Cate Blanchett

BY: Howard Karren

Tall (five-foot-eight) and statuesque, Cate Blanchett has a bold, intense presence that radiates power, even when she purrs with desire or breaks down emotionally. This is no ordinary blonde—and, in fact, it’s not clear whether she’s a blonde at all. When asked, she quipped, “Look, it’s one of the great mysteries of the world. I cannot answer that question. I think I’m vaguely blonde. To be perfectly frank, I don’t know.”

Some things we do know. She was born in Melbourne, Australia, 47 years ago, to an Australian mom and an American dad (who died when she was ten). She graduated from Australia’s prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992, and before long was working on the stage and screen. A starring role in Gillian Armstrong’s Oscar and Lucinda (1997), opposite Ralph Fiennes, led to Elizabeth (1998), in which she played England’s indomitable Elizabeth I and earned an Academy Award nomination, her first of seven.

 

For New Zealander Peter Jackson—and to the delight of millions of fans—she took on the role of Galadriel, J.R.R. Tolkien’s stately elf, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and three Hobbit films. Blanchett is not one to be intimidated by fantasy or history, and has made something a career out of anything-but-demure supporting roles: impersonating Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004), opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes, for which she took home her first Oscar; as the sexually compromised teacher in Notes on a Scandal (2006), Oscar-nominated; and playing a version of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There (2007), for yet another Oscar nod, the same year as she was up for Best Actress for the sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age. She was a hoot as the the villainous KGB agent, Col. Dr. Irina Spalko, in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, reportedly Spielberg’s favorite heavy from the series, and played opposite Brad Pitt in Babel and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Having married playwright Andrew Upton in 1997—they have four children; three sons and an adopted American girl—Blanchett has devoted a large part of her career to the theater. She and her husband shared the title of artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company from 2008–13, and its production of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which she played Blanche du Bois, toured the U.S. and won raves. “Blanchett, with her alert mind, her informed heart, and her lithe, patrician silhouette, gets it right from the first beat,” wrote John Lahr in The New Yorker. “I don’t expect to see a better performance of this role in my lifetime.” Fellow Oscar hog Meryl Streep concurred: “That performance was as naked, as raw and extraordinary and astonishing and surprising and scary as anything I’ve ever seen… I thought I’d seen that play, I thought I knew all the lines by heart, because I’ve seen it so many times, but I’d never seen the play until I saw that performance.” High praise, indeed.

There are certainly elements of Blanche du Bois in the role of Jasmine, the fallen and broken wife of a financial fraud (à la Bernie Madoff) in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013), for which Blanchett took home a Best Actress Academy Award. In 2015, Blanchett and her family moved from Australia to the U.S.—she has dual citizenship, due to her American dad—and she won her most recent Oscar nomination for Todd Haynes’s Carol, playing a 1950s divorcée who has a doomed yet exquisite lesbian affair with a salesgirl (Rooney Mara).

Blanchett will be in Terrence Malick’s Weightless some time this year; she has a new Thor movie, with Aussie Chris Hemsworth, lined up in 2017, and the prospect of a Lucille Ball biopic, written by Aaron Sorkin and produced by Ball’s kids, sometime in the future. She is as ambitious as ever as she approaches 50. “Of course one worries about getting older—we’re all fearful of death,” she says. “I’m simply not panicking as my laugh lines grow deeper. Who wants a face with no history, no sense of humor?”