Cate Expectations
We take a look back over the career of the star tipped to win the Best Actress gong at next week’s BAFTAS… By Niamh Mceneaney
Cate Blanchett is easily one of the most critically-acclaimed actresses in the world. She is also one of the most decorated for her efforts — with two Oscars, four Golden Globes and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. She also has three BAFTAS under her belt, and odds are, she is about to claim another one next week for her performance in the 2022 movie Tár in which she plays Lydia Tár, a fictional renowned conductor who is days away from recording the symphony that will elevate her career.
The film charts her downfall as all elements seem to conspire against her. Blanchett has already won a Golden Globe for the performance which has been described as“astonishing”and her“greatest yet”and this will come as welcome news to Tár director Todd Field who went above and beyond (including a near-death experience) to cast the Australian actress in his leading role.
The Oscar-nominated filmmaker, speaking tovariety in a joint interview with Blanchett, said he was chatting with her agent Hylda Queally in September 2020 when he crashed his car.
He said that prior to the accident, Queally had informed him that Blanchett was committed to other projects over the next three years. Field said,“i think because Hylda felt sad for me doing that, she agreed that if I wasn’t in too bad a physical condition, I could get home and send her the script, and she would read it.”
Blanchett added,“i read scripts very, very slowly, but this one I read incredibly quickly. I knew from the getgo that it was about really big things — metaphysical, existential things that I was interested in — so I read it very quickly and said yes immediately.”
And in April 2021, it was announced that Blanchett would star in and executive-produce the film. In a statement accompanying the teaser trailer in August 2022, Field said he wrote the script specifically for Blanchett, and that if she had said no, “(it) would have never seen the light of day”.
Blanchett made her feature film debut in 1997 with a supporting role as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II, in Bruce Beresford’s film Paradise Road, which co-starred Glenn Close and Frances Mcdormand.
Her first leading role came later that year as eccentric heiress Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrong’s romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda, opposite Ralph Fiennes.
Blanchett received wide acclaim for her performance,variety declaring, “luminous newcomer Blanchett, in a role originally intended for Judy Davis, is bound to become a major star”. They weren’t wrong.
Blanchett’s first highprofile international role was a young Elizabeth I in the critically-acclaimed historical drama Elizabeth (1998), directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film catapulted her to international prominence and her performance garnered wide recognition, earning her the Golden Globe Award and BAFTA, and her first SAG and Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
The following year, Blanchett appeared in Bangers (1999), an Australian short film and part of
Stories Of Lost Souls, a compilation of thematically-related short stories. The short was written and directed by her husband, Andrew Upton, and produced by the pair.
That year, she also appeared in the critically-acclaimed The Talented Mr. Ripley. She received her second BAFTA nomination for her performance as Meredith Logue in the movie which also starred Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
In 2001, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson’s Academy Award-winning blockbuster trilogy, The Lord Of The Rings, playing the role of elf leader Galadriel in all three films.
That year also saw the actress diversify her portfolio with a range of roles in the dramas Charlotte Gray, The Shipping News and crime-comedy Bandits, for which she earned a second Golden Globe and SAG Award nomination.
In 2003, she took on the biographical role of slain journalistveronica Guerin, which earned her a Golden Globe Best Actress Drama nomination.
In 2005, Blanchett won her first
“I read scripts very slowly but I read this incredibly quickly.”
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her highly-acclaimed portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator.
During her preparation for the role, and at the request of the director, Blanchett reviewed 35-millimeter prints of all of Hepburn’s first 15 screen performances to study and memorise her poise, mannerisms and speech pattern.
In 2006, she starred opposite Brad Pitt as one half of a grieving couple who get caught up in an international incident in Morocco in Babel. The movie received seven Academy Award nominations.
That same year, she also co-starred in the Steven Soderbergh-directed World War Ii-set drama The Good German with George Clooney, and the acclaimed psychological thriller Notes On A Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench. Blanchett received a third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the latter film.
In 2007, she was named one of
Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People In The World, and she reprised her role as Queen Elizabeth I in the 2007 sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age directed by Shekhar Kapur.
She also portrayed Jude Quinn, one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ experimental film I’m Not There, for which she won thevolpi Cup Best Actress Award at thevenice Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.
And At the 80th Academy Awards, Blanchett received two nominations — Best Actress for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Best Supporting Actress for I’m Not There — making her the first actress to receive a second nomination with the reprisal of a role.
Blanchett next appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008), as the villainous KGB agent Col. Dr. Irina Spalko, Spielberg’s favourite villain from the entire series. And she also appeared in David Fincher’s Oscarnominated The Curious Case
Of Benjamin
Button, co-starring with Brad Pitt for a second time, playing the title character’s love interest, Daisy Fuller. In 2010, Blanchett starred as Lady Marion opposite Russell Crowe’s titular hero in Ridley Scott’s epic Robin Hood and in 2011, she played the antagonist CIA agent Marissa Wiegler in Joe Wright’s action thriller film Hanna, co-starring with Saoirse Ronan and Eric Bana.
In 2013, she played Jasmine Francis, the lead role in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, co-starring
Alec Baldwin and
Sally Hawkins. Her performance garnered widespread acclaim, with some critics considering it to be the finest of her career to that point.
It won her more than 40 industry and critics’ awards including a SAG Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA, and the Academy Award for Best Actress. Blanchett’s win made her just the sixth actress to win an Oscar in both of the acting categories, the third to win Best Actress after Best Supporting Actress, and the first Australian to win more than one acting Oscar.
In 2014, Blanchett co-starred with Matt Damon and George Clooney in the latter’s ensemble film, The Monuments Men and also voiced the part ofvalka in the Dreamworks Animation film How to Trainyour Dragon 2.
In 2015, she portrayed Nancy in Terrence Malick’s Knight Of Cups, and also played the villainous Lady Tremaine in Disney’s Kenneth Branaghdirected live-action adaptation of Cinderella.
And in 2018, she starred in Ocean’s 8, the all-female spin-off of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, directed by Gary Ross, opposite Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna and Awkwafina.
Good luck to Cate…
And in 2021, she starred alongside Bradley Cooper in Guillermo del Toro’s film adaptation of the novel Nightmare Alley, which was released to positive reviews and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. She also appeared alongside Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo Dicaprio in Adam Mckay’s Don’t Look Up, an apocalyptic political satire black comedy film for Netflix, which also received an Oscar nomination for Best
Picture. ■