Childhood

Born May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Australia, Cate is an accomplished stage, television and screen actress. Cate was born to an American father and an Australian mother. When her parents met, her mom was a teacher in Melbourne. Her father was a Texan in the United States Navy. Cate is the middle sibling of three children, Bob her older brother and Genevive her younger sister.

When Cate was merely 10 years old, her father passed away. Together with her two siblings, younger sister Genevieve (theatre designer) and older brother Bob (computer programmer) were raised by their mother.

Cate grew up in Melbourne, and she began her studies of fine arts and economics at the University of Melbourne. Her first taste of acting came when she joined a drama group at her Methodist College, playing small roles in small time plays.

Cate left college life to continue her education via world travel.

It was while studying at the University of Melbourne that Blanchett  realized that her future lay in acting .With no background and little experience, she was accepted into an Australian acting school and, despite struggling for some time, made her way across the ocean to Hollywood.

Career

Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and within one year won critical acclaim for her work.

Cate also enrolled in Methodist Ladies College (MLC) in Melbourne, Australia, and became the School's Drama Captain.

Cate's first big break happened when she appeared with fellow Aussie Geoffrey Rush in a Sydney theater production, Oleanna, for which she picked up the Best Actress Rosemount Award from the Sydney Theater Critics Circle.

Blanchett co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama "Heartland" (1994) (mini), again winning critical appreciation for her performance . In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet".

Cate also is credited in other plays including the Sydney Theatre Company's Sweet Phoebe, Belvoir Street Theatre Company's The Tempest, and The Blind Giant is Dancing (playing Rose).

Cate's star began to shine in 1997. After her big screen debut in the short Parklands, Cate was cast as a nurse in Bruce Beresford's WW II drama Paradise Road (1997, starring Glenn Close and Frances McDormand). She received critical acclaim costarring in Cherie Nowlan's drama-comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie and in Gillian Armstrong's adaptation of Peter Carey's romance-drama novel, Oscar and Lucinda.

It took only one year for Blanchett to see her world change completely. She was cast as Queen Elizabeth I in 1998's Elizabeth, which garnered incredible critical praise. Her role as the British monarch was awarded with the Best Actress title by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, as well as by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics, and the Online Film Critics Society, to name but a few. Her brilliant work was also recognized by the Screen Actors Guild and at the Oscars, with Best Actress nominations .

In 1999, Blanchett was seen in Pushing Tin with John Cusack, a comedy about air traffic controllers directed by Mike Newell, An Ideal Husband directed by Oliver Parker and The Talented Mr. Ripley directed by Anthony Mingella for which she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

She also shared the screen with Thornton and Bruce Willis in Bandits (2001) and was widely known for portraying elf queen Galadriel in the Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.J.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings (2001), which she reprised in its sequels, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).