Cate Blanchett Biography

Actor

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Cate Blanchett is one of the Australia's best-known actors, as well as a five-time Oscar nominee, known especially for playing Queen Elizabeth I. Blanchett grew up in Melbourne, Australia, where she studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art before embarking on a career on stage and screen. Critics first took notice of the willowy actress when she appeared in Oscar and Lucinda (1997), and her lead role in 1998's Elizabeth earned her a Golden Globe award and her first Oscar nomination. She later appeared in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, opposite Matt Damon), Pushing Tin (1999, opposite Billy Bob Thornton) and Bandits (2001, with Thornton and Bruce Willis), and played the mystical Galadriel in Peter Jackson's movie trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Lord of the Rings, beginning in 2001. She won an Oscar as best supporting actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in the 2004 film The Aviator (with Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes), and has since been nominated for Notes on a Scandal (2006), I'm not There (2007, she played Bob Dylan) and, again playing Elizabeth I, Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007, with Clive Owen as adventurous scalawag Sir Walter Raleigh). She has since appeared in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (both 2008).

Extra credit: Blanchett married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. The couple's son Dashiell was born in 2001, a second son, Roman, was born in 2004, and a third son, Ignatius, was born in 2008.

Cate Blanchett appears with Liv Tyler in our loop on The Lord of the Rings.

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