Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett is one of the Australia's best-known actors, as well as an Oscar-winner for her supporting role in the 2004 film The Aviator. Blanchett grew up in Melbourne, Australia, where she studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art before embarking on a career on stage and screen. Critics first took notice of the willowy actress when she appeared in Oscar and Lucinda (1997), and her lead role in 1998's Elizabeth (as Queen Elizabeth I) earned her a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination. She later appeared in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, opposite Matt Damon), Pushing Tin (1999, opposite Billy Bob Thornton) and Bandits (2001, with Thornton and Bruce Willis). She played the mystical Galadriel in Peter Jackson's movie trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Lord of the Rings, beginning with The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001. In 2005 she won an Oscar as best supporting actress for playing Katharine Hepburn in the 2004 film The Aviator (with Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes). She again played Elizabeth I in the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age (with Clive Owen as adventurous scalawag Sir Walter Raleigh).

Extra credit: Blanchett married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. The couple's son Dashiell was born in 2001, and a second son, Roman, was born in 2004.