Catherine Élise Blanchett ( BLAN-chit; born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actor and producer. Regarded as one of the best performers of her generation, she is recognised for her versatile work across stage and screen, including independent films and blockbusters. She has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Actor Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and four Golden Globes, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award and a Tony Award.
A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Blanchett began her career on the Australian stage in 1992 and made her feature film debut in 1997. She came to international prominence for her performance as Queen Elizabeth I in the period drama Elizabeth (1998), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in the biopic The Aviator (2004), and Best Actress for playing a neurotic former socialite in the comedy-drama Blue Jasmine (2013). Her other Oscar-nominated roles were in Notes on a Scandal (2006), I'm Not There (2007), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Carol (2015), and Tár (2022), making her the most-nominated Australian. Her biggest commercial successes include The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), its prequel The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Cinderella (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Don't Look Up (2021).
Blanchett has performed in over twenty stage productions. She and her husband, Andrew Upton, were the artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company from 2008 to 2013. Some of her stage roles during this period were in revivals of A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya, Big and Little and The Maids. She made her Broadway debut in 2017 in The Present, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She portrayed Phyllis Schlafly in the FX on Hulu miniseries Mrs. America (2020) and a journalist in the Apple TV+ miniseries Disclaimer (2024), both of which earned her nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
Blanchett is the recipient of several honorary awards. The Australian government awarded her the Centenary Medal in 2001, and she was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2017. In 2012, she was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. Blanchett was honoured by the Museum of Modern Art and received the British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015. Time named her one of its 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. In 2018, she was ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses. She also received honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of New South Wales, University of Sydney and Macquarie University.
Early life and education
Catherine Élise Blanchett was born on 14 May 1969 in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe. Her Australian mother, June (née Gamble), was a property developer and teacher; and her American father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett Jr., a Texan native, was a United States Navy chief petty officer who became an advertising executive. They had met when Robert's ship broke down in Melbourne. Blanchett is the middle child of three, with an older brother and younger sister. Her ancestry includes English, some Scottish, and remote French roots. Her father died of a heart attack when she was ten, leaving her mother to raise the family.
Blanchett has described herself as a "part extrovert, part wallflower" child. During her teenage years she had a penchant for dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, and went through goth and punk phases, at one point shaving her head alongside her close friend Imogen Temm. She attended primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School; for her secondary education, she attended Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies' College, where she explored her passion for the performing arts. From her late teens to early twenties, she worked at a nursing home in Victoria. After high school, she began a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne, where her studies included Fine Arts and Economics and she involved herself in student theatre. After completing the first year of her degree, she decided to pause her studies and travel the world for a year. While staying in Egypt and short on money, a chance meeting with someone in the film industry led her to being cast as an extra as an American cheerleader in the Egyptian boxing film Kaboria (1990). On her return to Australia, she moved to Sydney and enrolled at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
Career
1992–2000: Early work and international breakthrough
Blanchett's first stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1992 David Mamet play Oleanna for the Sydney Theatre Company. That year, she was also cast as Clytemnestra in a production of Sophocles' Electra. A couple of weeks after rehearsals, the actress playing the title role pulled out, and director Lindy Davies cast Blanchett in the role. Her performance as Electra became one of her most acclaimed at NIDA. In 1993, Blanchett was awarded the Sydney Theatre Critics' Best Newcomer Award for her performance in Timothy Daly's Kafka Dances and won Best Actress for her performance in Mamet's Oleanna, making her the first actor to win both categories in the same year. Blanchett played the role of Ophelia in a 1994–1995 Company B production of Hamlet directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh, and was nominated for a Green Room Award.
Blanchett's first screen appearance was in the 1994 TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, and she went on to appear in the miniseries Bordertown (1995) with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled "The Loaded Boy". She also appeared in the 50-minute drama short film Parklands (1996), which received an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Blanchett made her feature film debut with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II, in Bruce Beresford's film Paradise Road (1997), which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. The film made just over $2 million at the box office on a budget of $19 million and received mixed reviews from critics. Her first leading role came later that year as eccentric heiress Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong's romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda (1997), opposite Ralph Fiennes. Blanchett received wide acclaim for her performance, with Emanuel Levy of Variety declaring, "luminous newcomer Blanchett, in a role originally intended for Judy Davis, is bound to become a major star". She earned her first AFI Award nomination as Best Leading Actress for Oscar and Lucinda. She won the AFI Best Supporting Actress Award in the same year for her starring role as Lizzie in the romantic comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997), co-starring Richard Roxburgh and Frances O'Connor.
Blanchett played a young Elizabeth I in the historical drama Elizabeth (1998), directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film catapulted her to international prominence, winning her the Golden Globe Award and British Academy Award (BAFTA), and her first Actor Award and Academy Award nominations. In his review for Variety, critic David Rooney wrote of her performance, "Blanchett conveys with grace, poise and intelligence that Elizabeth was a wily, decisive, advanced thinker, far too aware of her own exceptional nature to bow to any man. [She] builds the juicy character almost imperceptibly from a smart but wary young woman who may be in over her head into a powerful creature of her own invention." Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Blanchett's performance "brings spirit…