Her biggest commercial successes include The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Cinderella (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Don't Look Up (2021).

[5][6] Her Australian mother, June (née Gamble),[7] was a property developer and teacher; and her American father, Robert DeWitt Blanchett Jr., a Texas native, was a United States Navy Chief Petty Officer who became an advertising executive.

[11] Blanchett played the role of Ophelia in a 1994–1995 Company B production of Hamlet directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh, and was nominated for a Green Room Award.

[11][20] In his review for Variety, critic David Rooney wrote of her performance, "Blanchett conveys with grace, poise and intelligence that Elizabeth was a wily, decisive, advanced thinker, far too aware of her own exceptional nature to bow to any man.

[13] The trilogy was a major critical and financial success, earning $2.981 billion at the box office worldwide,[35][36][37] and all three films were later ranked within the top 10 greatest fantasy movies of all time in a poll conducted by American magazine Wired in 2012.

[38] In addition to The Lord of the Rings, 2001 also saw Blanchett diversify her portfolio with a range of roles in the dramas Charlotte Gray and The Shipping News and the American crime-comedy Bandits, for which she earned a second Golden Globe and SAG Award nomination.

[39] Bandits marked Blanchett's first notable foray into the comedy genre, with Ben Falk of the BBC declaring her and co-star Billy Bob Thornton "a real find as comedians" and calling her performance as an unsatisfied housewife caught between two escaped convicts, "unhinged, though undeniably sexy".

"[42] 2003 saw Blanchett again playing a wide range of roles: Galadriel in the third and final instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture);[43] the Ron Howard-directed western thriller The Missing; Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, playing two roles (both against herself), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female nomination;[44] and the biographical Veronica Guerin, which earned her a Golden Globe Best Actress Drama nomination.

[48] In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote that Blanchett portrayed Hepburn with "lip-smacking vivacity",[49] and Roger Ebert lauded the performance, describing it as "delightful and yet touching; mannered and tomboyish".

[55] She then starred opposite Brad Pitt in Alejandro González Iñárritu's multi-lingual, multi-narrative drama Babel, as one half of a grieving couple who get caught up in an international incident in Morocco.

[56] She also co-starred in Steven Soderbergh's World War II-era drama The Good German with George Clooney, and the psychological thriller Notes on a Scandal opposite Dame Judi Dench.

[18][20] Blanchett received a third Academy Award nomination for her performance in the latter film,[57] where she portrays a lonely teacher who embarks on an affair with a 15-year-old student and becomes the object of obsession for an older woman played by Dench.

[68] In David Fincher's Oscar-nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, she co-starred with Brad Pitt for a second time, playing the title character's love interest, Daisy Fuller.

[72][73] A Streetcar Named Desire production travelled from Sydney to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.[74][75] It was a critical and commercial success and Blanchett received acclaim for her performance as Blanche DuBois.

[99] The production and Blanchett received critical acclaim,[102] with The New York Times' Ben Brantley declaring, "I consider the three hours I spent on Saturday night watching [the characters] complain about how bored they are among the happiest of my theatregoing life ...

[115] In his review for The Guardian, Mark Kermode proclaimed, "Blanchett takes on the challenge like a peak-fitness runner facing a marathon, ploughing her way through 26 miles of emotional road pounding, with all the ups and downs, strains and tears, stomach turns and heartburns that that entails, a feat that occasionally leaves her (and us) gasping for breath.

"[116] Peter Travers, reviewing the film for Rolling Stone, called Blanchett's performance, "miraculous", and went on to write, "The sight of Jasmine – lost, alone and unable to conjure magic out of unyielding reality – is devastating.

"[124] On the subject of the Me Too movement, Blanchett said she thinks that "social media is fantastic about raising awareness about issues, but it's not the judge and jury" and the cases "need to go into court, so if these abuses have happened, the person is prosecuted, so someone, who is not in the shiny industry that I am, can use that legal precedent to protect themselves.

[138][139] Writing for Time magazine, Richard Corliss declared that "Blanchett [earns top billing], radiating a hauteur that chills as it amuses; the performance is grand without skirting parody.

Blanchett, who also served as an executive producer of the film, drew rave reviews for her performance as the titular character, which was widely cited as one of the best of her career, alongside Elizabeth and Blue Jasmine.

Justin Chang of Variety proclaimed, "As a study in the way beautiful surfaces can simultaneously conceal and expose deeper meanings, [Blanchett's] performance represents an all-too-fitting centerpiece for this magnificently realized movie.

Serkis utilised a mixture of motion capture, CG animation and live-action in the film, and the role of Kaa was written to be much closer to the original character in the short stories by the author Rudyard Kipling, which is as a mentor-like figure for Mowgli.

[220] She then headlined the Apple TV+ psychological thriller miniseries Disclaimer, written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and co-starring Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Louis Partridge.

[226] Starting in March 2025, Blanchett will star opposite Tom Burke, Emma Corrin, and Kodi Smit-McPhee in a reimagining of the Anton Chekov play The Seagull at the Barbican Theater in London.

[249] Commenting on her appeal as a screen actor in Vulture, Will Leitch and Tim Grierson stated that her greatest skill was "her ability to combine relatability and elusiveness: She is always completely present and yet just out of grasp.

[276] In October of the same year, Blanchett was appointed by Prince William as a council member for the Earthshot Prize, which provides 50 environmental pioneers with the funds needed to further their work in tackling major problems impacting the environment.

[278][279] The ecohouse that Blanchett and Upton are having built in Mawgan Porth, Cornwall, on the site of a stone cottage they bought for £1.6 million and then demolished,[280] has been the subject of controversy, as the noise from its construction is alleged to have "destroyed the family holidays" of a number of people in 2023.

[281] The couple's application to build an extension and space for parking had been described by a local resident as a "blatant attempt to erode an environmentally important piece of land by stealth and incorporate it".

The video, titled "What They Took With Them", has the actors reading a poem written by Jenifer Toksvig and inspired by primary accounts of refugees, and is part of UNHCR's "WithRefugees" campaign, which also includes a petition to governments to expand asylum to provide further shelter, integrating job opportunities, and education.

[325] Her highest-grossing films include The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) trilogies, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Cinderella (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), and Ocean's 8 (2018).