Cate Blanchett

Catherine Élise Blanchett born on May 14, 1969 in Ivanhoe, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia is an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning Australian actress. When Blanchett was 10, she lost her father to a heart attack. She has two siblings; the elder, Bob, is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister, Geneviève, is a theatrical designer. She is of partial French ancestry.

Blanchett attended primary school in Melbourne at Ivanhoe East Primary School before completing secondary education at Methodist Ladies' College, where she explored her passion for acting. She studied economics and fine art at the University of Melbourne before leaving Australia to travel.

When she was 18, Blanchett went on a vacation to Egypt. A fellow guest at a cheap hotel in Cairo asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, and the next day she found herself in a crowd scene, cheering for an American boxer who was losing to an Egyptian. She walked off from the set. She returned to Australia and later moved to Sydney to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art; graduating in 1992 and beginning her career in the theatre.