Cate Blanchett was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on May 14, 1969, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., a Texas-born American advertising executive. She has a younger sister and an elder brother. Her 40-year-old father died suddenly of a heart attack when she was 10 years old. Her mother never married again, and her grandma took up residence to assist her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and earned both critical and popular acclaim in less than a year. After graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls" and subsequently starred as Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances," for which she won the 1993 Sydney Theatre Critics Circle Newcomer Award. Blanchett next took on the part of Carol in David Mamet's scathing polemic "Oleanna," again for the Sydney Theatre Company, for which she received her second Rosemont Best Actress Award that year. She next co-starred in ABC Television's prime-time drama Heartland (1994), which garnered critical praise once again. In 1995, she received a Tony Award nomination for her performance as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet." Other theatrical credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe," Miranda in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's "The Tempest," and Rose in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's "The Blind Giant is Dancing." Blanchett's previous television appearances include Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), Janie Morris in G.P. (1989), and the famous ABC series Police Rescue (1994). In Paradise Road, she made her feature film debut (1997).
In 1997, Cate married writer Andrew Upton. She met him a year previously on a film shoot, and they first disliked one other. He perceived her to be distant, and she perceived him to be arrogant, but they bonded during a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later, he proposed marriage, and they were married soon before she moved to England to play her breakout part in film, Elizabeth (1998), for which she received multiple prizes, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the film, but lost to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a very busy year for him, with leading appearances in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001), and the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy as Elf Queen Galadriel. In 2001, she also gave birth to her first child, a boy named Dashiell. She gave birth to her second son, Roman, in 2004.
Additionally, she portrayed Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's 2004 film "Aviator," for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Notes on a Scandal" as a teacher who has an affair with an underage pupil (2006). She returned to the role that launched her career in 2007 with "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" (2007). This performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. That same year, she was nominated for another Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There" (2007). She gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius, in 2008. She and her husband became creative directors of the Sydney Theatre Company in order to spend more time with their three boys in Australia. Additionally, she acquired a multimillion-dollar mansion in Sydney, Australia, renamed it Bulwarra, and renovated it extensively. Due to her relocation to Australia, her film employment dwindled until Woody Allen placed her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), for which she received the Academy Award for Best Actress. She resigned as creative director of the Sydney Theatre Company, although her husband remained for two further years before resigning as well.
She adopted her daughter Edith in 2015 in her father's native country of the United States. That same year, she and her husband successfully sold their multimillion-dollar property in Australia and relocated to the United States. The reasons ranged from her desire to work more in America to her desire to get acquainted with her late father's American ancestry. She got an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife who engages in a lesbian romance with a younger woman. While most actresses would slow down in their forties, Blanchett continued to push her boundaries, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then made her Broadway debut in 2017 with "The Present," her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's "Platonov," for which she received a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Play. Additionally, in 2017, she was appointed to Australia's highest award, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).
Family
Spouse Andrew Upton
Children Upton, Edith Vivian Patricia
Upton, Roman Robert
Upton, Dashiell John
Upton, Ignatius Martin
Parents Gamble, June DeWitt Blanchett Jr., Robert
Blanchett, Genevieve (sibling)
Salary (3)
(2005) $750,000
(2010) $10,000,000
(2011) $7,000,000