At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Australian film and theater actress is being honored on Tuesday (17.11.). It's a great honor for the actress and a symbol of glamour.
Image: Reuters/B. Tessier
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Tribute to Cate Blanchett at MoMA
The Australian actress and Hollywood film star is being specially honored in New York. MoMA is dedicating a gala to Blanchett, thus honoring her exceptional career in film and onstage.
Image: Reuters/R. Duvignau
Great actress
It's a rare occurrence for the venerable museum in New York to salute not Monet or Mondrian, but a great actress instead. At the MoMA film department, Cate Blanchett stands for exceptional theatrical art, so the Australian is now the eighth film artist to be honored in New York.
Image: Reuters/B. Tessier
Lesbian love
The museum gala is timed to match the premiere of Cate Blanchett's new film. In "Carol" by director Todd Haynes, she plays an unhappily married woman who finds a new partner in Therese, a younger woman portrayed by Rooney Mara.
Image: Wilson Webb/DCM
Art and commerce
Like few others, Cate Blanchett manages a balancing act, appearing both in high-quality but low-budget films and in blockbusters. She's to be seen in "Lord of the Rings."
Image: Courtesy New Line Cinema/Photofest
In the great tradition
When making its choice, MoMA will likely have considered her appearance as Katharine Hepburn in "The Aviator." Like no other, Hepburn was considered clever, adaptable and charismatic. All these apply to Blanchett too.
Image: Photofest
In black and white
Cate Blanchett doesn't just play in movies of great glamor and entertainment. She also had a convincing appearance in the postwar drama "The Good German" in 2006.
Image: Courtesy Warner Bros/Photofest
Diary of a scandal
A year after "The Good German," Cate Blanchett acted the role of a young, attractive teacher alongside her colleague Judi Dench in the British film "Diary of a Scandal." Here, too, she convincingly embodied a contradictory, sensitive character.
Image: Courtesy Warner Bros/Photofest
A woman acts the role of a man
One of her most baffling appearances was in 2007, in the German-American co-production "I'm Not There." In Todd Haynes's artistically outstanding movie, the Australian portrays the legendary musician Bob Dylan, among others.
Image: Courtesy The Weinstein Company/Photofest
Charisma and Grandezza
Enormously adaptable, Cate Blanchett also embodied the title role in the heavily costumed film "Elizabeth - the Golden Kingdom" one year later.
Image: Photofest
Oscar for a stranded woman
In a career spanning nearly 20 years, Cate Blanchett has received many honors and distinctions. After her first Oscar for Best Supporting Role (in "The Aviator"), she took Best Actress in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" two years ago, depicting a woman in a life's crisis.
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Monuments Men
A good actress shines also in bad films. Cate Blanchett was one of the few bright spots in George Clooney's "The Monuments Men." A grand artistic failure, it dealt with art as war booty.
Image: 2013 Twentieth Century Fox
At the summit of her career
Cate Blanchett is a welcome guest at every kind of cultural event and stands out at red-carpet festivals, embodying acting artistry and glamor in equal measure.
Image: AP
At the museum
MoMA declares that she stands for innovation and risk. And even though the New York museum usually does retrospectives of great artistic careers, this time it wasn't so. More can be expected from Cate Blanchett.
Image: Getty Images/S. Platt
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Some actresses have it all - standing out in demanding roles on the world's theater stages and treading the red carpet in Cannes, Venice or Berlin. Their glamour and star appeal grace both Hollywood blockbusters and smaller-scale European films. Cate Blanchett is one such actress.
Among well-known American actresses in recent years, Meryl Streep has nearly stood alone in that respect. In decades past, Katherine Hepburn belonged to that exclusive category, both camera-skilled and shining at galas and film festivals.
The venerable museum honors an actress
Rajendra Roy, curator of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, chose to honor Cate Blanchett at MoMA's eighth Film and Movie Gala. With its collection of 30,000 films, the museum has placed the "seventh art" on an equal footing with the pictorial arts for years.
Joy over the Oscar for 'Blue Jasmine'Image: Reuters
The focus is on a star equally skilled in art and in box office successes, including "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" as well as "Babel" and "I'm Not There" - grand-scale, commercially successful global movies for young audiences yet highly complex art house cinema for demanding viewers. The two are not mutually exclusive, as becomes clear when you look at Blanchett's career.
A queen onscreen
Born in 1969 in Melbourne, the actress began her career onstage, acted in TV series in her homeland and was discovered early on by European and American directors. In less than twenty years, she can look back on an astonishing variety of roles, having convincingly portrayed both a real queen - Elizabeth I of England - and a fictive one: Galadriel, sovereign of the elves in J.R.R. Tolkien's saga.
With Giovanni Ribisi in Tom Tykwer's 'Heaven'Image: Imago/United Archives
She's to be seen in "Heaven," a drama about terrorism by German director and producer Tom Tykwer and in Alejandro González Iñárritus' existential and philosophical film "Babel." Often compared to Katharine Hepburn, she portrayed the older actress in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator." She was equally convincing in a male role - as Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There" - and as a desperate woman and wife in films like "Knight of Cups" by Terrence Malick and "Blue Jasmine" by Woody Allen.
The woman of many faces
Blanchett is the winner of roughly seventy prizes and awards, including two Oscars and the Coppa Volpi prize at the Venice film festival for "I'm Not There."
Looking good in an evening dress: Cate Blanchett this year in CannesImage: Reuters/E. Gaillard
The German movie and theater scenes have also profited from her acting prowess. Tom Tykwer engaged her 13 years ago for his film "Heaven." In 2012 she played one of the main roles in the play "Groß und klein" (Large and Small) by Botho Strauss. Blanchett has headlined the Ruhr Festival in Recklinghausen. Since 1997 she has been married to Australian script writer Andrew Upton; the couple has three children. Having moved back to Australia, she now heads the "Sydney Theatre Company."
"The leading actress of her generation"
The American Barry Levinson, having directed Blanchett in his film "Bandits" in 2001, calls her "the leading actress of her generation" - a description rarely disputed. At the MoMA in New York, she now joins the list of earlier profiled artists such as Pedro Almodóvar and Tim Burton. Following Tilda Swinton, Blanchett is the second artist to have received the distinction.
In "Carol," her new film, she plays a woman in love with a womanImage: Wilson Webb/DCM
