Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett

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Birth name: Catherine Elise Blanchett
Date of birth: 14 May 1969
Place of birth: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Nickname: Cate
Height: 5′ 8½” (1.74 m)
Spouse: Andrew Upton (29 December 1997 – present) 2 children

Famous Quote: “You know, when you see yourself on a big screen, I tend to watch from behind my hands. There is absolutely the regret. You always get that at the end of every project. That’s what’s great about theater: at least every night you get the chance to go out and reoffend. I’m endlessly disappointed, which is what propels me into the next project, probably, not to repair the damage but to kind of hopefully keep developing. Otherwise there’s no reason to keep doing it, is there?”

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Cate Blanchett
Wolf-Kasteler Public Relations
335 North Maple Drive, Suite 351
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Biography: 

Catherine Élise “Cate” Blanchett (born May 14, 1969) is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning Australian actress and stage director. She has won various other acting awards, most notably two SAGs and two BAFTAs, as well as the Volpi Cup at 64th Venice International Film Festival. A gifted performer who developed her talent at a young age, Cate Blanchett grew into exceptional actress who achieved international acclaim with her stunning Oscar-nominated turn as a young Elizabeth I in Shekhar Kapur’s “Elizabeth” (1998). Prior to that role, the engaging Australian found herself thrust in the spotlight with just her third feature, “Oscar and Lucinda” (1997), starring opposite Ralph Fiennes. 

As the headstrong proto-feminist heiress whose penchant for gambling draws her to a clergyman with the same predilections, Cate Blanchett delivered a star-making performance that garnered the attention of filmdom’s most esteemed directors. Alluring, yet elusive and possessing an innate intelligence coupled with malleable features – she sometimes seemed plain, but beautiful, often in the same shot – the actress quickly rose to international fame to become one of Hollywood’s most respected and revered talents.

Blanchett came to international attention in the 1998 film Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, in which she played Elizabeth I of England. She is also well known for her portrayals of the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, a role which brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is currently the artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company.

Blanchett was born in Ivanhoe, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, the daughter of June, an Australian property developer and teacher, and Robert “Bob” Blanchett, a Texas-born United States Navy Petty Officer who met Blanchett’s mother while stationed in Melbourne and who later worked as an advertising executive.[4][5] When Blanchett was 10, she lost her father to a heart attack. She has described herself during childhood as “part extrovert, part wallflower”. She has two siblings; her older brother, Bob, is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister, Genevieve, is a theatrical designer. Blanchett grew up in suburban Ivanhoe near the Yarra River. Her mother, June, a native Australian, was a schoolteacher and her dad, Robert, a Texas-born Navy seaman who wound up Down Under when his ship broke down, put himself through night school and had a career in advertising. But when Blanchett was only 10, her father died from a sudden heart attack. 

He was just 40 years old. Meanwhile, she developed a passion for films and putting on performances for her friends, which were later translated during her second year at the University of Melbourne. Originally an art history and economics major, Blanchett got her first real taste for acting after appearing in Kris Hemensley’s “European Features.” On a whim, she auditioned for a spot in the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, where she studied from 1990-92 and where, with her performance as Clytemnestra in a production of Sophocles’ “Electra,” she developed an early reputation as a gifted actress.

Blanchett attended primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School before completing secondary education at Methodist Ladies’ College, where she explored her passion for acting. She studied Economics and Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel overseas. When she was 18, Blanchett went on a vacation to Egypt. A fellow guest at a cheap hotel in Cairo asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, and the next day she found herself in a crowd scene cheering for an American boxer losing to an Egyptian in the film Kaboria, starring the late Egyptian actor Ahmed Zaki. Blanchett returned to Australia and later moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art; graduating in 1992 and beginning her career in the theatre.

Although Blanchett left drama school with a solid reputation, she was by no means the hot go-to actress. But in 1993, she generated waves with her win for Best Newcomer at Sydney’s equivalent for the Tony Award with her graceful turn in “Kafka Dances.” That same year, she went on to earn accolades, as well as another award win – this time for Best Actress – for her turn as a female college student who brings charges of sexual harassment against her professor (Geoffrey Rush) in David Mamet’s electric play “Oleanna” (1993). 

She later added the Shakespearean roles of Ophelia and Miranda to her credits, before playing Nina in Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” in Australia in 1997. Blanchett made her London stage debut in 1999 with a revival of David Hare’s “Plenty,” playing protagonist Susan Traherne, whose life post-World War II is trapped in a permanent state of ineffectual dissent against the ensuing peace. Reviews on the play were scathing against both the play and Blanchett’s performance. Even years later, Blanchett refused to read another review of her work.

Her first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1993 David Mamet play Oleanna, for which she won the Sydney Theatre Critics’ Best Newcomer Award. She also appeared as Ophelia in an acclaimed 1994–95 Company B production of Hamlet, directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh. Blanchett appeared in the TV mini-series Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the mini-series Bordertown, with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled “The Loaded Boy”. She also appeared in the 1994 telemovie of Police Rescue as a teacher taken hostage by armed bandits and in the 50 minute drama Parklands (1996), which received a limited release in Australian cinemas.

Blanchett shortly made her film debut in the short “Parklands” (1996), but soon landed her first feature role as one of the females interned in a Japanese camp in Bruce Beresford’s WWII-era drama “Paradise Road” (1997). She further garnered attention – and the 1997 Australian Film Institute Best Supporting Actress Award – as one leg of a romantic triangle (completed by Richard Roxburgh and Frances O’Connor) in the darkly comic “Thank God He Met Lizzie” (1997). Her rising star status was confirmed when she landed the leading role of the Tudor monarch in the biopic “Elizabeth.” Holding her own in a cast that included Geoffrey Rush, Richard Attenborough, Joseph Fiennes and Christopher Eccleston, Blanchett delivered a brilliant turn as the young woman who grows into the stature of her office. By turns an emotional girl and a driven women, her Elizabeth was a multi-dimensional creation that earned numerous accolades including an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Blanchett made her international film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during WW2 in Bruce Beresford’s 1997 film Paradise Road, which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. Her first leading role, also in 1997, was as Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong’s production of Oscar and Lucinda opposite Ralph Fiennes. Coincidentally, Peter Carey, the Booker Prize-winning Australian author of Oscar and Lucinda, had known Blanchett’s father, Bob, when both worked in the advertising industry in Melbourne. Blanchett was nominated for her first Australian Film Institute Award as Best Leading Actress for this role but lost out to Pamela Rabe in The Well. She did, however, win an AFI Award as Supporting Actress in the same year for her role as Lizzie in the romantic-comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie, co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O’Connor.

Her first high-profile international role was as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love but won a British Academy (BAFTA) Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. The following year, Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

After carrying a major film, it perhaps came as a bit of a surprise that her follow-up roles were predominantly supporting ones – such as with Blanchett exhibiting her comic side, replete with a New Jersey accent as the wife of air traffic controller John Cusack in “Pushing Tin” (1999). Later that same year, she was back in period clothes, first as the wife of a titled man being blackmailed in Oliver Parker’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband;” then as Meredith, a character created especially for the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” a 1950s-era drama about a slick American (Matt Damon) who plots to kill a playboy (Jude Law) in order to assume his identity in Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel.

Blanchett continued to alternate between showy supporting roles and strong leads. She demonstrated her chameleonic abilities essaying a Southern widow with psychic abilities in the gothic thriller “The Gift” (2000), and on the heels of that film, was terrific as a gold-digging Russian chorus girl in “The Man Who Cried” (2001). The former was co-written by her “Pushing Tin” co-star Billy Bob Thornton, who based Blanchett’s character on his own mother. The actress remained busy and consistently employed, reuniting with Thornton in the comedy “Bandits,” followed by a turn as Kevin Spacey’s ex-wife in “The Shipping News” and the titular role in “Charlotte Gray” (all 2001). Meanwhile, Blanchett had a small, but significant part as the elf queen Galadriel in the epic “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy: “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001), “The Two Towers” (2002) and “The Return of the King” (2003). Additionally, she acted opposite her “The Gift” co-star Giovanni Ribisi in “Heaven” (2002), Tom Tykwer’s English-language debut.

Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. She played the role of the High Elf Queen Galadriel in all three films, which hold the record as the highest grossing film trilogy of all time. In 2004, she played a pregnant journalist in the Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, yet again earning a nomination for BFCA award for Best Acting Ensemble.

In 2005, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. This made Blanchett the first person ever to garner an Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar-winning actor/actress.

Blanchett received rave reviews for her turn as the real-life crusading Irish journalist whose life is endangered by criminal elements when she pursues her mob investigation too far in “Veronica Geurin” (2003). In 2004, she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress at the Independent Spirit Awards for her dual performance as “herself” and a jealous relative in Jim Jarmousch’s anthological riff, “Coffee & Cigarettes.” Blanchett – who Leonardo DiCaprio at that time referred to as “the female Daniel Day-Lewis” for her chameleon-like qualities tackled two wildly different roles in 2004. 

First, she played a pregnant female journalist caught in an off-kilter romantic triangle between an undersea explorer (Bill Murray) and his possible son (Owen Wilson) in Wes Anderson’s comedy “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” Next she captured the coltish, often haughty charisma and unforgettable New England cadences of Hollywood superstar Katharine Hepburn one of Howard Hughes’ (DiCaprio) more serious paramours in director Martin Scorsese’s impressive Hughes biopic, “The Aviator.” Blanchett was widely recognized for her performance and earned several awards for Best Supporting Actress, including, at last, the Academy Award. Blanchett’s victory gave her the unique distinction of becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for playing an Oscar-winning actress.

In 2006, she starred in both Babel opposite Brad Pitt, and Notes on a Scandal playing Sheba Hart opposite Dame Judi Dench. Coincidentally, Dench won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for playing Elizabeth I, the same year Blanchett lost for playing the same historical figure, albeit in a different category. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film (Dench was also Oscar nominated).

Blanchett was little-seen on the big screen for most of 2005, though she did star in the Australian-made thriller “Little Fish,” playing a recovering drug addict trying to get her life back in order when a criminal kingpin (Sam Neill) forces her to confront her greatest fear. She next starred in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s complex “Babel” (2006), a dense and heartbreaking look at confusion, fear and the depths of love. Set on different continents – Asia, Africa and North America – “Babel” told three separate stories brought together by a single random act of violence. Blanchett played an American tourist traveling with her husband (Brad Pitt) in Morocco when a stray bullet from a rifle crashes through their bus window, seriously wounding her and touching off a series of events – including the couple’s Mexican housekeeper (Adriana Barraza) trying to cross the border, a neglected Japanese girl (Rinko Kikuchi) scouring Japan for love in all the wrong places, and two Moroccan boys (Said Tarchani and Boubker Ait El Caid) dealing with their culpability in the shooting – that underscore the fear and confusion brought about by the failure to communicate.

She next starred in “The Good German” (2006), playing the former lover of a U.S. Army war correspondent (George Clooney) in post-war Berlin who is trying to escape the war’s aftermath – and her own dark past – before being discovered. Blanchett next co-starred in “Notes on a Scandal” (2006), playing an attractive new art teacher at a London high school engaging in an illicit affair with a 15-year-old student (Andrew Simpson) whose secret is guarded by the school’s obsessively voyeuristic history teacher (Judi Dench), a role that earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture. Though she lost out to newcomer Jennifer Hudson, Blanchett was given a shot at redemption by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2007, she won the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe Award for portraying one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ feature film I’m Not There and also reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel to Elizabeth entitled Elizabeth: the Golden Age. In 2007, Blanchett returned to familiar territory with “The Golden Age,” Shekhar Kapur’s sequel to “Elizabeth” that focused on the Virgin Queen’s relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). Even more impressive, Blanchett – obviously a woman – essayed singer/songwriter legend, Bob Dylan in the unique film chronicling Dylan’s life, “I’m Not Here.” So impressive was she by morphing into a man – and a quirky man, at that – that she won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, paving the way to an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role at the 80th Academy Awards. Meanwhile, her second go-round as Queen Elizabeth earned Blanchett another Oscar nod that year, this time for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. 

At the 80th Annual Academy Awards Blanchett received two Academy Award nominations including Best Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I’m Not There, making Academy Awards history, as she became the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year and the first female actor to receive another Oscar nomination for the reprisal of a role.

In 2007, Blanchett was named as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People In The World and also one of the most successful actresses by Forbes magazine. She will next be seen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the villainous Russian Agent Irina Spalko, and also in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, both of which will be released in 2008.

Blanchett and her husband commenced three-year contracts as artistic co-directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in January 2008. Their contracts include a clause that will allow either of them to take three months out of each year to pursue other activities. Blanchett made her stage directing debut in 2007 when she directed the play Blackbird for the Sydney Theatre Company. On 26 February 2008, she was named as a member of the panel that will select participants for Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit of the best and brightest Australians. Controversially, Blanchett was the only woman on the ten-member panel.

Blanchett’s husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. It was not love at first sight, however; “He thought I was aloof and I thought he was arrogant”, Blanchett later remarked. “It just shows you how wrong you can be, but once he kissed me that was that.” The two were married on December 29, 1997. Their first child, Dashiell John, was born on December 3, 2001; their second child, Roman Robert, was born on April 23, 2004 and on April 13, 2008, they welcomed their third son, Ignatius Martin Upton.

After making Brighton, England their main family home for much of the early 2000s, she and her husband returned to their native Australia. In November 2006, Blanchett stated that this was due to a desire to decide on a permanent home for her children, and to be closer to her family as well as a sense of belonging to the Australian (theatrical) community. She and her family live in “Bulwarra”, a 1877 sandstone mansion in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill. It was purchased for $10.2 million Australian dollars in 2004 and underwent extensive renovations in 2007 in order to be made more “eco-friendly”.

Blanchett works as the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. In 2006, a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist in the Archibald Prize, which is awarded for the “best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics”. Blanchett is a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival.

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