How Cate Blanchett Won an OscarAcclaimed Australian actress, Cate Blanchett, garnered a whole new fan following for her appearance in The Lord of the Rings trilogy featuring The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. She played Galadriel in all three films, referred to by Tolkien as “the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth” and the “greatest of elven women”. But how did Cate Blanchett come to a point in her life where she was actually selected for the role?

Cate Blanchett had become a regular on the Australian screen but only made her international film debut as an Australian nurse captured by the Japanese Army during World War II in Bruce Beresford’s 1997 film Paradise Road This was a supporting actress role. But leading lady success was soon to follow. Later that year she made her debut as a leading lady in Gillian Armstrong’s production of Oscar and Lucinda opposite Ralph Fiennes.

Cate Blanchett’s performance on the film was so good that she was nominated for her first Australian Film Institute Award as Best Leading Actress for this role. Though she lost out to someone else for that role, she won an AFI Award as Supporting Actress in the same year for her role as Lizzie in the romantic-comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie.

But Cate Blanchett was not quite on her way yet. It was her role as Elizabeth I of England in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, that really brought her to notice and even earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She won a British Academy Award (BAFTA) and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for the role she played. More BAFTA love was to follow as next year, Cate Blanchett was nominated for another BAFTA Award for her supporting role in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

 Academy Award success evaded Cate Blanchett till 2005, which is when she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Adding to the honour was the fact that Cate Blanchett was the first actress to be given an Academy Award for her success in playing a previous Oscar-winning actress. Famed for her amazing skin, Cate Blanchett is the face of SK-II, a high-end skin care line from Procter & Gamble Co.

If you want to see a lot more of Cate Blanchett you can access any of the movies mentioned in the article on Amazon.com.