Biography

Catherine Elise Blanchett was born on the 14th of May, 1969, at the Jessie McPherson Hospital in Melbourne, as the daughter of a Texan navy officer (Robert Blanchett) and a Melbourne schoolteacher (June Blanchett). When her parents met, Robert Blanchett moved to Australia, and got into advertising. As a kid, Cate recalls herself as "part extrovert, part wallflower". When she was ten, Cate and her older brother Bob Blanchett and younger sister Genevieve Blanchett were pulled out of a Melbourne cinema to be told that their father was dead of a heart attack at the age of 40. It's a story she resists talking about, but the loss of her father was deeply mourned. As a child cate dreamt of living in a haunted house, so she might meet her father again. Cate and her brother and sister were raised by her mother June. Cate's brother Bob Blanchett is a computer programmer, and her sister Genevieve recently graduated from her Architects' studies.

Cate attended Melbourne's Methodist Ladies College(where she became the school drama captain and appeared in various plays), and from here went on to Melbourne University to study Fine Arts and Economics. She dropped out because she wanted to travel and to gain experience before deciding upon a career. During a visit to England, she was forced to leave due to an expired Visa. From England she then moved on to Egypt, where she was spotted by a fellow-guest in her cheap hotel who asked to appear as an extra in an Egyptian boxing movie. She decided to go with it because she needed the money. While this experience wasn't a good one in the least, being stuck as an extra on a dusty movie set, and walking out after being yelled at by the director, Cate nonetheless came to realise that actors have the power to genuinely move people, which is what she wanted. Cate moved back to Melbourne, where she decided to enroll in Sydney's Prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Arts(NIDA).

Cate graduated from the NIDA in 1992, and began her career on the stage in her final year, playing in Sophocles' Electra. Her first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1993 David Mamet play Oleanna. She then played in multiple Australian plays, before landing a role in the TV Movie Police Rescue in 1994. She maintained her stage career while playing in TV series such as Heartland, Bordertown and Parklands. She made her motion picture debut in Paradise Road, starring Glenn Close and Frances McDormand, as one of a group of women imprisoned by the Japanese in Sumatra in World War 2.

Her big break in the film industry was the role of Lucinda in 'Oscar and Lucinda' alongside Ralph Fiennes, which landed her the part of Queen Elizabeth I in 'Elizabeth'. The director of 'Elizabeth', Shekhar Kapur, saw a reel of 'Oscar and Lucinda', which happened to be playing in the office of his casting director and immediately decided upon her for the part. 'Elizabeth' catapulted Cate to the A-list of actresses, and earned her numerous awards and award nominations, such as a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

As for Cate's private life, in 1997, while playing Nina in Chekov's The Seagull, she met playwright Andrew Upton. It nearly never started. "He thought I was aloof," she later said, "and I thought he was arrogant. But once he kissed me, that was that. It just shows how wrong you can be... I was, and am, swept away."

Later, she would say she'd also been impressed by his passion for the Russian novelist Turgenev. The pair married, in the Blue Mountains National Park of New South Wales, just before Cate left to film Elizabeth in 1998. During the filming she missed him sorely, director Shekhar Kapur noted that Upton was "very, very stabilising" for her, lending her the confidence she needed to perform.

Cate and Andrew are self-confessed homebodies. They had their first child, son Dashiell in 2001, who was named after Andrew's favourite crime novelist, Dashiell Hammett. Cate and Andrew's second son Roman was born April 23, 2004, and their third son, Ignatius, was born on April 13, 2008.

After living in Brighton, England for a number of years, they now call Sydney, Australia home. They live in the fancy neighbourhood of Hunters Hill, in a historic house called Bulwarra, which they recently finished 'greenovating', installing rainwater tanks and filtration systems, solar panels and energy saving lights among other features.