [ park sounds, sound of spray paint ] ♪ we asked people a question, how much money do you think you'll need when you retire?

$500,000. maybe half-million. say a million dollars. [ dan ] then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. ♪ i was trying to like pull it a little further. you know, i was trying to stretch it a little bit more. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going to have to rethink this thing. [ man ] i looked around at everybody else and i was like, "are you kidding me?" [ dan ] it's just human nature to focus on the here and now. so it's hard to imagine how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪ ♪

♪

>> kroft: now, an update on a story we first reported a year ago called "the cost of admission." doctors at the nation's fourth- largest for-profit hospital chain, health management associates, told us hma pressured them to admit emergency room patients to the

company's hospitals regardless of medical need, even setting quotas. >> my department chief said we will admit 20% of our patients or somebody's going to get fired. >> kroft: the u.s. department of justice has now joined eight whistleblower lawsuits against hma, targeting unnecessary hospital admissions and medicare fraud. it singled out hma's former chief executive, gary newsome, for being behind the scheme. newsome retired last summer and now runs a mormon mission in uruguay. i'm steve kroft. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes." [ male announcer ] the all-new toyota highlander has every amenity. booooriiiing!!!! ah, ah, ah. hit it, guys! ♪ ♪ it's got a bin for your chickens ♪ ♪ a computer from the future ♪ ♪ and some giant freaky room for eight ♪ ooh, yeah! ♪ but it ain't got no room for boring ♪ i'm spacing out on all this space, too! ♪ no, we ain't got no room for boring ♪ whee!

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captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org let's do open discussion before we wrap up. i have kind of a, uh, different topic in mind. craziest thoughts about your disease? you know what i mean. you know they're nuts, but they just keep popping into your head anyway. i often wonder if i should have been born in another time. (clears throat)