Cate Blanchett

Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (born May 14, 1969) is an Academy Award- and Golden Globe Award-winning Australian actress and stage director. She has won various other acting awards, most notably two SAGs and two BAFTAs, as well as the Volpi Cup at 64th Venice International Film Festival.

Blanchett came to international attention in the 1998 film Elizabeth, directed by Shekhar Kapur, in which she played Elizabeth I of England. She is also well known for her portrayals of the elf queen Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a role which brought her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. [1][2] [3] She and her husband Andrew Upton are currently artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.

Blanchett was born in Ivanhoe, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, the daughter of June, an Australian property developer and teacher, and Robert "Bob" Blanchett, a Texas-born United States Navy Petty Officer who met Blanchett's mother while stationed in Melbourne and who later worked as an advertising executive.[4][5] When Blanchett was 10, she lost her father to a heart attack. She has described herself during childhood as "part extrovert, part wallflower".[6] 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.[6]