Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother. Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim.

Family

Trivia

1993: She was the first person to win the Sydney Theatre Critic's Circle Theatre award for Best Newcomer (for her role in "Kafka Dances"), and Best Lead Actress (for her role in David Mamet's "Oleanna", with the Sydney Theatre Company, opposite Shine (1996) star Geoffrey Rush in the same year.

Personal Quotes 

The only actor to be nominated and win Oscars for both of the iconoclast New York directors Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen.
Was the 126th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Aviator (2004) at The 77th Annual Academy Awards (2005) on February 27, 2005.