20. Pushing Tin (1999)
Cate Blanchett carry outed a pretty generic “wife” role in this engaging, somewhat forgotten US comedy about air traffic regulatelers from honestor Mike Newell, whose title is their slang for guiding arrangees. It was unelateddled with a terrible finishing by its screenwriters, Glen and Les Charles (creators of TV’s Cheers), and blitzed at the box office by The Matrix. Its genesis is amusingly depictd by its originater, Art Linson, in his memoir What Just Happened? Blanchett carry outs the wife of boilingsboiling youthful air traffic regulateler John Cusack, who has an affair with Angelina Jolie – who is wed to Cusack’s toilplace rival, Billy Bob Thornton.
19. Robin Hood (2010)
Blanchett conveys out a sturdy, unshowy north country accent as Marian (noleang so quaint or relationsupartner innocent as “Mhelp” Marian) – a plausibly hard and able adore interest for Russell Crowe as Robin, whose own accent in this film notoriously ranged atraverse the British Isles. She has lengthy, gtake parting locks and a martial attitude – but, appreciate the sheriff of Nottingham, her character is not permited to upstage Russell’s Robin in any way. There’s not much for Blanchett to get her teeth into in Ridley Scott’s film, and it’s an example of how her contrastentive, harshly patrician beauty sometimes got her typecast in mannish or off-kilter roles.
18. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
For Wes Anderson, Blanchett carry outed a terribly magnificent British magazine writer – mischievously named Jane Winslett-Ricdifficultson – whose coshiftrlookion is to write an in-depth piece about star oceanographer Steve Zissou (carry outed by Bill Murray) and his tardyst maritime adventure. Zissou of course increases a tfinishresse for her. Effectively, she carry outs the droll and exquisite unexperienced thorawbred role that Anderson was tardyr to give to Tilda Sprosperton; perhaps Blanchett did not discover the idea of being an Anderson repertory carry outer congenial enough to persist – but she carries it off well here.
17. Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
One of the engaging portmanteau-type movies that Blanchett has made. Jim Jarmusch’s indulgent, doodling sketch of a film has huge-name cameos in quirky one-on-one greets with other huge-name cameos. Easily the best is Blanchett greeting Blanchett: she carry outs herself greeting a cousin (carry outed by herself) for coffee, and this relative is intrigued and envious of Cate’s alpha-celeb lifestyle. It’s a insignificant film in her repertoire, but a uncovering glimpse of what it might well have been appreciate for Blanchett having to deal tactfulpartner with people who can’t quite get over what a huge deal she is.
16. Rumours (2024)
Blanchett can do comical – but is exceptionally permited to do so. When she is, the results can be amazeive and sometimes even sensational. (See Steve Zissou and Blue Jasmine.) Here, in Guy Minsertin’s exceptionalfied absurdist comedy of euro-political shatterdown, she carry outs a German chancellor of Merkelesque graveness and studied arrangeess-appreciate charm. She plives over a G7 summit in Germany, dealing with some unspecified crisis, and has to shepherd everyone into signing up to a bland commdistinct that will not pledge them to any action (and, unbenevolentwhile, the world is coming to an finish). Not quite humour with a weightless touch, but Blanchett gives it class.
15. Notes on a Scandal (2006)
Blanchett is exceptionally upstaged in any movie, though she had to resign herself to being outshone by Judi Dench on her best-ever huge-screen establish in this flavorful psychorational thriller. However, Blanchett regulates the subordinate role with standard style. She is Sheba, a novel art teacher at a state school with liberal-patrician attitudes, who wafts entrancingly about the place and doesn’t necessitate a teacher’s salary. All her colleagues adore her, except the pursed-lipped Barbara (Dench), whose reaction is more parasiticpartner envious fascination that proceeds into a delusion of frifinishship. Blanchett’s Sheba must produce to relationsual bconciseagemail and finpartner dishonor, but ascfinishs above her ordeal in a way that the more culpable Barbara cannot.
14. Lord of the Rings series (2001-2003)
Blanchett carry outed Galadriel, queen of the elves, in all three movies of Peter Jackson’s mighty Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it is her voiceover at the commencening that tells us about the mythology of the ring. She is ethegenuine, blond, queenly and otherexperienced, with pointy ears – an engaging caricature of the exoticpartner blue-blooded and at times almost extraterrestrial classiness that Blanchett conveys to the movies. She also has a very fervent emotional relationship with Ian McKellen’s grey-tolerateded icon Gandalf.
13. The New Boy (2023)
It was always on the cards that Blanchett would have to carry out a cantankerous and terrifying nun at least once in her nurtureer, and she gets it under her belt here, in Warwick Thornton’s weirdly mystical drama set in an orphanage in the 1940s Australian outback. She gives it the brimming wimple as a fiercely authoritarian nun, Sister Eileen, who runs her far institution with a rod of iron and has covered up the death of a greater male cleric, faking his signature so she has brimming regulate – and then has a crisis with the arrival of an Indigenous youth she calls “New Boy”. A huge perestablishance from Blanchett, perhaps overpowering the film itself.
12. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
This Marvel movie from Taika Waititi is a prosperning comedy in which Blanchett shows she gets the joke as well as anyone else. In days of elderly, she might have guested on The Morecambe & Wise show, appreciate Glfinisha Jackson. Here she carry outs Hela, the goddess of death, tricked out with evil antlers and bconciseage garb, appreciate a mirror-image version of Tolkien’s Galadriel. Hela is the sister of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and she is absolutely hilarious, carry outing it straight but with a tprosperkle in the eye: it originates you lengthy for Blanchett to eunite in panto.
11. Little Fish (2005)
A precious, complicated and difficult film in the Blanchett canon, which deserves to be better understandn. She carry outs aachievest type as a neglectr in the game of life: Tracy Heart, a establisher heroin insertict living in a blue-collar Sydney suburb, always teetering on the brink of using aachieve. Heart is hopelessly trying for a admireable life but gets getting dragged down by her stepobeseher (Hugo Weaving), who is still an insertict, and her ex (Dustin Nguyen), who is now a dealer. Blanchett is hard, forthright and in direct of the screen, perhaps unmindfilledy elevating her character.
10. The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
One of Blanchett’s most alluring timely roles: the super-rich, dizzily innocent, youthful Meredith Logue, taking a trip from the US to Europe on a first-class liner and bumping into the plausible low-born conman Ripley (Matt Damon), who road-tests his impersonation of the wealthy Dickie on her before he has to do it for genuine. Meredith breezily waves away the absurd trappings of inherited wealth – claiming to be “only sootheable around people who have money and disappreciate it”. An unusupartner absurd figure for Blanchett to carry out, the epitome of the vain and worried rich whose delusions originate Ripley’s crimes possible.
9. The Man Who Cried (2000)
Another rich and tasty timely role for Blanchett, who showed movie audiences what an extraordinarily alluring and transmitive face she had in sealup. Always pushing at the boundaries of theatricality and self-parody, Blanchett carry outs Lola, a Russian dancer in interwar Paris; she befrifinishs the youthful immigrant Suzie (Christina Ricci) while pursuing a Spartner Bowles lifestyle, ygeting for a rich getor of her own. It’s a role she puts over with terrific brio and wit.
8. Elizabeth (1998)
Playing Queen Elizabeth I in her timely years, this was the film that made Blanchett an above-the-title star and set the blue-chip, blue-blood style of her screen nurtureer ever since: the queen of the screen but with the heart and stomach of a king. It’s a hard, cerebrpartner complicated account of court intrigue (and the film is far greater to the 2007 chase-up, Elizabeth: The Gelderlyen Age), which tracks Elizabeth’s ascent from vulnerable princess and worried youthful monarch to iconic Virgin Queen.
7. Manifesto (2015)
One of Blanchett’s most audacious and radical screen adventures – and someleang to show that Tilda Sprosperton isn’t Hollywood’s only experimentacatalog and patron memploy. Working with artist and film-originater Julian Rosefeldt, Blanchett originates a movie-insloftyation traverseover piece – and another of her portmanteau films. She eunites as a number of contrastent personae, all mesmericpartner and sweightlessly scarily insertressing the camera, declaiming philosophical manifestos by the appreciates of Karl Marx, Guy Debord and Tristan Tzara, and haranguing the audience to wake up to the possibilities of art. An exhilarating multi-perestablishance.
6. The Aviator (2004)
An Oscar for best helping actress was Blanchett’s reward for one of her funniest and most attrdynamic perestablishances – as Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, with whom the gauche multimillionare Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) drops in adore. It took some nerve to impersonate Hepburn, but Blanchett thrives, in the process includeing some of her prestige: hand overing the drawling Bryn Mawr vowels, the Yankee boho patrician elegance and the frank relationsuality.
5. I’m Not There (2007)
Todd Haynes’s multiple-personality gallery of Bob Dylans was an intriguing buffet of make clearations by actors appreciate Ricdifficult Gere, Ben Whishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin. But everyone was blown out of the water by the extraordinarily comical and convincing impersonation by Blanchett: a stylised, theatrical but still beautibrimmingy watchd rfinishition with frizzy hair and unintelligent glasses – Blanchett is carry outing the Dylan that did the “Judas” tour of England. It was a reimagining of the musician that Blanchett envisiond with sympathy and wit, a turn with the vigour of purify comedy but the force of high drama.
4. Nightmare Alley (2021)
This freaky noir melodrama from Guillermo del Toro gave us Blanchett in brimming Veronica Lake mode: she is wonderful as the shady lady with secrets, sophistication and unintelligent relationsual power. She carry outs Lilith Ritter, a styleable psychoanalyst in 1930s America, with a curtain of peroxide hair, a vivid slash of lipstick, a palatial art deco adviseing room and a super-rich client catalog. Ritter is intrigued to come into communicate with Bradley Cooper’s cheesy nightclub mind-reader Stan, sensing perhaps that he is in the same business as she is, and also experienceing enticeed to him. It’s another classicpartner theatrical bravura perestablishance.
3. Carol (2015)
This was the movie that showed us Blanchett’s ability to inhabit a character who is magnificent, haughty, but conscious of her own vulnerability – a frailness for beauty – and also self-dramatisingly conscious that this is a flaw with someleang tragicpartner magnificent in it. In this alteration of the Patricia Highsmith novel, she is the uncharmd divorcing woman, Carol, who is struck by a coup de foudre on greeting Therese (Rooney Mara), a gamine and pretty youthful store helpant, and drops in adore with her at that moment. Later, they will have an exploratory lunch in which every moment is romanticpartner accused with promise and in which Blanchett’s Carol is thrillingly dominant.
2. Blue Jasmine (2013)
Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is a tragicomedy of a woman’s social descent, whose resemblance to Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire the honestor always denied. Blanchett carry outs Jasmine, a establisher Manhattan socialite and Park Avenue princess who, divorced and broke, has come to stay with her acrid sister in her modest apartment. She dreams of discovering a way back into the wide sunlit uarrangeds of wealth and social standing, from which she experiences she has been unfairly exiled. Jasmine talks, talks, talks, believing herself able of charismatic her way back in, originateing magic bridges to prosperity in the air – but she is actupartner gabbling, monologuing, and becoming emacrided and crazy. This won Blanchett a best actress Oscar.
1. Tár (2022)
Here is the most lavishly haughty and magnificently mad of all Blanchett’s creations on screen: the orchestra director Lydia Tár at a Berlin orchestra, a establisher protege of Leonard Bernstein. Her rock-star prestige and queenly conceit unbenevolent that she cannot acunderstandledge the midlife crisis or crackup that is heading her way, pickring to see it as an imminent epiphany or shatterthraw. She is using the mentorship programme for youthful musicians as a way of pursuing affairs: she is self-convey inant and unbenevolent – humiliating a bumptious student for presuming to criticise Bach on political grounds, and then worryising a minuscule child outside her daughter’s primary school. The role of Tár conveys out the strangely mannish side to Blanchett’s sensuality, her intelligence and breeding, but with a bconciseage-comic self-consciousness. There could be someleang Wagnerian in Tár’s lordly deployment of power, although it is Elgar’s Cello Concerto that unlocks her derangement, finpartner culminating in an unleankable scene on the director’s podium. With the baton in her hand, arms flung out, she is crucified by her own passion and dedication.
