Cate Blanchett, diva in corset without fear of failure. She now she conducts the orchestra

Just two years ago he was on the other side of the fence: president of the Jury of the Venice 2020 Exhibition. But now Cate Blanchett, after having strongly contributed to awarding the Golden Lion to director Chloe Zhao and her Nomadland, tracing the victorious path towards the Oscars, it is returned to being judged as an actress. Not only from the shots of photographers on the red carpet but as the protagonist of one of the first films in competition at the Lido, the American Tar, where she plays a female conductor, Lydia Tar, first to become him in the major German orchestra, but little tolerated by colleagues, in a still very masculine profession. Close to the milestone of 100 acting films, this 53-year-old Australian woman of exquisite class has received seven Academy Award nominations and has already held the statuette twice in her hands. Thanks to two directors who have been active but have long been in the history of cinema such as Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen.

To Allen and the character of Jasmine French, unstable and uncomfortable in her reality as a woman of the New York bourgeoisie, she owes the Oscar to the best actress obtained 9 years ago precisely for Blue Jasmine; but already in 2004 she had raised the Oscar on the Hollywood stage as a supporting actress for the role of the great colleague of the past Katherine Hepburn in the biopic of the Italian-American director on the tycoon Howard Hughes, The Aviator. Married for 35 years to compatriot Andrew Uptonplaywright and screenwriter for cinema who is three years older than her and with whom she had three sons now between 14 and 20, has also decided to adopt a girl, who is now 7 years old.

Very jealous of privacy, she has always been rarely seen with her boys. She lives with her husband and children in Sussex and she loves English culture, starting with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, of which she hasn’t missed a thriller on TV since she was a girl. To continue with the history of the British monarchy, since it is certainly no coincidence that even in her thirties she played Queen Elizabeth I, a role that earned her the first of her Oscar nominations for best actress. Repeated choice with the sequel Elizabeth: the Golden Age of 2007. On the other hand, the role of sixteenth-century sovereign fit perfectly to those who do not exist to define themselves: «one of those strange beasts who really like to wear a corset…».

Ironic, self-confident, with that elegant detachment from things that often makes her utter one of her historical phrases: “If you know you are going to fail, then you fail gloriously”, Blanchett, however, had a complicated childhood and adolescence, marked by sudden death. for her father’s heart attack when she was just 10 years old: he was a Texan advertising who had left the US to move to Melbourne for the love of the actress’s mother. Lto whom, in the agitated adolescence spent in Australia, at the age of 15 he decided to shave himself to zero, playing for the job of babysitting in a family, evidently frightened by his sudden choice. And to think that her hair would become one of the hallmarks of her style and her elegance. She often jokes: «The color of my hair is one of the great mysteries of the world. I think I’m vaguely blonde, but to be honest, I don’t know what color I am. ‘