Cate Blanchett

The shortest version: two Oscars in two categories, three decades at the front of the industry, no discernible type. Elizabeth in 1998 was the breakout, a cold, precise performance as a young Queen Elizabeth I that got her first nomination and set the pattern. A supporting win for The Aviator, then a lead win for Blue Jasmine. The range isn't a trick. It's the whole point.

Tar in 2022 should have been her third Oscar. She won the major precursors, delivered what most critics called the best performance of the year, then lost at the ceremony to Michelle Yeoh's sweep in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The awards season proved the narrative matters as much as the acting. Since then: Disclaimer on Apple TV+ with Alfonso Cuaron, Black Bag with Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch's Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, which won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2025. Also co-running Dirty Films and championing displaced filmmakers through the UN.

For five years starting in 2008, Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton ran Sydney Theatre Company as joint artistic directors, producing and starring in stagings of A Streetcar Named Desire and Uncle Vanya that toured internationally. Most actors at her level don't spend their prime years in administrative theatre work. They met in the mid-1990s and Upton proposed three weeks in.