Cate Blanchett, actress and feminist activist accustomed to juries and awards, is a polymorphous performer, capable of playing an elf princess, Bob Dylan, as well as a famous conductor, a role which earned her a second prize for interpretation at Venice.
At 53, the Australian actress received her second Volpi Cup on Saturday evening on the Lido for the best female interpretation as a character drunk on power in Tarby Todd Field.
This tall blonde, with a diaphanous face, delivers a marmoreal performance in this drama that evokes questions about identity or “cancel culture”. She plays an ultra-famous conductor, in a relationship with a violinist from her orchestra, who will be caught up in her past.
A role that takes a complex look at the denunciation of harassment or the abuse of power by women over their subordinates, and echoes the commitments of the artist.
Fifteen years before this role as an artist, she had already won the prize in Venice for I’m not There of Todd Haynes, where she embodied, crossing the frontier of the genre, another musician, Bob Dylan.
These awards add to a well-filled hunting list for the actress that the general public has discovered in the role of Queen Elizabeth I of England (elizabeth then Elizabeth: The Golden Age).
The two-time Oscar winner has shown that she can play anything, transforming from one role to another.
Not hesitating to take risks, she was both Katharine Hepburn, in The Aviatoras the elf heroine Galadriel, in The Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson.
And she proved her comedic talent again most recently in satirical comedy Don’t look up!where she played a TV presenter oblivious to the collision of a comet with the Earth.
feminist cause
Beyond her roles, Cate Blanchett is a committed activist for the feminist cause, who with #MeToo has become a figure in the fight against sexual harassment.
Her activism, however, placed her on the front lines when she was president of the jury at Cannes in 2018, where she protested against the under-representation of women in the charts, then in Venice in 2020.
She was also part, with Natalie Portman or Meryl Streep, of the collective in Hollywood which launched the “Time’s Up” foundation to help victims of sexual harassment.
A commitment that should not, however, be confused with its characters: “I do not see artistic practice as an educational tool,” she said in Venice.
“I’m not interested in agit-prop,” she added, saying that the place of actresses in the film industry had improved significantly in recent years but continued to be hampered by the lack of strong leading roles.
Born and raised in Melbourne, southeast Australia, Cate Blanchett was 10 years old when her father, an American business leader, died of a heart attack. The Blanchetts, she confided, then ate rabid cows.
Salvation will come through the theatre. A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992, she quickly achieved public and critical success with the Sydney Theater Company, before embarking on film.
In 1999, she won a Golden Globe for the film elizabeth by Shekhar Kapur, his first major international role. It is on display the same year of The Enigmatic Mr. Ripley by Anthony Minghella.
Having become famous, she then played in the successful trilogy of the Lord of the Ringsher biggest box office success, before winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2005 for The Aviator by Martin Scorsese.
At the turn of the 2010s, she devoted herself more to the theater with the father of her four children, Andrew Upton. From 2009 to 2013, she became the artistic director of the Sydney Theater Company.
Her role as a fallen bourgeois sliding towards madness in Jasmine French by Woody Allen marks her big comeback in dark rooms, and earned her a second Oscar, that of best actress, in 2014.
She also caused a sensation at Cannes in 2015 with carollesbian romance by Todd Haynes.