Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett started out on the Australian stage. Born in Melbourne in 1969, she left her university degree to enrol at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney and graduated in 1992. That year she played opposite Geoffrey Rush in David Mamet’s Oleanna for the Sydney Theatre Company.

Film audiences discovered her in 1998 with Elizabeth, in which she plays Queen Elizabeth I. Six years later Martin Scorsese cast her as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, and she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for playing an actress who had won four herself. Her second Oscar came for Blue Jasmine (2013). In between, she was Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings.

She never left the theatre. From 2008 to 2013 she and her husband, Andrew Upton, ran the Sydney Theatre Company, and she appeared in revivals of A Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya and The Maids. In 2017 she made her Broadway debut in The Present, Upton’s version of Chekhov’s Platonov, and was nominated for a Tony.

Start with Tár (2022), where she plays Lydia Tár, a celebrated conductor invented for the film. The role won her a second Volpi Cup at Venice.