50 facts about Cate Blanchett: awarded the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society by the Australian government

50 things you missed about actress Cate Blanchett.

1. Catherine élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress.

2. Cate Blanchett 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.

3. Cate Blanchett has been awarded the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society by the Australian government.

4. Cate Blanchett was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2012.

5. In 2014, she was presented with a Doctor of Letters by Macquarie University in recognition of her extraordinary contribution to the arts, philanthropy and the community, her third honorary degree from major Australian institutions.

6. Cate 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.

7. 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.

8. In 2013, she starred as Jeanette "Jasmine" Francis in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, for which she won numerous accolades including the Academy Award for Best Actress.

9. Cate Blanchett is one of only six actresses to win Academy Awards in both leading and supporting acting categories, and the only Australian to win two acting Oscars.

10. 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).

11. Blanchett's 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).

12. Cate Blanchett has also had an extensive career on stage and is a four-time Helpmann Award winner for Best Female Actor in a Play.

13. 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).

14. From 2008 to 2013, she and her husband Andrew Upton were co-CEOs and artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company; her roles included 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 the Lincoln Center (2011), and Claire in The Maids with Isabelle Huppert in Sydney (2013) and New York at the Lincoln Center (2014).

15. Cate Blanchett was born on 14 May 1969 in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe.

16. She is the middle of three children, with an older brother, Bob, who is a computer systems engineer, and a younger sister, Genevieve, who works as a theatrical designer.

17. Her mother, June (née Gamble), was an Australian property developer and teacher.

18. Her father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., a Texas native, was a United States Navy petty officer who later worked as an advertising executive.

19. Her parents met while Blanchett's father's ship broke down in Melbourne.

20. When Blanchett was ten, her father died of a heart attack, leaving her mother to raise the family on her own

21. Blanchett's ancestry includes English, some Scottish, and remote French.

22. Cate Blanchett has described herself as being "part extrovert, part wallflower" during childhood.

23. Cate Blanchett had a penchant for dressing in masculine clothing, and went through goth and punk phases during her teenaged years, shaving her head at one point.

24. Cate Blanchett attended primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School; For her secondary education, she attended Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School and then Methodist Ladies' College, where she explored her passion for the performing arts.

25. Cate Blanchett studied economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne but dropped out after one year to travel overseas.

26. While in Egypt, Blanchett was asked to be an extra as an American cheerleader in an Egyptian boxing movie, Kaboria, and in need of money, she accepted.

27. Upon her return to Australia she moved to Sydney and enrolled in the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) to pursue an acting career.

28. Cate Blanchett graduated from NIDA in 1992.

29. Blanchett's first major stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1992 David Mamet play Oleanna for the Sydney Theatre Company.

30. That year, she was cast as Clytemnestra in a production of Sophocles' Electra. A couple of weeks after rehearsals, the actress playing the title role pulled out, and director Lindy Davies cast Blanchett in the role.

31. Her performance as Electra became one of her most acclaimed at NIDA.

32. In 1993, Blanchett was awarded the Sydney Theatre Critics' Best Newcomer Award for her performance in Timothy Daly's Kafka Dances and won Best Actress for her performance in Mamet's Oleanna, making her the first actor to win both categories in the same year.

33. Cate Blanchett played the role of Ophelia in an acclaimed 1994-95 Company B production of Hamlet directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh, and was nominated for a Green Room Award.

34. Cate Blanchett appeared in the 1994 TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the 1995 miniseries Bordertown with Hugo Weaving, and in an episode of Police Rescue entitled "The Loaded Boy".

35. Cate Blanchett also appeared in the 50-minute drama short Parklands (1996), which received an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

36. Already an acclaimed actress, Blanchett received a host of new fans when she appeared in Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning blockbuster trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, playing the role of Galadriel in all three films.

37. Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton.

38. They met in 1996 on the set of a TV show, and were married on 29 December 1997.

39. Blanchett and Upton have four children: biological sons Dashiell John, Roman Robert, Ignatius Martin and adopted daughter Edith Vivian Patricia, whose adoption was confirmed on 6 March 2015.

40. Blanchett said that she and her husband had been wanting to adopt ever since the birth of their first child.

41. After making Brighton, England their main family home for nearly 10 years, she and her husband returned to their native Australia in 2006.

42. She and her family lived for some time in Bulwarra, an 1877 sandstone mansion in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill.

43. Cate Blanchett is a patron and ambassador of the Australian Film Institute and its academy, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.

44. Cate Blanchett is also a patron of the Sydney Film Festival, and the development charity SolarAid.

45. Cate Blanchett became a spokesperson for and the face of SK-II, the luxury skin care brand owned by Procter & Gamble, in 2005.

46. In 2007, Blanchett became the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation's online campaign - trying to persuade Australians to express their concerns about climate change.

47. In January 2014, Blanchett took part in the Green Carpet Challenge, an initiative to raise the public profile of sustainable fashion, founded by Livia Firth of Eco-Age.

48. Cate Blanchett is a patron of the new Australian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, and spoke at its opening at the Venice Giardini in May 2015.

49. In 2006, a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist for the Archibald Prize.

50. In 2015, Madame Tussauds unveiled a wax figure of Blanchett draped in a recreation of the Valentino Garavani dress she wore to the 2005 Academy Awards ceremony.

Source: Wikipedia.org