"Do I think Cate Blanchett is the most spectacular creature that ever walked the planet? Yes, I do."
Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett, AC (born 14 May 1969 in Melbourne) is an award-winning Australian-Americannote screen and stage actor, producer and theatre director who burst onto the international stage in 1998 in an Oscar-nominated performance as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth.
Prominent roles of hers since then include the Elven queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies, an interpretation of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, Daisy in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator opposite Leonardo DiCaprio (for which she won her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the only actor in history to win an Oscar for playing another real-life Oscar winner), Sheba Hart in Notes on a Scandal with Judi Dench, the completely awesome Lady Marion Loxley in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Lady Tremaine in the live-action remake of Cinderella, and Jasmine Francis in Blue Jasmine, for which she won her second Academy Award, this time for Best Actress. She also portrayed Hela, the first major female supervillain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in Thor: Ragnarok.
She is mostly well known for her hugely charismatic screen presence, smoky and alluring voice, sharp cheekbones and generally queenly, ethereal nature, as well as her considerable acting talent and ability with accents. The incomparable Meryl Streep has listed her as one of her favorite working actors, and she has been heralded multiple times as "the greatest actress of her generation"note .
She's been married to Australian director/playwright/screenwriter Andrew Upton since 1997, and they have four children.
Notable Roles (in chronological order):
- Paradise Road (1997) as Susan Macarthy
- Elizabeth (1998) as Elizabeth I (Oscar nomination for 'Best Actress')
- The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) as Meredith Logue
- The Gift (2000) as Annabelle 'Annie' Wilson
- Bandits (2001) as Kate Wheeler
- The Lord of the Rings as Galadriel
- The Shipping News (2001) as Petal
- The Missing (2002) as Magdalena 'Maggie' Gilkeson
- Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) as Herself/Shelly
- Veronica Guerin (2003) as Veronica Guerin
- The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) as Jane Winslett-Richardson
- The Aviator (2004) as Katharine Hepburn (Oscar win for 'Best Supporting Actress')
- Babel (2006) as Susan
- The Good German (2006) as Lena Brandt
- Notes on a Scandal (2006) as Sheba Hart (Oscar nomination for 'Best Supporting Actress')
- I'm Not There (2007) as Jude Quinn (Oscar nomination for 'Best Supporting Actress')
- Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) as Elizabeth I (Oscar nomination for 'Best Actress')
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) as Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) as Daisy Fuller
- Robin Hood (2010) as Lady Marion Loxley
- Hanna (2011) as Marissa Wiegler
- The Hobbit as Galadriel
- Blue Jasmine (2013) as Jeanette 'Jasmine' Francis (Oscar win for 'Best Actress')
- The Monuments Men (2014) as Claire Simone
- How to Train Your Dragon Franchise as Valka (Voice)
- Cinderella (2015) as Lady Tremaine
- Carol (2015) as Carol Aird (Oscar nomination for 'Best Actress')
- Truth (2015) as Mary Mapes
- Thor: Ragnarok (2017) as Hela
- Ocean's 8 (2018) as Lou Miller
- The House With a Clock in Its Walls (2018) as Florence Zimmerman
- Mowgli (2018) as Kaa (Voice/Motion Capture)
- Where'd You Go, Bernadette? (2019) as Bernadette Fox
- Mrs. America (2020) as Phyllis Schlafly note
- Don't Look Up (2021) as Brie Evantee
- Nightmare Alley (2021) as Dr. Lilith Ritter
- Tár (2022) as Lydia Tár (Oscar nomination for 'Best Actress')
- The School for Good and Evil (2022) as the Narrator
- Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) as Spazzatura (Voice)
- Borderlands (TBA) as Lilith
Tropes relating to Cate Blanchett:
- Ability over Appearance: In Thor: Ragnarok, Blanchett plays Hela, who is a 7'0" Statuesque Stunner in the comics. However, in Real Life, Blanchett is 5'9", but she was cast as Hela partly because she is talented enough to play the character despite the height difference, and partly because it (understandably) would have been VERY difficult to find a female actor (or human being for that matter) of Hela's height in the comics. Costuming, camera angles and Cate playing the character larger than life made her come off quite a bit taller too. It also helps that by any realistic, reasonable human standard, Blanchett is a Statuesque Stunner anyway, just not as superhumanly tall as the character is supposed to be.
- Acting for Two:
- In Coffee and Cigarettes, she plays herself and her (fictional) cousin Shelly, in conversation with each other.
- In Manifesto she plays thirteen different characters!
- Actor Shipping: Hoo boy, yes. Cate's large lesbian fanbase love shipping her with other female actors that she has noticeable chemistry with. It started with Rooney Mara after Carol, and was then followed by Sandra Bullock (and Sarah Paulson to a lesser extent) after the release of Ocean's 8.
- Awesome, Dear Boy:
- The main reason she played Galadriel? She wanted to have pointy ears.
- She also commented that one of the reasons she signed up to Thor: Ragnarok was to work with director Taika Waititi, of whom she is a big fan.
- The Cameo:
- In Hot Fuzz — not only was Blanchett uncredited, but her character wore a mask and coveralls throughout her screen time.
- She also had a voice only cameo in Eyes Wide Shut as the mysterious masked woman who sacrificed herself to save Tom Cruise's character, a fact that wasn't revealed until nearly twenty years after the film's release.
- Celebrity Voice Actor: As Granmammare in the English language dub of Ponyo, Penelope and Queen Elizabeth II in two separate episodes of Family Guy and Valka in the the second and third installment of the How to Train Your Dragon franchise.
- Dyeing for Your Art:
- She had her head shaved for real in a scene of the movie Heaven where her character did the same.
- She also had her hairline raised and her eyebrows and eyelashes bleached to play Elizabeth I in Elizabeth and its sequel to encapsulate the fashion during the Elizabethan era.
- One of her earliest screen roles was in an Australian series called Bordertown (1995), where she played an albino character whose hair and eyebrows were white as snow. To prepare for a scene where she had to show her privates, Cate tried to bleach her pubic hair to match her white wig
. The bleach, she reports, did not catch.
- Dye Hard: She may well have gone through the entire spectrum of hair colours in her roles. She has joked that she can't even remember what her natural hair colour is.
- Fake American: Many of her roles. Mildly subverted in that she does have American ancestry and holds dual citizenship (her father was from Texas), but was born and raised in Australia so still has to fake the accent.
- Fake Brit: Very often plays English characters and also played the Scottish Charlotte Gray in the film of the same name.
- Fake Irish: When she played the title role in Veronica Guerin.
- Fake Russian: In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Man Who Cried.
- Fake Nationality: In addition to the above, she has also played the French Claire Simone in The Monuments Men and the German Lena Brandt in The Good German (and also the Elvish Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and the Asgardian Hela in Thor: Ragnarok)
- Fan Community Nickname: Her fans commonly refer to themselves as 'Blanchetters'.
- The Fashionista: She is regularly being named in the media as one of the most stylish women in the world in Real Life and is the international brand ambassador for Armani beauty and Sì fragrance, as well as being a noted muse of Giorgio Armani himself. A few of her characters could definitely be called fashionistas too, notably Jasmine French in Blue Jasmine, Lady Tremaine in Cinderella and Lou Miller in Ocean's 8.
- Film Nerds:
- A self-confessed cinephile. She impressed Peter Travers when she listed off films in 2015 (even ones she hadn't appeared in) like a qualified critic, and he joked that she should have been hired instead of him.
- She also loves horror films, and is a fan of the Halloween series.
- Her comfort movie? Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night.
- Guesting on the WTF Podcast by Marc Maron, Cate casually dropped a TC Tuggers reference mid-conversation while talking about Maron's shirt. Who knew Oscar-winning actors watched I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson?
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She has somewhat of a reputation for playing noble, heroic and elegant blonde women. In fact, the only time she has played overtly villainous characters on film, they have either been brunette or red-haired. Subverted big-time in Mrs. America where she plays the blonde nightmare Phyllis Schlafly as well as Nightmare Alley where she plays the blonde manipulative Dr. Lilith Ritter.
- Hide Your Pregnancy: Averted in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou as her character Jane was also pregnant so she had no need to hide her real life pregnancy. Amusingly Cate didn't realise that she was pregnant herself until she was having her prosthetic baby bump modelled and fainted (half-naked) in the studio! Nearly played straight in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but mostly averted as she was only three months pregnant by the end of filming and wasn't yet showing.
- The High Queen: Her roles as Elizabeth I and Galadriel. People tend to see her as this off-screen as well (her fans affectionately refer to her as "Queen Cate" and "Cate The Great") despite her many and varied roles and tendency to drop F-bombs in interviews.
- Hollywood Hype Machine: It got behind her big time after Elizabeth. Now nearly twenty years later, she's a two-time Oscar winner, top Box Office draw and widely one of the most respected actors in the world.
- Knight Fever: She was made a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 2017.
- Large Ham: Gleefully so, when the role calls for it. When she gets hungry for scenery, look out.
- LGBT Fanbase:
- Due to portraying a lesbian in the incredibly popular lesbian romance Carol, along with her tendency to often portray very powerful, assertive, badass female characters and also often wear suits or other androgynous clothing in Real Life, she has amassed an increasingly huge lesbian fanbase, to the extent that she's often referred to as being 'Queen of the Lesbians' or 'Queen of the Gays' on social media.
- Her role as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There created rather a few drag-king fetishes.
- Said lesbian fanbase then reached peak levels after the release of Ocean's 8, helped by the fact that her character is notoriously Ambiguously Gay (or not so ambiguously gay depending on who you ask), not to mention that she has scorching chemistry with co-star Sandra Bullock.
- Long Hair Is Feminine: Although she normally wears her hair just below her shoulders or shorter, three of her most famous roles (Galadriel, Queen Elizabeth, and Lady Marion Loxley) also have her with hair worn well past her waist. Interestingly, she is a blonde as Galadriel, a brunette as Marion and a redhead as Elizabeth.
- Memetic Mutation:
- All will love her and despair!
- Also, the 'Get You a Girl Who Can Do Both' thing really took off on social media when the Thor: Ragnarok teaser trailer was released, often referenced as Hela being the result of Galadriel if she wore the ring.
- When Cate snapped at the E! Entertainment camera for panning up and down her dress in 2014, often referenced by when she said, "Do you do that to the guys?"
- Ms. Fanservice: Usually averted. As beautiful as she is, she rarely does nude or particularly revealing scenes, but...
- Played straight in The Man Who Cried where she plays a beautiful Russian dancer and spends a lot of her scenes in various showgirl-style midriff and leg-revealing outfits as well as incredibly form-fitting evening gowns.
- Also played straight in Thor: Ragnarok wherein she spends the entire movie wearing an outfit so tight that it leaves very little to the imagination and may as well be painted on her body.
- Generally played straight in a nontraditional fashion in the more 'glamorous and queenly' way.
- Oscar Bait: One of the most awards-laden living film actors, she has eight Oscar nominations and two wins to date.
- Playing Against Type:
- She plays the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella, quite a different turn from her heroic leading lady roles. Cate commented on people's reactions when she said she'd be in Cinderella — most of them looking at her curiously, assuming she meant she'd be Ella herself.
- As the ruthless and destructive Big Bad Hela in Thor: Ragnarok.
- Pretty in Mink: She's played several glamorous ladies who've worn luxurious furs, from the ermine cape in Elizabeth to the mink coats in The Aviator and Carol.
- Promoted Fanboy:
- During press interviews for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull she admitted to being a huge fan of the Indiana Jones movies since she was a child and wanting to be Indiana Jones when she grew up. You can imagine how thrilled she was to get a phone call from Steven Spielberg asking her to be in the new movie, and then also subsequently receiving the script to find that they wanted her to play the the villain rather than the love interest.
- She was also a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings books before playing Galadriel, and had the pointy elf ears bronzed after filming was over.
- Protagonist Title: She has starred in a fairly unusually high number of films where her character is (or is one of) the central protagonist(s) and the character's name is also in the title of the film. From earliest to most recent: Oscar and Lucinda, Elizabeth, Charlotte Gray, Veronica Guerin, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Blue Jasmine, Carol, Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Tár.
- Shakespearian Actor: Not with the RSC but she has the classical background training at Australia's NIDA (National Institute for Dramatic Art) and, yes, did Shakespeare, including Miranda (The Tempest) and Ophelia (Hamlet) and of course, she also possesses those "redoubtable acting skills".
- So My Kids Can Watch: This is Cate's reason for accepting a voice role in How to Train Your Dragon 2 (as her kids loved the first film) and also one of her reasons for joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. Her oldest son actually talked her into the latter role by arguing that it would make sense from a career standpoint to pick a franchise as her first movie back after taking a year’s long maternity leave to adopt her daughter.
- Spirited Young Lady: Cate played this type of role a lot in her earlier career, Lucinda Leplastrier in Oscar and Lucinda, Elizabeth I in Elizabeth, the title character in Charlotte Gray, her interpretation of Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator and Daisy Fuller in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button being notable examples.
- Star-Making Role: She was virtually unknown outside of Australia before her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth, which automatically made her one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood and led to her first Oscar nomination.
- Statuesque Stunner: She is 5'9 and towers over many of her co-stars, especially when she is wearing heels. She is also famous for playing Galadriel, one of the most famous Statuesque Stunners in the literary genre.
- Those Two Actors:
- She co-starred with Brad Pitt in Babel and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
- She has been acting with good friend Hugo Weaving for many years on the stage and has also co-starred with him in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies as well as the Australian drama, Little Fish.
- Same with fellow Aussie, Richard Roxburgh, who she has a very long theatre history with from her time at NIDA right up to the present day and who she also co-starred with in an early film on her résumé, Thank God He Met Lizzie.
- She also co-starred with George Clooney in both The Good German and The Monuments Men.
- And Matt Damon in both The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Monuments Men.
- Also with Sarah Paulson in Ocean's 8, Carol and Mrs. America.
- She co-starred with Rooney Mara in both Carol and Nightmare Alley.
- Uncredited Role: She has had brief uncredited cameos in both Hot Fuzz and Eyes Wide Shut, the latter being voice only.
- Villainous Cheekbones: Of the "you could cut glass on" kind. Hers tend to come in handy for her villain roles.
- What Could Have Been:
- She was considered for the role of Clarice Starling in Hannibal, which eventually went to Julianne Moore.
- She was offered the role of Anna in Mike Nichol's Closer but had to pull out due to her pregnancy with her second son and was eventually replaced by Julia Roberts.
- She was also considered for the role of Jane Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) which ended up going to Angelina Jolie - she would however eventually end up starring with Brad Pitt in both Babel and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
- She was Steven Spielberg's first choice to play Agatha in Minority Report but the role ended up going to Samantha Morton due to numerous scheduling conflicts.
- She and Brad Pitt were to star together a third time in The Fountain. But when funding fell through, the project was shelved and both of them dropped out. It was eventually made on a much smaller budget with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Had Cate starred in it, she would have added another Queen to her list - Queen Isabella of Spain (a fictional version of her anyway). Hilariously Rachel was set to play Daisy in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button before dropping out.
