Do we like Cate Blanchett?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A long, steady record on refugees and women in film, with no harmful words or acts found, and a couple of debates she has copped over.
Cate Blanchett was born in Melbourne in 1969 and graduated from Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992. Hollywood noticed her after Paradise Road and Oscar and Lucinda in 1997, and Elizabeth in 1998 earned her a Golden Globe and a first Oscar nomination.
The big prizes followed: best supporting actress for The Aviator in 2005, then best actress for Blue Jasmine in 2014. In between she played Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings and Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, and in 2008 she and her husband Andrew Upton became co-artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company.
On the harm test, we found no slide into grievance, conspiracy or culture-war grifting. The most-covered LGBTQ+ moment is from 2018, when she said she would “fight to the death” for the right to play roles beyond her own experience, which was a defence of straight actors in gay roles. That is a casting debate where reasonable people disagree, and it is not an attack on anyone.
Her refugee work is the real stuff. She has been a UNHCR goodwill ambassador since May 2016. In 2023 she told the European Parliament that the belief every refugee is headed for Europe is a “dangerous myth”, and said solidarity shown to people fleeing Ukraine should be afforded to all.
She is also heading back to the classroom. Oxford announced in June 2026 that she will be its Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre for 2026-27. The reporting we read turned up no court cases against her and nothing from a credible outlet to set against her.
The record is not perfect, since we couldn't dig up much on her politics beyond refugees and the Cannes remarks, and a good-person verdict rests on a clean file rather than a long list of kind acts. Still, a decade of refugee advocacy and a career spent backing women in film adds up to a solid yes from us.