Academy Award for Best Actress

2013

Cate Blanchett

as

Jeanette "Jasmine" Francis

Blue Jasmine

Catherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett (/ˈblɑːn.tʃət/; born 14 May 1969) is an Australian actress and theater director. She has received critical acclaim and many accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and three British Academy Awards. Blanchett came to international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in Shekhar Kapur's 1998 film Elizabeth, for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award, and earned her first Academy Award for Best Actress nomination. Her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's 2004 film The Aviator brought her critical acclaim and many accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, making her the only actor to win an Oscar for portraying another Oscar-winning actor. In 2013, she starred as Jasmine French in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, for which she won numerous accolades including the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Blanchett is one of only five actors, and the only actress, to receive Academy Award nominations for portraying the same role in two films, as well as the only Australian to win two acting Oscars. A six-time Oscar nominee, she has also received nominations for Notes on a Scandal (2006), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and I'm Not There (2007). Her other notable films include The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–03) and The Hobbit trilogy (2012–14), Babel (2006), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), Cinderella (2015), and Carol (2015).

Blanchett has also had an extensive career on stage and is a four-time Helpmann Award winner for Best Female Actor in a Play. Her earlier roles include the title role in Electra at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (1992), Ophelia in Hamlet at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney (1994), Susan in Plenty in the West End (1999), and the title role in Hedda Gabler with the Sydney Theatre Company (2004). From 2008 to 2013, she and her husband Andrew Upton were co-CEOs and artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. Her other roles on stage include Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire in Sydney, New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center (2009), Yelena in Uncle Vanya in Sydney, Washington D.C. at the Kennedy Center and New York at Lincoln Center (2011), and Claire in The Maids in Sydney (2013) and New York at Lincoln Center (2014).

Blanchett has been awarded the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society by the Australian government. She was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2012. She has been presented with a Doctor of Letters from University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, and Macquarie University in recognition of her extraordinary contribution to the arts, philanthropy and the community. In 2015, she received the Museum of Modern Art's Film Benefit honor, and the British Film Institute Fellowship in recognition of her outstanding contribution to film.