Cate Blanchett



Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett ( /ˈblɑːntʃ[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key . ]ət/ ; born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actress, whose work has earned several accolades, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, twoScreen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, and an Academy Award.

She came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 film Elizabeth, for which she won British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and Golden Globeawards, and earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Blanchett appeared as the elf lady Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy from 2001 to 2003. In 2004, Blanchett's portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator brought her numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Blanchett's other films include Babel (2006), Notes on a Scandal (2006), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Blanchett collaborated with director Peter Jackson again for what is to be The Hobbit trilogy (2012-2014).

Early life and education
Blanchett was born in Melbourne, Victoria in the suburb of Ivanhoe. Her mother, June (née Gamble), was an Australian property developer and teacher, and her father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., was a Texas native who was a US Navy Petty Officer and later worked as an advertising executive. The two met while Blanchett's father's ship, USS Arneb, was in Melbourne. When Blanchett was ten, she lost her father to a heart attack. She has two siblings; her older brother, Bob, is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister, Genevieve, worked as a theatrical designer and received her Bachelor of Design in Architecture in April 2008.

Blanchett has described herself as being "part extrovert, part wallflower" during childhood. She attended a primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School. For her secondary education, she attended Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies' College, from which she graduated, where she explored her passion for acting. She studied economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel overseas.

When she was eighteen, Blanchett went on a holiday to Egypt. A fellow guest at a hotel in Cairo asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, and the next day she found herself in a crowd scene cheering for an American boxer losing to an Egyptian in the film Kaboria, starring the Egyptian actor Ahmed Zaki. Blanchett returned to Australia and later moved to Sydney, New South Wales to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1992 and beginning her career in the theatre.

Personal life
Blanchett at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2005.Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 on the set of a TV show. They were married on 29 December 1997 and have three sons: Dashiell John (born 3 December 2001), Roman Robert (born 23 April 2004), and Ignatius Martin (born 13 April 2008).

 After making Brighton, England, their main family home for much of the early 2000s, she and her husband returned to their native Australia. In November 2006, Blanchett stated that this was due to a desire to decide on a permanent home for her children, and to be closer to her family as well as a sense of belonging to the Australian (theatrical) community. She and her family live in Bulwarra, an 1877 sandstone mansion once owned by Halse Rogers Arnott, in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill. It was purchased for A$10.2 million in 2004 and underwent extensive renovations in 2007 in order to be made more "eco-friendly".

In 2006, a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist in the Archibald Prize.

Blanchett is a Patron of the Sydney Film Festival. She works as the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. In 2007, Blanchett became the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation's online campaign – trying to persuade Australians to express their concerns about climate change. She is also the Patron of the development charitySolarAid. Opening the 2008 9th World Congress of Metropolis in Sydney, Blanchett said: "The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different."

In early 2009, Blanchett appeared in a series of special edition postage stamps called "Australian Legends of the Screen", featuring Australian actors acknowledged for the "outstanding contribution they have made to Australian entertainment and culture". She, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, and Nicole Kidman each appear twice in the series: once as themselves and once in character; Blanchett is depicted in character from Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">At the beginning of 2011, Blanchett lent her support for a Carbon Tax. She received some criticism for this, especially from conservatives.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Blanchett and her husband are currently artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. She has recently announced the 2013 season at the Sydney Theatre Company will be her final as artistic director.