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50 free Cate Blanchett trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Cate Blanchett's first screen credit was as an American cheerleader extra in an Egyptian boxing film, taken because she needed the money. Within a decade she was Elizabeth I, Galadriel and Katharine Hepburn, the last of which made her the only actor ever to win an Oscar for playing another Oscar-winning actor. A second Academy Award followed for Blue Jasmine, and Tár brought her eighth nomination. This quiz covers the whole range: her Melbourne childhood and NIDA training, the Sydney stage work with Geoffrey Rush, the Shekhar Kapur films, the Tolkien trilogies, the Scorsese, Jarmusch, Malick, Haynes and Field collaborations, the Marvel villain and the Disney stepmother, the voice roles from Ponyo to Pinocchio, the Sydney Theatre Company years with Andrew Upton, the Broadway debut, the miniseries, and the refugee and climate work that now fills her time between films. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a film-night quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cate Blanchett was born in 1969 in which suburb of Melbourne?
Ivanhoe
Her Texan father was a US Navy chief petty officer whose ship broke down in Melbourne; he died of a heart attack when she was ten.
Q 02From which drama school did Blanchett graduate in 1992?
NIDA
The National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. She had started a business degree at the University of Melbourne first.
Q 03Blanchett's first screen appearance was as a cheerleader extra in which 1990 Egyptian film?
Kaboria
She was travelling in Egypt, needed money and said yes to a boxing film.
Q 04Her first stage role, opposite Geoffrey Rush in 1992, was in which David Mamet play?
Oleanna
The following year she won Sydney's Best Newcomer and Best Actress awards at once, the first actor to take both in one year.
Q 05Blanchett's feature film debut was as a captured nurse in which 1997 Bruce Beresford film?
Paradise Road
Glenn Close and Frances McDormand co-starred; it made about $2 million on a $19 million budget.
Q 06Who starred opposite Blanchett in her first lead role, Oscar and Lucinda (1997)?
Ralph Fiennes
The part of heiress Lucinda Leplastrier had been meant for Judy Davis; Variety predicted the 'luminous newcomer' would become a major star.
Q 07Who directed Blanchett as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth (1998) and its 2007 sequel?
Shekhar Kapur
The first film won her a Golden Globe and BAFTA; the sequel made her the only female actor Oscar-nominated twice for the same role.
Q 08Which elf does Blanchett play in The Lord of the Rings trilogy?
Galadriel
The trilogy took $2.981 billion worldwide; all three films made Wired's 2012 top-10 fantasy films.
Q 09Roughly how much did The Lord of the Rings trilogy earn at the worldwide box office?
$2.98 billion
The Hobbit trilogy, which brought her back, made nearly $3 billion more.
Q 10Which actor played one of the escaped convicts opposite Blanchett in the 2001 comedy Bandits?
Billy Bob Thornton
The BBC called the pair 'a real find as comedians'; it was her first notable comedy and brought a second Golden Globe nomination.
Q 11Who directed Heaven (2002), the first part of an unfinished Krzysztof Kieślowski trilogy?
Tom Tykwer
The New York Times called her grieving bomber 'the most compelling screen performance of her career'.
Q 12What was unusual about Blanchett's part in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)?
She played two roles opposite herself
It earned an Independent Spirit nomination. The same year she was in Ron Howard's The Missing and the biopic Veronica Guerin.
Q 13Who directed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, in which Blanchett played a pregnant journalist?
Wes Anderson
Q 21Which character did Blanchett voice in the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo?
Granmamare
The same year she was Daisy Fuller, the love interest in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Q 22Who directed Blanchett as Blanche DuBois in the 2009 production of A Streetcar Named Desire?
Liv Ullmann
Joel Edgerton was Stanley. Meryl Streep said she had never really seen the play until that performance.
Q 23Blanchett played Lady Marion opposite which actor's Robin Hood in 2010?
Russell Crowe
Ridley Scott's epic drew mixed reviews but took $321 million.
Bill Murray's eccentric oceanographer was the subject of her character's reporting.
Q 14Blanchett won her first Oscar for playing which screen legend in The Aviator?
Katharine Hepburn
It made her the first actor to win an Academy Award for playing another Academy Award winner. Scorsese had her study the star's first fifteen films.
Q 15Blanchett lent her Aviator Oscar statuette to which institution?
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Her second statuette came nine years later for Blue Jasmine, making her the only Australian with two acting Oscars.
Q 16What is the name of the production company Blanchett runs with her husband?
Dirty Films
It co-produced Little Fish (2005), which won her an AFI Best Actress award and took 13 AFI nominations.
Q 17Who played the obsessive older teacher opposite Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal?
Judi Dench
Richard Eyre directed. Blanchett's lonely teacher, having an affair with a pupil, brought her third Oscar nomination.
Q 18In Hot Fuzz, Blanchett made an uncredited cameo as Simon Pegg's ex-girlfriend, named what?
Janine
She was a forensic scientist seen only in a mask and gave her fee to charity.
Q 19In I'm Not There (2007), Blanchett played one of six incarnations of which musician?
Bob Dylan
Her Jude Quinn won the Volpi Cup at Venice and a Golden Globe, and she was Oscar-nominated the same year as Elizabeth I.
Q 20What is the name of the KGB villain Blanchett plays in the fourth Indiana Jones film?
Irina Spalko
The 2008 film drew mixed reviews but grossed over $790 million.
Q 24In Hanna (2011), Blanchett played a CIA agent named what?
Marissa Wiegler
Joe Wright directed; Saoirse Ronan was the teenage assassin and Eric Bana her father.
Q 25Which character did Blanchett play in the 2011 Uncle Vanya that toured to the Kennedy Center?
Yelena
Her husband adapted Chekhov's play; Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh co-starred, and the New York Times called her one of the bravest actresses on the planet.
Q 26Her Lord of the Rings elf was written into The Hobbit films by Peter Jackson and which co-writer?
Guillermo del Toro
The character does not appear in Tolkien's novel. The Hobbit trilogy earned nearly $3 billion.
Q 27Who directed Blue Jasmine, the 2013 film that won Blanchett her second Oscar?
Woody Allen
Her Jasmine Francis won more than 40 awards and made her the sixth actress to win Oscars in both acting categories.
Q 28Blue Jasmine co-starred Sally Hawkins and which actor?
Alec Baldwin
Mark Kermode likened her performance to a marathon runner ploughing through 26 miles of emotional road.
Q 29Which character does Blanchett voice in How to Train Your Dragon 2?
Valka
Hiccup's long-lost mother. She returned for The Hidden World and is set to reprise the role in Universal's live-action remake.
Q 30Which role did Blanchett play in Kenneth Branagh's 2015 live-action Cinderella?
Lady Tremaine
Time's Richard Corliss said she radiated 'a hauteur that chills as it amuses'.