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Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actress and theatre director. She has won multiple acting awards, most notably two SAGs, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, and an Academy Award, as well as the Volpi Cup at the 64th Venice International Film Festival. Blanchett earned five Academy Award nominations between 1998 and 2010.
Blanchett came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 filmElizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur. She is also well-known for her portrayals of the elf queenGaladriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming The Hobbit, Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a role which brought her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She and her husband Andrew Upton are currently artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.
Early life and education
Blanchett was born in Ivanhoe, a suburb of Melbourne, the daughter of June, an Australian property developer and teacher, and Robert "Bob" Blanchett, a Texas-born US Navy Petty Officerwho later worked as an advertising executive.[4][5] The two met while Blanchett's father's ship,USS Arneb, was in Melbourne. When Blanchett was 10, she lost her father to a heart attack. She has two siblings; her older brother, Bob, is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister, Genevieve, worked as a theatrical designer and received her Bachelor of Design in Architecture in April 2008.[6]
Blanchett has described herself during childhood as "part extrovert, part wallflower".[6] She attended a primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School. For her secondary education, she attended Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies' College, from which she graduated, where she explored her passion for acting.[7] She studied Economics and Fine Arts at the University of Melbournebefore leaving Australia to travel overseas.
When she was 18, Blanchett went on a vacation to Egypt. A fellow guest at a 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 Egyptian actor Ahmad 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.
Career
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.[8] 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 miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the miniseries Bordertown, with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode ofPolice 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 made her international film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War IIin 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.[citation needed] 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 Award(BAFTA) 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.
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 Galadriel in all three films. The trilogy holds the record as the highest grossing film trilogy of all time.[9]
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 to garner an Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar-winning actor/actress.[citation needed]
In 2006, she starred in Babel opposite Brad Pitt, The Good German with George Clooney and Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the film (Dench was also Oscar nominated).[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
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 reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age.[10] At the80th Academy Awards Blanchett received two Academy Award nominations; Best Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There, becoming the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year and the first female actor to receive another nomination for the reprisal of a role.[11]
Blanchett and her husband started three-year contracts as artistic co-directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in January 2008, with Giorgio Armani as its patron.[citation needed]
She next starred in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko, and in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, appearing on screen with Brad Pitt for a second time.
On 5 December 2008 Blanchett was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theatre.
As of 2010, Blanchett has featured in eight films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: Elizabeth (1998), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002 and 2003), The Aviator (2004), Babel (2006), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).
Blanchett provided a voice for the film Ponyo , and appeared opposite Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, released on 14 May 2010.
It was announced that Blanchett will reprise her role as Galadriel in Jackson's upcoming films of The Hobbit in 2012 and 2013.
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. 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." They were married on 29 December 1997 and have three sons: Dashiell John (born 3 December 2001), Roman Robert (born 23 April 2004), and Ignatius Martin (born 13 April 2008).
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.[15] She and her family live in "Bulwarra", an 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".[16][17]
In 2006, a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist in the Archibald Prize, which is awarded the "best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics".[18]
Blanchett is a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival. She works as the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. In 2007, Blanchett became the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation's online campaign www.whoonearthcares.com – trying to persuade Australians to express their concerns about climate change. She is also the Patron of the development charity SolarAid. Opening the 2008 9th World Congress of Metropolis in Sydney, Blanchett said: "The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different."[19]
In early 2009, Blanchett appeared in a series of special edition postage stamps called "Australian Legends of the Screen", featuring Australian actors acknowledged for the "outstanding contribution they have made to Australian entertainment and culture".[20] She, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, and Nicole Kidman each appear twice in the series: once as themselves and once in character; Blanchett is depicted in character from Elizabeth: The Golden Age.[20]
Filmography
[edit]Theatre credits
Year | Production | Location | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pre-1992 | The Odyssey of Runyon Jones | Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne | Unknown | Adaption of play by Norman Corwin |
| pre-1992 | They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? | Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne | Director | Directed fellow students in a production of an adaptation of the novel byHorace McCoy |
| 1992 | Electra | National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney | Electra | Lead |
| 1992/1993 | Top Girls | Sydney Theatre Company | Unknown | This play by Caryl Churchill was her first starring role there |
| 1993 | Oleanna | Sydney Theatre Company | Carol | Lead opposite Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet's play about a university professor who is accused of sexual harassment by a student. Won Rosemont Best Actress Award. |
| 1994 | Hamlet | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Ophelia | Played opposite Geoffrey Rush. It was a Company B Production, directed byNeil Armfield. |
| 1995 | Sweet Phoebe | Sydney Theatre Company andWarehouse Theatre, Croydon | Helen | Played lead in the Belvoir Street Theatre/Playbox Theatre co-production, written and directed by Michael Gow. The Sydney production was the first ever, then transferred to the West End |
| 1995 | The Tempest | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Miranda | A Company B Production, directed by Neil Armfield. Played alongside Duxton Chevalier. |
| 1995 | The Blind Giant is Dancing | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Rose Draper | Played alongside Hugo Weaving. A Stephen Sewell play. It opened on 15 August 1995, and closed on 10 September 1995. It was a Company B production, directed by Neil Armfield, with music composed by Paul Charlier. |
| 1997 | The Seagulla.k.a. The Seagull in Harry Hills | Belvoir Street Theatre Company | Nina | Lead in the Anton Checkov play. It opened on 4 March 1997, and closed on 13 April. It was a Company B Production, directed by Neil Armfield, music composed by Paul Charlier. |
| 1999 | Plenty | The Alemida Season at the Albery Theatre, London | Susan Traherne | Lead in play by David Hare, directed by Jonathan Kent. It opened on 27 April 1999, and closed on 27 July. |
| 1999 | The Vagina Monologues | Old Vic Theatre, London | Unknown | Ensemble; Took part in the show in February 1999, alongside other actors including Melanie Griffith. |
| 2004 | Hedda Gabler | Sydney Theatre Company | Hedda Gabler | Opened on 22 July 2004, and closed on 26 September 2004. She reprised her performance as Hedda in New York in March 2006, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre. |
| 2009 | The War of the Roses Cycle | Sydney Theatre Company | Richard II, Lady Anne | Previewed from 5 January 2009; performed in two parts as part of the Sydney Festival 2009, 10–31 January; through 14 February 2009. |
| 2009 | A Streetcar Named Desire | Sydney Theatre Company | Blanche DuBois | The play was directed by actress Liv Ullmann and co-starred Joel Edgerton. 2009 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Non-Resident Production, Washington, DC |
| 2010 | Uncle Vanya | Sydney Theatre Company | Yelena | Adaptation by A. Upton; with Richard Roxburgh (Vanya), John Bell (Professor Serebryakov), Hugo Weaving (Astrov) |
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