Travis’ Favorites: Cate Blanchett

To begin with, she’s Australian … which is always major brownie points in my book, right out of the gate. Of course, she’s unbelievably attractive and she can act too … a double-feature that eludes many actresses with success at her level. When I say she can act, I mean she can REALLY act, not just successfully recite lines and look the part. As if all this wasn’t enough, she’s versatile and she rarely ever does a movie that would be considered mediocre mainstream fare.

Born May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Australia … Cate graduated form Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Arts in 1992. Her “career” began to take off shortly after as she began getting roles in 1994. Her first major movie was in Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road (1997), a movie based on the true story of a group of women held prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. Blanchett plays Susan Macarthy, an Australian nursing student. The women manage to use music as a way to cope with their struggle.

That same year, Blanchett would star as Lucinda Leplastreir in Oscar and Lucinda, a very good and greatly under-appreciated period film directed by Gillian Armstrong. Blanchett was nominated for two awards for her performance as the teenage heiress who purchases a glass factory and pursues her dream of building a church made entirely of glass and relocating it into the Australian Outback. When she arrives, she meets Oscar Hopkins (Ralph Fiennes), an ostracised priest who shares Lucinda’s passion for gambling. She wagers her entire fortune with Oscar that he cannot safely transport her glass church to the Outback. What results is a journey that will change both their lives forever.

Blanchett would truly raise eyebrows with her stellar performance as the youthful queen of England in Elizabeth (1998). She would go on to win 13 separate awards out of 15 nominations for her performance and one of those two nominations was the Oscar. Personally, I feel she was undeservedly overlooked. As much as I enjoyed Shakespeare in Love, and Gwyneth Paltrow was good, but no competition for Cate Blanchett’s performance. Worse yet, Blanchett would be nominated for a second time for the same role in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and would again be passed over, this time by a more deserving Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose.

Over her career so far, she has earned a total of 56 awards and 54 additional nominations. One of those wins would be her only Oscar to date, which she received for Best Supporting Actress as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (2004). Among my personal favorites not already mentioned are her performances as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I have yet to watch Notes on a Scandal and I’m Not There. She was lots of fun in Indiana Jones 4. Her next film out will be David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. She is currently voicing a character for Wes Anderson’s animated feature The Fantastic Mr. Fox and is already rumored to be cast in three more films. Below is a list of must-see Cate Blanchett films: