Cate Blanchett

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Cate Blanchett
Birth name Catherine Élise Blanchett
Born May 14, 1969 (age 37)
Flag of Australia Melbourne, Australia
Spouse(s) Andrew Upton (1997-)
Notable roles Elizabeth I in Elizabeth (1998)
Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003)
Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (2004)
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actress
2005 The Aviator

Nominated: Best Actress
1998 Elizabeth

Nominated: Best Supporting Actress
2007 Notes on a Scandal
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1999 Elizabeth
BAFTA Awards
Best Actress
1998 Elizabeth
Best Supporting Actress
2004 The Aviator
AFI Awards
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Little Fish
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
1997 Thank God He Met Lizzie

Catherine Élise Blanchett (born on May 14, 1969) is an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning Australian actress.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Blanchett was born in Melbourne, Australia to Robert Blanchett, a Texas-born United States Navy Petty Officer who later worked in advertising, and June, an Australian schoolteacher. When Blanchett was 10, she lost her father to a heart attack. She has two siblings; the elder, Bob, is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister, Geneviève, is a theatrical designer. She is of French ancestry.

[edit] Career

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 art at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel. 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 who was losing to an Egyptian. She walked off from the set. She 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.

Her first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1993 David Mamet play Oleanna. 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 mini-series Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the mini-series Bordertown and in the Police Rescue episode, "The Loaded Boy".

She made her film debut as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese in a production of Paradise Road directed by Bruce Beresford, co-starring Glenn Close and Frances McDormand.

Blanchett's first high-profile role was as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth. This role earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, losing to Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love. However, Blanchett's performance won her a British Academy (BAFTA) Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama.

Cate Blanchett was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her performance as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth
Cate Blanchett was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for her performance as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth
Cate Blanchett with Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal
Cate Blanchett with Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal

The following year, Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2005 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.

Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies. She played the role of the High Elf Queen Galadriel in all three films.

In 2006, Blanchett played Sheba Hart in Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench, who 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. She received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film (Dench was also Oscar nominated).

Blanchett will reprise her role as Elizabeth I in the upcoming sequel tentatively entitled Golden Age. She is set to star as a young Bob Dylan in the feature film I'm Not There.

As of 2008, she and her husband will commence three-year contracts as artistic co-directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. The contracts include a clause that will allow either of them to take three months out each year to pursue other activities. Also in 2008, Blanchett will play an as yet unspecified role in the next instalment of the "Indiana Jones" series, tentatively scheduled for a May 22, 2008 release. [1]

[edit] Personal life

Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. They were married the following year 1997. 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. The younger son received a minor burn injury on May 15, 2005 while the family was in Marrakech, Morocco, for the filming of the movie Babel. After initial treatment there, Blanchett flew with him to London for further treatment.

After making England her main family home for most of the early 2000s, she and her husband returned to their native Australia. In 2006, Blanchett said in a Vogue interview of November 2006: "Andrew and I realized how much Australia meant to us. We saw the theatre community in Sydney and we felt, well, we know you all; we have worked with many of you. We have tried to live a few other places, but something really hit us in the gut. It's just a feeling about what home is. It became clear to us, particularly after the children were born, that family and the theatrical community in Australia were a large part of who we are."

[edit] Filmography

Year Film Role Award Nominations and/or Wins
1996 Parklands Rosie
1997 Oscar and Lucinda Lucinda Leplastrier Nominated for Australian Film Institute award (AFI) for Best Lead Actress
Thank God He Met Lizzie Lizzie Won Australian Film Institute award (AFI] for Best Supporting Actress
Paradise Road Susan Macarthy
1998 Elizabeth Elizabeth I of England Nominated for Academy Award for Best Actress
Won Golden Globe for Best Actress - Drama
Won BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Nominated for SAG award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Won BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress
1999 Bangers Julie-Anne
The Talented Mr. Ripley Meredith Logue Nominated for BAFTA for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Pushing Tin Connie Falzone
An Ideal Husband Lady Gertrude Chiltern
2000 The Gift Annabelle "Annie" Wilson
The Man Who Cried Lola
2001 The Shipping News Petal Quoyle
Charlotte Gray Charlotte Gray
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Galadriel Nominated for SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast
Bandits Kate Wheeler Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Actress - Comedy or Musical
Nominated for SAG award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Galadriel Nominated for SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast
Heaven Philippa
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Galadriel Won SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast
Won BFCA award for Best Acting Ensemble
The Missing Magdalena 'Maggie' Gilkeson
Coffee and Cigarettes Herself & Shelly
Veronica Guerin Veronica Guerin Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Actress - Drama
2004 The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Jane Winslett-Richardson Nominated for BFCA award for Best Acting Ensemble
The Aviator Katharine Hepburn Won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Won BAFTA award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Won SAG award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated for BFCA award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress
2005 Little Fish Tracy Heart Won Australian Film Institute award (AFI) for Best Lead Actress
2006 Babel Susan Jones Won Gotham Award for Best Ensemble
Nominated for SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Nominated for BFCA award for Best Acting Ensemble
The Good German Lena Brandt
Notes on a Scandal Sheba Hart Nominated for BFCA award for Best Supporting Actress

Nominated for Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated for SAG award for Best Supporting Actress
Nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
2007 The Golden Age Elizabeth I
Hot Fuzz Uncredited Cameo
I'm Not There Bob Dylan
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Daisy
2008 Indiana Jones 4

[edit] Awards won

  • 1992 Sydney Theatre Critics Award: Best Actress for David Mamet's Oleanna
  • 1993 Sydney Critics Circle Award: Best Newcomer for Timothy Daly's Kafka Dances
  • 1997 AFI Award: Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Thank God He Met Lizzie
  • 1997 Sydney Film Critics Award: Best Supporting Actress for Thank God He Met Lizzie
  • 1998 BAFTA Award: Best Actress for Elizabeth
  • 1998 Golden Globe Awards: Best Actress, Drama, for Elizabeth
  • 2002 Goldene Kamera (a German award): Best Actress
  • 2003 Screen Actors Guild Awards: Best Ensemble Cast for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
  • 2005 Academy Award - Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator
  • 2005 BAFTA Award: Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator
  • 2005 Screen Actors Guild Awards: Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator
  • 2005 AFI Award: Best Lead Actress for Little Fish
  • 2006 Mo Award: Best Female Actor in a Play for Hedda Gabler
Awards
Preceded by
Judi Dench
for Mrs. Brown		 BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
1998
for Elizabeth		 Succeeded by
Annette Bening
for American Beauty
Preceded by
Judi Dench
for Mrs. Brown		 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1999
for Elizabeth		 Succeeded by
Hilary Swank
for Boys Don't Cry
Preceded by
Renée Zellweger
for Cold Mountain		 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
2004
for The Aviator		 Succeeded by
Rachel Weisz
for The Constant Gardener
Preceded by
Renée Zellweger
for Cold Mountain		 BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
2004
for The Aviator		 Succeeded by
Thandie Newton
for Crash

[edit] Awards nominated

[edit] Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • "If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously."
  • On the Lord of the Rings trilogy: "I had never done anything with blue screen before, or prosthetics, or anything like that. Lord of the Rings was like stepping into a video game for me. It was another world completely. But to be honest, I basically did it so that I could have the pointy ears. I thought they would really work with my bare head."
  • "If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life - that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment - that would be the perfect state."

[edit] External links

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