Catherine Élise Blanchett (born on May 14, 1969) is an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning Australian actress.Blanchett's husband is playwright and screenwriter Andrew Upton, whom she met in 1996 while she was performing in a production of The Seagull. They were married the following year 1997. It was not love at first sight, however. "He thought I was aloof and I thought he was arrogant," Blanchett later remarked. "It just shows you how wrong you can be. But once he kissed me that was that." The two were married on December 29, 1997. Their first child, Dashiell John, was born on December 3, 2001; their second child, Roman Robert, was born on April 23, 2004. The younger son received a minor burn injury on May 15, 2005 while the family was in Marrakech, Morocco, for the filming of the movie Babel. After initial treatment there, Blanchett flew with him to London for further treatment.
After making England her main family home for most of the early 2000s, she and her husband returned to their native Australia. In 2006, Blanchett said in a Vogue interview of November 2006: "Andrew and I realized how much Australia meant to us. We saw the theatre community in Sydney and we felt, well, we know you all; we have worked with many of you. We have tried to live a few other places, but something really hit us in the gut. It's just a feeling about what home is. It became clear to us, particularly after the children were born, that family and the theatrical community in Australia were a large part of who we are."
In 2006 a portrait of Cate Blanchett and family painted by McLean Edwards was a finalist in the Archibald Prize. The prize is awarded for the "best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics"