Blanchett was born in
Ivanhoe, a
suburb of
Melbourne,
Australia,
the daughter of June, an Australian property developer and teacher,
and Robert "Bob" Blanchett, a
Texas-born
United States Navy
Petty Officer
who met Blanchett's mother while stationed in Melbourne and who
later worked as an advertising executive.[4][5]
When Blanchett was 10, she lost her father to a
heart attack.
She has described herself during childhood as "part extrovert, part
wallflower".[6]
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 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 Arts at the
University of Melbourne
before leaving Australia to travel overseas. 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 losing to an Egyptian in the
film Kaboria, starring the late Egyptian actor
Ahmed 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.[7]
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 mini-series
Heartland
opposite
Ernie Dingo,
the mini-series
Bordertown,
with
Hugo Weaving,
and in an episode of
Police 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.
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 the High Elf Queen
Galadriel in
all three films, which hold the record as the highest grossing film
trilogy of all time.[8]
In 2004, she played a pregnant journalist in the
Wes Anderson
film
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,
yet again earning a nomination for BFCA award for Best Acting
Ensemble.
In 2006, she starred in both
Babel
opposite
Brad Pitt,
and
Notes on a Scandal
playing Sheba Hart opposite
Dame Judi Dench.
Coincidentally, Dench 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. Blanchett received her third Academy Award nomination for
her performance in the film (Dench was also
Oscar
nominated).
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 also reprised her role as Elizabeth I in the sequel to
Elizabeth
entitled
Elizabeth: the Golden Age.[9]
At the
80th Annual Academy Awards
Blanchett received two Academy Award nominations including Best
Actress for Elizabeth: the Golden Age and Best Supporting
Actress for I'm Not There, making Academy Awards history, as
she became the eleventh actor to receive two acting nominations in
the same year and the first female actor to receive another Oscar
nomination for the reprisal of a role.[10]
Blanchett and her husband commenced
three-year contracts as
artistic co-directors
of the
Sydney Theatre Company
in January 2008. Their contracts include a clause that will allow
either of them to take three months out of each year to pursue other
activities. Blanchett made her stage directing debut in 2007 when
she directed the play Blackbird for the Sydney Theatre Company.
On 26 February 2008, she was named as a
member of the panel that will select participants for
Kevin Rudd's
2020 Summit
of the best and brightest Australians. Controversially, Blanchett
was the only woman on the ten-member panel.
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." 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 and on
April 13,
2008, they
welcomed their third son, Ignatius Martin Upton, in
Sydney.
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.[11]
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".[12][13]
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".[14]
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 supported the web-based campaign
whoonearthcares.com
� urging people to express their concerns about climate change in
Australia.
