Happy Birthday Suitless: Cate Blanchett

Some consider Cate Blanchett the heir apparent to Meryl Streep: regal, respected, and talented.  She's very articulate and has a unique beauty.  Her career path has been somewhat different, but, then, again, it really isn't possible for anyone these days (male or female) to have the Hollywood ascension Streep enjoyed in the late 70s/early 80s.  One could argue that Blanchett has come the closest as far as the parts she has taken and the awards on her mantle.

Like Streep, Blanchett has had a charmed career.  After years of theatrical training, Blanchett's debut seemingly came out of nowhere for most Americans.  Though she had already a few years of a little bit of TV and film behind her, she blasted into the Hollywood arena rather quickly.  One of her first two films included the romantic female lead opposite Ralph Fiennes in Oscar and Lucinda. A year later, she would be an Oscar frontrunner for her Queen Elizabeth, similar to how the AMPAS began to embrace Streep within her first couple of films after a short time on the big screen.  Both ladies had their American cinematic christening at age 28, an advanced age for most actresses (they're also almost exactly twenty years apart, both being born in the late Spring/early Summer in years ending in "9").  Blanchett had a brief run as dramatic heroine in the early 2000s, top-lining and driving movies like Charlotte Gray, Veronica Guerin, The Gift, Heaven, and The Missing.  But, the rules have changed since Streep, which often included Blanchett taking supporting roles in her prime 30s.

While Streep has become known as "the actress who can do accents," Blanchett herself has had more opportunities in that department than all of her contemporaries.  Yet, due to the low audience turnout for those affairs, her abilities in this regard have largely gone unnoticed.  Being Australian may or may not have something to do it, additionally.  While the majority of her characters have been equal parts English to American (including a few Southerners, as well as mimicking the distinctive voices of Bob Dylan and the clipped, mid-Atlantic brogue of Katharine Hepburn), she has also done Irish (Veronica Guerin), Scottish (Charlotte Gray), German (The Good German), and Russian (The Man Who Cried, the Indiana Jones sequel).  Like her colleague Nicole Kidman, she has only spoken in her native Australian voice a handful of times, early on in her career.

I mentioned in a previous post how Reneé Zellweger has covered more than her share of time eras, yet, upon further research, Blanchett's reach has been almost as far.  The list is pretty impressive and includes (but not limited to): 12th-century and 16th-century, 19th-century, mid-20th-century, and modern England; 1850s and modern Australia; 1880s and 1950s Southwest; 1920s and 1940s France, 1930s Hollywood; 1940s Japan; postwar and modern Berlin; 1950s and modern Italy; 1960s US; and1990s Ireland.  There's never a setting she can't believably fit herself into whether it be the South, Morocco, or even Middle-Earth.


She has attracted the likes of such directing titans as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, and Sam Raimi.  Juxtaposed against Nicole Kidman's choice of directors, one can see a shrewdness on Blanchett's part of picking directors with an auteur's respect, but a populist appeal, while also working with more eclectic artists like Sally Potter, Tom Tykwer, and Wes Anderson.  Additionally, she has collaborated with respected and/or Oscar-winning directors like Ron Howard, Anthony Minghella, Barry Levinson, Bruce Beresford,  Lasse Hallström, Gillian Armstrong, and Mike Newell.

While the majority of her nominations have been in the supporting category, she has accumulated five nods (one win).  The only other actress to match or surpass this in the last fifteen years is Kate Winslet, Judi Dench and, well, Streep herself.

In the last couple years, she has been able to work Sydney Theatre Company's stage--where she originally cut her teeth--playing Hedda Gabler, Blanche Dubois, and Yelena from Uncle Vanya, as well as serving as its Artistic Director along with her husband.  Blanchett is at an age now when Streep was finishing up her stage of comical leading lady.  While Blanchett hasn't had a major comic role in a while, unlike Streep, she took on such roles closer to when she was getting her bearings in Hollywood, opposite Billy Bob Thornton in Pushing Tin and Bandits, as well as An Ideal Husband.  Streep proceeded to her mature mother era, which was also when her commercial profile was at its least exposed.  With Blanchett, it's difficult to encapsulate her career as of late, as she has gone from playing a man in a highly experimental project to a villainous role in a big-budget action film to a fairy.  But, then, she never really had a phase.  Her characters include: rulers, neurotic assassin, movie star, psychic and pop folksinger.  While I've always admired the way she has carried herself and the career she has cultivated, as an actress, she hasn't been one I've been drawn to.  Yet, that could well have to do with how seamlessly she disappears into roles.  How else can you explain her true chameleon-like abilities where she is able to oscillate between genders, classes, and time periods that cross centuries?

She's quoted as asserting she will never get plastic surgery and pities actresses who do, which may or may not have been a thinly veiled disapproving jab at her fellow countrywoman Kidman.  Recently, she appeared on the cover of the magazine Intelligent Life sans makeup.  Upcoming films include her return as Galadriel, as well as two Terrence Malick films, and possibly one from Woody Allen.  Today, Blanchett turns 43.

Check Out Other Happy Birthday Suit(lesses):

Jennifer Aniston     Ellen Barkin     Drew Barrymore     Annette Bening     Jessica Biel     Juliette Binoche     Cate Blanchett     Helena Bonham Carter     Cher     Glenn Close     Claires Danes     Geena Davis     Kirsten Dunst     Jennifer Garner     Jennifer Grey     Kate Hudson     Holly Hunter     Angelina Jolie     Ashley Judd     Keira Knightley     Jessica Lange     Andie MacDowell     Eva Mendes     Rosie O'Donnell     Lena Olin     Michelle Pfeiffer     Natalie Portman     Emma Thompson     Uma Thurman     Rachel Weisz     Debra Winger     Renée Zellweger

Jennifer Aniston #1     Nicole Kidman #1     Rachel McAdams     Julia Roberts     Winona Ryder