Oscar Profile #308: Cate Blanchett

Born May 14, 1969 in Ivanhoe, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne, Catherine Elise (Cate) Blanchett was the middle child of a property director/teacher Australian mother and an advertising executive Texas-born father. Her father died when she ten, leaving her mother to raise the family with the help of her grandmother.

Blanchett graduated from Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Arts in 1992 and immediately obtained a major stage role in Sydney opposite Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet’s Oleanna, winning awards for that and Sophocles’ Electra later that year. Frequently seen on Australian TV from 1993 on, she made her film debut in 1995’s Paradise Road. Her first major lead role came just two years later in 1997’s Oscar and Lucinda opposite Ralph Fiennes. She received her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Britain’s Elizabeth I in the following year’s Elizabeth.

Married to Australian stage director Andrew Upton since 1997, the couple made their main home in Britain for ten years, returning to Australia in 2006 and relocating to the U.S. in 2015 with their four children. In the interim she had alternated stage work in Australia and the U.S. with screen roles both large and small in such films as An Ideal Husband, The Talented Mr. Ripley, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Charlotte Gray, The Shipping News, Heaven, Veronica Geurin, The Missing, The Aviator, Babel, The Good German and Notes on a Scandal all in her first ten years on the screen. 2004’s The Aviator would bring her a second Oscar nomination and her first win, and 2006’s Notes on a Scandal would bring her a third nomination.

Blanchett began her second decade on screen with a rare two acting Oscar nominations in one year, garnering a Best Actress nod for Elizabeth: The Golden Age for which she became the first woman nominated for playing the same character twice and a Best Supporting Actress nod for I’m Not There becoming the second woman nominated for playing a man (Bob Dylan) behind Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously. It was also the first time a double acting nominee was nominated for playing two real-life characters in the same year.

The remainder of her second decade saw Blanchett continue her practice of alternating starring roles with major supporting ones. Her leading roles included those in the 2008 Oscar nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button opposite Brad Pitt, the title socialite in Blue Jasmine for which she received her sixth Oscar nomination and second win, and the title role in Carol for which she received her seventh nomination.

It’s hard to believe with Carol still fresh in audiences’ minds, but Blanchett has since made ten more films, six of which are in post-production including yet another version of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, this one a live-action version due to be released in 2018.
Cate Blanchett continues to be one of the movies’ most fascinating performers as she approaches her third decade in film at the age of 46.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

VERONICA GUERIN, directed by Joel Schumacher (1947)

Ever since she lost the Oscar for her portrayal of Britain’s Elizabeth I in 1998’s Elizabeth to Gwyneth Paltrow in the Elizabethan Shakespeare in Love, Blanchett’s fans hoped in vain she would have another shot at the gold statuette. That wouldn’t happen for another year, but did receive a Golden Globe nomination for her intense portrayal of the Irish reporter who risked her life to expose drug-trafficking in Dublin. She pulls out all the stops in this one as a wife, daughter and mother who not only puts her own life in jeopardy, but those of her family members as well. It’s a riveting tour-de-force from beginning to end.

THE AVIATOR, directed by Martin Scorsese (2004)

Blanchett finally received her second Oscar nomination six years after her first which would be her first in a supporting role and her first win, for playing Katharine Hepburn opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in Scorsese’s well-received film about the tycoon. While Blanchett’s take on Hepburn is an interesting one, it only scratches the surface. She is basically playing Hepburn as her character from Bringing Up Baby as opposed to giving us an overall portrait of the legendary actress. She was more fascinating, I thought, as Judi Dench’s victim in Notes on a Scandal for which she was nominated two years later.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, directed by David Fincher (2008)

Blanchett received a Broadcast Film Critics’ nomination, but sadly no Oscar nomination, for her splendid portrayal of Brad Pitt’s lifelong friend in this unusual science-fiction film which is told through her eyes as her daughter reads the dying woman’s diary. Pitt and Blanchett’s characters had first met when she was a little girl and he was an old man. As her life moved forward in the normal manner and his moved backwards as he aged in reverse, their characters reached the same age at 40. The film had been nominated for 13 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor and Supporting Actress (Taraji P. Henson), winning 3.

BLUE JASMINE, directed by Woody Allen (2013)

Blanchett received her second Oscar for her portrayal of the entitled socialite who falls on hard times after her disgraced husband commits suicide in prison in Woody Allen’s fictionalized take on the Bernie Madoff scandal. Structured to resemble Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanchett a la Blanche DuBois comes to San Francisco as opposed to New Orleans to move in with her sister (Sally Hawkins) and the sister’s brute of a husband. While the film is good, it is no classic, certainly not one approaching the greatness of Streetcar, but Blanchett is superb throughout.

CAROL, directed by Todd Haynes (2015)

Haynes’ film, based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Price of Salt, provided Blanchett with her most exquisite characterization to date. Set in New York and New Jersey in the early 1950s, Blanchett’s Carol is an unhappily married woman with a child who is attracted to a young shop-girl (Rooney Mara) and vice versa. Their brief romance leads to the breakup of her marriage to vindictive Kyle Chandler. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards including one each for Blanchett, her sixth, and Mara, her second, but came away empty-handed. Had Blanchett not already been a double winner, she may well have won for this.