Cate Blanchett

Catherine Elise Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969, in Melbourne, Australia. With an Aussie mother and a Texan father, she was exposed to a range of cultures. When Cate was merely 10 years old, her father passed away, leaving her mother to take care of not only Cate, but also a younger sister and older brother. Her first taste of acting came when she joined a drama group at her Methodist College, playing small roles in small time plays. At the University of Melbourne, Blanchett began studying art history before she decided to continue her education abroad. After spending some time in England, she did some traveling in Egypt, where she was asked to be an extra in a boxing movie being shot nearby. Blanchett maintained a busy schedule after the Newell project, appearing in a plethora films throughout the early 2000s. She joined Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci with her role as a kindhearted albeit materialistic showgirl in The Man Who Cried, then starred as a fortune-teller who holds the key to a mysterious murder in director Sam Raimi's The Gift, an unwitting accomplice in the crime comedy Bandits, a British schoolteacher in Tom Tykwer's Kieslowski update Heaven, and Galadriel, Queen of Lothlórien, in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Blanchett also appeared in 2001's The Shipping News (as Petal) and director Gillian Armstrong's Charlotte Gray as the title character. That same year, she gave birth to her first son, Dashiell John.

Blanchett appeared as ill-fated Irish journalist Veronica Guerin in director Joel Schumacher and producer Jerry Bruckheimer's eponymously titled 2003 biopic. The film split critics in half and died a quick death in cinemas during its late-autumn run, but those reviewers who did respond favorably again singled out the actress' stunning interpretation of the role. The following year, Blanchett appeared in Wes Anderson's quirky film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou alongside Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. Blanchett wore a prosthetic belly in the film for her role as a seven-months-pregnant journalist and, interestingly enough, she later found that she was actually pregnant during filming. She gave birth to her second son, Roman Robert, later that same year. First, however, she effortlessly lit up the screen with a performance as film legend Katharine Hepburn in director Martin Scorsese's lavish Howard Hughes epic The Aviator. If The Aviator's Best Picture loss to Million Dollar Baby proved somewhat disappointing to Scorsese fans when the Oscars were handed out, Blanchett landed her greatest triumph that evening: she won the Best Supporting Actress award for her turn as Hepburn.

Perhaps despairing of the paucity of solid scripts in Hollywood, Blanchett went global after the Scorsese affair. She returned to her native Australia for a low-key follow-up, Rowan Woods' harrowing and skillful Little Fish (2005). 2006's multi-national production Babel, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, won the Best Director Award at Cannes; one of the narrative strands in its array of subplots featured Blanchett and Brad Pitt as husband and wife, grieving over the death of a child, and thrust into a desperate situation. Babel turned out to be a major critical success, as did another film Blanchett appeared in that same year, Notes on a Scandal. In the film, Blanchett played a mother and schoolteacher who becomes deeply embroiled in a maze of power and deception when she betrays her job and family by carrying on an affair with a student. The tautly suspenseful and intimate film also starred Judi Dench, who played Blanchett's friend and confidant who soon becomes a source of emotional blackmail. The actresses were each praised for their performances, and each received both Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for their work in the film.

Blanchett went on to play Lena Brandt in The Good German, Steven Soderbergh and Paul Attanasio's tale of a man (George Clooney) searching for his former mistress (Blanchett) in post-WWII Berlin.

2007 found the revered actress double nominated at the Oscars. She snagged a Best Supporting Actress nod for her work as the Don't Look Back era Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There - the eccentric bio of the pop singer co-starred Richard Gere, Julianne Moore, Adrien Brody, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with various performers playing the musician in different sequences. She also made the final five in the Best Actress category for reprising her role as one of England's most celebrated monarchs in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur's sequel to his 1998 arthouse hit Elizabeth, a film that earned Blanchett her first Academy nomination in the same category.

Blanchett also agreed to join the cast of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, scheduled for release in 2008. The David Fincher-directed fantasy was adapted by Eric Roth from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who begins to age backwards.