Hollywood Hotties
Tinseltowns Hottest Stars
Cate Blanchett
Early Life
Catherine Élise Blanchett was born on May 14th, 1969 in Ivanhoe, a prestigious suburb of Melbourne, Australia. She is the daughter of Robert "Bob" Blanchett, a U.S. Navy Petty Officer who later worked as an advertising executive and June, an Australian property developer and teacher. She was raised by her mother alone following the death of her father, when she was ten, from a heart attack. She has one older brother, Bob, and one younger sister, Genevieve. Blanchett attended Ivanhoe East Primary School before completing secondary education at Methodist Ladies' College in Kew, Melbourne. She then studied Fine Arts and Economics at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel overseas. While travelling in Egypt she took the opportunity to earn some extra money by taking a job as a film extra. This experience had huge effect on her and shortly after she returned to Australia and moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. After graduating in 1992 Blanchett began acting in theatre productions, most notably opposite Geoffrey Rush in Oleanna and as Ophelia in Hamlet. Following a string of positive reviews for her theatre work she was cast in the Australian T.V. mini-series’s Heartland, alongside Ernie Dingo, and Bordertown, with Hugo Weaving.
Career Highlights
Blanchett made her international film debut with a supporting role in Bruce Beresford's 1997 fact based war drama Paradise Road. She played the role of Australian nurse Susan McCarthy who is imprisoned in a Sumatra concentration camp when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Singapore in 1942. Her first leading role followed when she was cast as Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Oscar and Lucinda opposite Ralph Fiennes. Her performance as the young heiress was nominated by the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Leading Actress which was eventually awarded to Pamela Rabe. She did, however, win the AFI Award for Supporting Actress for her role in the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie the same year. Co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O'Connor, Blanchett played the role of Lizzie, who is set to be married to Roxburgh who is troubled with recollections of a previous relationship. Blanchett first came to the attention of international audiences when she was cast in the title role in her only movie of 1998, Elizabeth. The film, which is loosely based on the early reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, was directed by Shekhar Kapur and also starred Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Christopher Eccleston, and Richard Attenborough. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love. She did however receive a British Academy Award (BAFTA) and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. In 1999 Blanchett was cast in the romantic comedy An Ideal Husband, a film based on the 1895 play by Oscar Wilde. Blanchett plays the role of Lady Gertrude Chiltern, a loving wife of a successful Government minister who faces political ruin when a mysterious woman arrives with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Her next movie saw her star alongside John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie in the comedy drama Pushing Tin. The movie follows the story of two rivals, Cusack and Thornton, working at New York TRACON with Blanchett playing Cusack’s long suffering wife. Her final role of the year saw her win further critical acclaim when she appeared in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, an adaptation of the 1955 novel by Patricia Highsmith. Blanchett was part of a impressive cast that included Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. Her role as wealthy American heiress Meredith Logue, a character created for specifically for the film, saw her receive nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the BAFTA’s and Chlotrudis Awards. She also appeared in the Australian short film Bangers, that was written and produced by her husband Andrew Upton.
Her first role of 2000 was in the supernatural thriller The Gift, a movie written by her Pushing Tin co-star Billy Bob Thornton and based on the psychic experiences of his own mother. Blanchett plays a resident fortune teller of a small Georgian town, who’s help is enlisted by local police after she receives a vision of a murder. Her performance received widespread critical praise and saw her nominated at the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards and Saturn Award for Best Actress. Her second and final film of the year was the Anglo-French wartime drama The Man Who Cried. Blanchett appeared in a supporting role as a Russian showgirl Lola, who befriends a young Jewish girl and helps her escape Paris from the invading German army. Blanchett began 2001 in the title role of Gillian Armstrong’s war drama Charlotte Gray. Based on the 1999 novel by Sebastian Faulks, Blanchett plays a young Scottish woman who joins the French Resistance during World War II to rescue her Royal Air Force boyfriend who is missing in action in France. Her next appearance was a extremely well received supporting role in The Shipping News. The film, a romantic drama based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by E. Annie Proulx, saw her playing the role of Petal, a unfaithful and abusive wife who sells her child to a black market adoption agency. This was followed by another starring role in the comedy crime-drama Bandits alongside Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton. She was nominated for several best actress awards, including a Golden Globe, for her performance as Kate a housewife who escapes her failing marriage by going on a bank robbing spree with two escaped prisoners. Her final release of the year saw her playing Galadriel, Elven queen of Lórien, in the first instalment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. The trilogy is based on the three volume book The Lord of the Rings by English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. The multiple Grammy Award winning film became her biggest commercial success at the time, being named second highest grossing film of 2001 at the U.S. box office and earning over $870 million worldwide. Blanchett was named Best Supporting Actress At the 73rd National Board of Review Awards for her roles in The Fellowship of the Ring, The Man Who Cried and The Shipping News. The following year Blanchett reprised her role as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The movie was critically acclaimed, although some criticism was aimed at Jackson for not following the original text closely. It was an enormous box-office success, earning over $900 million worldwide, out-grossing its predecessor, and to date is the 8th highest grossing film of all time. Her only other appearance of the year was in the crime thriller Heaven. Blanchett starred as Philippa, a English teacher living it Turin, Italy, who takes the law into her own hands by trying to kill a drug dealer who supplied her husband with the drugs that killed him. She later falls in love with a member of the Italian police who helps her escape justice for her actions. The movie is in both English and Italian. Blanchett’s first role of 2003 was as the title character in Veronica Guerin directed by Joel Schumacher and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The movie is based on the true story of the Irish investigative journalist Veronica Guerin who exposed some of Ireland’s most dangerous drug lords in 1996. She was given the Best Actress award by Empire, Britain's biggest selling film magazine, for her performance. Later that year she appeared with Tommy Lee Jones in Ron Howard’s western thriller The Missing, based on the novel The Last Ride by Thomas Eidson. The movie is set in 19th-century New Mexico with Blanchett playing the role of Maggie who reconciles with her estranged father(Jones) in order to rescue her own daughter who is kidnapped by Apache Indians to be sold into prostitution south of the border. Her final release of the year was the concluding film in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, The Return of the King. The movie would prove to be the most successful of the trilogy and second highest grossing of all time, behind Titanic, taking over $1.1 billion worldwide. It also won all eleven Academy Awards for which it was nominated, equalling Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most Oscars ever won by a single film. In 2004 Blanchett won her first and to date only Oscar for her performance in The Aviator. Directed by Martin Scorsese the movie is based on the life of American industrialist Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Blanchett stars as the American cinema legend Katharine Hepburn, a one time lover of Hughes. The Aviator was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning five, including Best Supporting Actress for Blanchett. The win meant she was the first person to have won a Academy Award for playing a previous Oscar winning actor or actress. She was also awarded the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Her only other release of 2004 was Wes Anderson's offbeat comedy The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. She was part of a ensemble cast which included Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum. Murray's character, Steve Zissou, is both a parody of and homage to Jacques-Yves Cousteau, with Blanchett playing the role of a news reporter with whom he becomes infatuated with. Her only film role of 2005 was in the well received Australian crime drama Little Fish, alongside Sam Neill and Hugo Weaving. Blanchett plays the lead role of Tracy, a recovering heroin addict who is desperately trying to escape her past. However, her life is thrown into turmoil by her ex-boyfriend, Jonny, who involves her in a drug deal that ends in tragedy. The film won five of the thirteen Australian Film Institute Awards it was nominated for in 2005, including Best Actress for Blanchett.
Her first casting of 2006 was in Babel opposite Brad Pitt. The movie focuses on several interwoven stories taking place in Morocco, Japan, Mexico and the United States. Blanchett and Pitt play a married couple who are on vacation in Morocco when Blanchett is wounded by a gun shot. Because of her injury they are unable to return home to the U.S. where their Mexican maid has illegally taken their two children back to her native country. The film was initially poorly received at the domestic box office but recovered to gross over $110 million worldwide. Her next role was alongside George Clooney and Tobey Maguire, in the feature film adaptation of the 2001 novel, The Good German, by Joseph Kanon. Set in Berlin following the Allied victory over the Nazis, Blanchett stars a Lena, a German Jew who has survived the Holocaust. Her final film of the year was the English drama, Notes on a Scandal, opposite Dame Judi Dench. Based in a London school, Blanchett plays the role of Sheba Hart, a teacher who embarks on an affair with a student, with devastating consequences on her life. The film was met with many positive reviews, especially for the two lead actresses, and was one of the most successful English films of the year. Blanchett received nominations for Best Supporting Actress at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes for her performance, losing out to Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) at both ceremonies. In 2007 Blanchett reprised her role as Elizabeth I of England in the sequel to her 1998 film Elizabeth entitled Elizabeth: the Golden Age. The sequel is again loosely based on historic events throughout the later years of her reign and the build up to the Spanish Armada. The film was praised by the critics but was less successful at the box office compared to its predecessor. Blanchett was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture and a Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film, becoming the first female actor to receive a Academy Award nomination for the reprisal of a previous role. Later that year she was cast as Jude Quinn, one of six incarnations of the iconic American singer songwriter Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There. The film received a generally favourable response for its non traditional narrative technique of following the storylines of the six different Dylan inspired characters, the others being portrayed by Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw. Blanchett won the prestigious Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. Her first movie of 2008 was the eagerly anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth film in the Indiana Jones franchise, created by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. Blanchett plays the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko alongside Harrison Ford, who reprised his role as Indiana Jones for the fourth time. The film received was the second most successful film of 2008, behind The Dark Knight, taking over $785 million worldwide. In December that year, Blanchett appeared alongside Brad Pitt for the second time in David Fincher's fantasy drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, loosely based on the 1921 short story of the same name written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Blanchett plays the role of Daisy a close friend Benjamin Button (Pitt), who has lived his life by aging backwards. The film appeared on many critic’s top ten lists of the best films of 2008 and grossed over $325 million worldwide. Cate Blanchett Filmography 1997 - Oscar and Lucinda - Lucinda Leplastrier 1997 - Thank God He Met Lizzie - Lizzie 1997 - Paradise Road - Susan Macarthy 1998 - Elizabeth - Queen Elizabeth I 1999 - Bangers - Julie-Anne 1999 - The Talented Mr. Ripley - Meredith Logue 1999 - Pushing Tin - Connie Falzone 1999 - An Ideal Husband - Lady Gertrude Chiltern 2000 - The Gift - Annabelle "Annie" Wilson 2000 - The Man Who Cried - Lola 2001 - The Shipping News - Petal Quoyle 2001 - Charlotte Gray - Charlotte Gray 2001 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Galadriel 2001 - Bandits - Kate Wheeler 2002 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - Galadriel 2002 - Heaven - Philippa 2003 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - Galadriel 2003 - The Missing - Magdalena 'Maggie' Gilkeson 2003 - Coffee and Cigarettes - Herself & Shelly 2003 - Veronica Guerin - Veronica Guerin 2004 - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Jane Winslett-Richardson 2004 - The Aviator - Katharine Hepburn 2005 - Little Fish - Tracy Heart 2006 - Babel - Susan Jones 2006 - The Good German - Lena Brandt 2006 - Notes on a Scandal - Sheba Hart 2007 - Hot Fuzz - Janine(Un-Credited Cameo) 2007 - Elizabeth: The Golden Age Queen - Elizabeth I 2007 - I'm Not There - Jude Quinn 2008 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Colonel Dr. Irina Spalko 2008 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Daisy Fuller Button Cate Blanchett Trivia Cate Blanchett Links Ask Men | Babe Invasion | Bestzilla | Celebrity Link | Chickipedia | Free Ones | IMDB |
