Interesting facts about Cate Blanchett

cate blanchett

Cate Blanchett is an Australian actress and theatre director.

Her full name is Catherine Elise Blanchett.

She was born on on 14 May 1969 in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe.

Her Australian mother, June (née Gamble), worked as a property developer and teacher, and her American father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., a Texas native, was a United States Navy petty officer who later worked as an advertising executive.

Cate is the middle of three children; her older brother is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister is a theatrical designer.

Blanchett’s ancestry includes English, some Scottish, and remote French roots.

When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.

She studied art history at the University of Melbourne before graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992.

cate blanchett young

Her professional acting career began on the Australian stage.

Blanchett’s first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush, in the 1992 David Mamet play Oleanna for the Sydney Theatre Company.

Blanchett made her television debut in 1993, and she soon landed leading roles in the miniseries Heartland (1994) and Bordertown (1995).

She made her feature film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II, in Paradise Road (1997).

paradise road poster

Blanchett first leading role was as Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong’s romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda (1997), opposite Ralph Fiennes.

Then she starred in the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997), co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O’Connor.

Blanchett’s breakthrough role was as young Queen Elizabeth I in the critically acclaimed film Elizabeth (1998). Her performance garnered wide recognition, earning her the Golden Globe Award and British Academy Award (BAFTA), and Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

elizabeth poster

In 1999 she appeared in the Mike Newell comedy Pushing Tin, costarring Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie (critics singled out Blanchett’s performance), and the critically acclaimed Anthony Minghella film The Talented Mr. Ripley, alongside Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. She received her second BAFTA nomination for her performance in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

In 2000, she played a psychic woman in a small Southern town in the thriller The Gift, starring alongside Katie Holmes and Greg Kinnear.

Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning blockbuster trilogy, The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, and 2003), playing the elf queen Galadriel in all three films. The trilogy holds the record as the highest-grossing film trilogy of all time.

galadriel

In addition to The Lord of the Rings, 2001 also saw Blanchett diversify her portfolio with a range of roles in the dramas Charlotte Gray and The Shipping News and the American crime-comedy Bandits, for which she earned a second Golden Globe nomination.

In 2002, Blanchett appeared, opposite Giovanni Ribisi, in Tom Tykwer-directed Heaven, the first film in an unfinished trilogy by acclaimed writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski.

In the western The Missing (2003), Blanchett brought her trademark complexity to the role of a young woman forced to confront her estranged father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) in order to reclaim her kidnapped daughter.

the missing poster

Then she appered in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) — playing two roles (both against herself) — for which she received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female nomination.

She earned further critical acclaim for her performance as an Irish journalist who runs afoul of the mob in Veronica Guerin (2003).

In 2004 she starred in Wes Anderson’s offbeat comedy The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

In 2005, she won her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her acclaimed portrayal of Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. This made Blanchett the first actor to garner an Academy Award for playing an Oscar-winning actor.

the aviator poster

In 2006, she starred opposite Brad Pitt in the drama Babel, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, which received seven Academy Award nominations, the Steven Soderbergh-directed The Good German with George Clooney, and the acclaimed Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench. Blanchett received a third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the latter film.

In 2007 Blanchett reprised her role as the English queen in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which explores Elizabeth’s political battles with Spain and her personal relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh; she earned another Academy Award nomination for best actress for her performance.

In the unconventional biopic I’m Not There (2007), she starred as one of several characters based on the musician Bob Dylan at different stages in his life. Her performance earned her another Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award for best supporting actress.

i'm not there poster

She next appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko, Spielberg’s favorite villain from the entire series, and in David Fincher’s Oscar-nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, co-starring with Brad Pitt for a second time.

In 2008, Blanchett and her husband became co-CEOs and artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.

Two years later she appeared as Marion Loxley in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (2010). The action drama starred Russell Crowe in the title role as the outlaw hero.

In 2011, she played the antagonist CIA agent Marissa Wiegler in Joe Wright’s action thriller film Hanna.

Blanchett again assumed the role of Galadriel in the Hobbit trilogyAn Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

In 2013, Blanchett played Jasmine French, the lead role in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, costarring Alec Baldwin and Sally Hawkins. The performance earned her more than 40 industry and critics awards, including Golden Globe award, BAFTA award, and the Academy Award for Best Actress.

blue jasmine poster

Then she played a French art historian and Resistance member in The Monuments Men (2014), which fictionalized Allied efforts to recover art stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

Blanchett portrayed Nancy in Terrence Malick’s Knight Of Cups (2015).

She then portrayed Lady Tremaine, Cinderella’s evil stepmother, in Disney’s live-action re-imagining of Charles Perrault’s Cinderella (2015) and the 1950 animated film, to critical acclaim.

Blanchett appered in Carol (2015), a drama in which she played a married socialite who enters a romantic relationship with a younger store clerk (Rooney Mara). She received Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and BAFTA Award nominations for her performance.

carol poster

Blanchett appeared in Manifesto (2015), Julian Rosefeldt’s multi-screen video installation, in which 12 artist manifestos are depicted by 13 different characters played by Blanchett.

In 2017, Blanchett also appeared in Malick’s Song to Song, shot back-to-back with Knight of Cups in 2012.

She portray Hela in the 2017 Marvel Comics superhero film Thor: Ragnarok, directed by Taika Waititi.

Blanchett was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture in 2012, in recognition of her significant contributions to the arts.

Blanchett was awarded the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society by the Australian government.

Cate Blanchett has an estimated net worth of $45 million.

cate-blanchett-2

Blanchett is married to playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton. They met in 1996 on the set of a TV show and were married on 29 December 1997. Blanchett and Upton have four children: biological sons Dashiell John (b. December 2001), Roman Robert (b. April 2004), and Ignatius Martin (b. April 2008), and adopted daughter Edith Vivian Patricia, whose adoption was confirmed in March 2015.

She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Picture at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on December 5, 2008.

In 2009, Blanchett appeared in a series of commemorative postage stamps called Australian Legends, in recognition of the outstanding contribution made to Australian entertainment and culture.

In 2015, Madame Tussauds unveiled a wax figure of Blanchett draped in a recreation of the Valentino Garavani dress she wore to the 2005 Academy Awards ceremony.

cate blanchett wax figure

Blanchett holds the record for largest “Best Actress” award sweep (42 wins) for her performance as Jasmine French in Blue Jasmine (2013).

When she was 18, Cate was on vacation in Egypt. A fellow guest at a cheap hotel in Cairo asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, the Egyptian boxing movie Kaboria [Crabs (1990)], directed by Khairy Beshara. She appeared in 3 scenes in that movie, in one of them she was dancing to the main song of the movie.

After completing work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the role of Galadriel, she kept and bronzed her elf ear prosthetics.

Blanchett lives in Hunters Hill, Sydney, Australia.

She has American citizenship due to her father being American.

Blanchett enjoys making lists and crossing items off as she accomplishes them.

She shaved her head at 15 and as a result was almost fired from her job at a nursing home.