British postcard by GB Posters, Sheffield, no. PC 0710. Photo: New Line Cinema. Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003).
German postcard by Gallery Salz und Silber. Photo: Simon Annand. Caption: Cate Blanchett. Albery Theatre, Plenty, 1999.
Australian freecard by AvantCard for HQ, no. 3146. Photo: Lorenzo Agius / Public, London. Caption: Cate Blanchett, Playing Hard To Get.
Purely positive reviews for her roles
Catherine Élise ‘Cate’ Blanchett was born in Ivanhoe, a suburb of Melbourne in 1969. Her American father Robert DeWitt Blanchett Jr. was a Texas naval officer who became an advertising executive, and her Australian mother June (née Gamble), was a property developer and teacher. They met when Robert's ship broke down in Melbourne. Cate is the second of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister.
When Blanchett was ten, her father died of a heart attack, leaving her mother to raise the family. During her teenage years, Cate had a penchant for dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, and went through goth and punk phases, at one point shaving her head. After high school, she began a degree in economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne but dropped out after one year to travel overseas. While in Egypt, Blanchett was asked to be an extra as an American cheerleader in the Egyptian boxing film Kaboria (Khairy Beshara, 1990). In need of money, she accepted the job.
On returning to Australia, she moved to Sydney and enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1992. After her studies, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company. There she starred in ‘Top Girls’. In 1993, she won two major theatre awards, the Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her role in the musical ‘Kafka Dances’, and the Rosemont Best Actress Award for her role in David Mamet's ‘Oleanna’, in which she starred opposite Geoffrey Rush. Blanchett moved into television. She starred in the popular series Heartland (1994) and Police Rescue (1994). She received purely positive reviews for her roles and her television and theatre careers prospered.
In 1997, Blanchett made her film debut in the American-Australian production Paradise Road (Bruce Beresford, 1997). In this prisoner-of-war drama, she starred as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II opposite Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. She won the Australian Film Institute's Best Actress Award for her second film, the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie (Cherie Nowlan, 1997). Her role as eccentric heiress Lucinda Leplastrier in the romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda (Gillian Armstrong, 1997), opposite Ralph Fiennes, got her attention from abroad.
In 1998, Blanchett played the role of young Queen Elizabeth I of England in the British drama Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur., 1998). The film received eight Oscar nominations, including one for Best Actress, for Blanchett. She lost the Academy Award to Gwyneth Paltrow, but she did receive a Golden Globe. The following year, she acted in such films as Pushing Tin (Mike Newell, 1999), An Ideal Husband (1999) and The Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999), starring Matt Damon as Tom Ripley.
Australian Freecard by AvantCard, no. 6391, 2002. Photo: FilmFour. Cate Blanchett in Charlotte Gray (Gillian Armstrong, 2001).
Spanish postcard by Memory Card, no. 741. Cate Blanchett in The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001).
Australian Freecard by AvantCard. Photo: Touchstone. Image: a poster of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004) with Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Angelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Owen Wilson, and Bud Cort.
A wonder of acting
More international roles in a wide variety of international films followed for Cate Blanchett. In the new century, she did mystery in The Gift (Sam Raimi, 2000) with Keanu Reeves, comedy in Bandits (Barry Levinson, 2001) with Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis, and drama in Heaven (Tom Tykwer, 2002) with Giovanni Ribisi.
She reached a whole new audience with the role of the elf leader Galadriel in Peter Jackson's Blockbuster The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). Later, she played the role of Galadriel again in the story that precedes The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit trilogy: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson, 2012), The Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (Peter Jackson, 2014).
She played the title role in Veronica Guerin (Joel Schumacher, 2003) and played Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004) opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. For this role, she won the Oscar for Best Female Supporting Actor. Roger Ebert lauded the performance, describing it as "delightful and yet touching; mannered and tomboyish". In 2004, she played a pregnant journalist in the adventure comedy-drama The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004) starring Bill Murray as Steve Zissou, an eccentric oceanographer who sets out with his crew to exact revenge on the ‘jaguar shark’ that ate his partner Esteban. During the shooting of the film, she was also pregnant in real life.
After this, she returned to Australia for the film Little Fish (Rowan Woods, 2005) in which she played an ex-drug addict. She acted opposite Brad Pitt in the acclaimed psychological drama Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006). For the psychological thriller Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre, 2006) opposite Dame Judi Dench, she was nominated for an Oscar in the ‘Best Supporting Actress category. In 2007, she played the role of Queen Elizabeth for the second time, in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007). That year, she also starred as Jude Quinn, one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in the experimental film I'm Not There (Todd Hayes, 2007), for which she was awarded a Golden Globe. Roger Ebert: "That Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto International Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting." Next, Blanchett appeared in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko. That year, she also starred alongside Brad Pitt in David Fincher's Oscar-nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton became co-CEOs and artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2009, she returned to acting in the theatre with the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2010, she starred as Lady Marion opposite Russell Crowe's titular hero in Ridley Scott's epic Robin Hood. Blanchett won an Oscar in 2013 for the lead role of Jasmine in the tragicomedy Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013). Blanchett also starred as Lydia Tár, a fictional renowned conductor, in Tár (Todd Field, 2022). Her performance received rave reviews. For the performance, Blanchett won her second Volpi Cup for best actress, her fourth Golden Globe Award and her fourth BAFTA Award. Subsequently, she received her eighth Oscar nomination. In 2023, Blanchett co-starred in the Australian drama film The New Boy (Warwick Thornton, 2023), which she also produced. It follows a young Aboriginal Australian orphan boy who is brought into a Christian monastery, run by a renegade nun, where he begins to question his faith and loyalty to his heritage. In 1997, Cate Blanchett married playwright Andrew Upton. They have three sons together and adopted a daughter in 2015.
German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).
German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).
German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).
German postcard by Universal Pictures.de for the DVD release. Photo: Universal. Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen in Elizabeth: the Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007).
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.
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