One of my favorite actresses….

So Bruce Willis, Steve Martin, and John Cusack have all had the glory of being featured on our wall of cool stuff. I figured it was high time an actress had her turn. I barely had to think about who I would choose.

Cate Blanchett of course!

She can handle the meaty dramatic roles, dry comedic ones and can even pass for an ethereal, yet creepy elf.  So I grabbed a selection of Cate’s film’s from the shelves to share with our customers.

In her most recent role Cate plays Daisy, the love of Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Cate’s Daisy must deal with loving Benjamin as he ages backwards through his adventurous life.

In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Cate plays Irina Spalko, a Soviet psychic hell bent on taking a crystal skull from Dr. Jones and gaining power that could endanger the Western world. Not my favorite Indy movie, but Blanchett is a great bad girl!

Cate did the best at embodying the spirit of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. She plays Jude, a character so Dylan like it is positively eerie. Also starring Heath Ledger, Richard Gere and Christian Bale as other incarnations of Dylan.

In Notes on a Scandal, Blanchett plays Sheba Hart, a free-spirited art teacher who catches the attention of the nearly retired battle-ax of a teacher, Barbara Covett (an always brilliant Judi Dench). Covett soon discovers Hart’s sexual indiscretion with a student and feeling betrayed, plots revenge on Hart.

Cate plays Susan Jones in Babel. The wife of Richard Jones (played by Brad Pitt), the couple is struck with tragedy as they are vacationing in Morocco. This touches off an interconnecting story of four groups of people who, while divided by distance and cultural differences, will discover a shared destiny.

In Charlotte Gray, Blanchett plays a young Scottish woman who joins the French Resistance during World War II to rescue her Royal Air Force boyfriend who is lost in France.

Her ethereal turn as Galadriel, the elfin princess/witch in Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring as well as all the other Rings movies, gives me the willies every time I see her. Spooky and beautiful, that’s Cate!

Finally, we have one of the films that helped propel Cate to A list actress. She plays the title role in Elizabeth, the story of Queen Elizabeth I. In this role Cate handles war, romance and the possibility of losing her head if she does not please her country and those running it.

All in all a good selection. While I wish we currently had copies of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or The Missing, two of my more favored Blanchett roles, I think there is always plenty to choose from in her repertoire!

Enjoy!!