Cate joins elite Oscar club
2008-01-22 21:22
Beverly Hills - Australian screen icon Cate Blanchett joined an elite Oscars club here on Tuesday after scooping Academy Award nominations in both the lead and supporting actress categories.
The 38-year-old star - a best supporting actress winner in 2005 for her memorable portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator - received nods for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and I'm Not There.
No actor has ever won two acting Oscars in the same year and only 10 other performers in Academy Awards history have been nominated in both acting categories at the same time.
Other stars to have achieved the feat include Jamie Foxx in 2004 (for both Ray and Collateral), Julianne Moore in 2002 (Far From Heaven and The Hours) and Al Pacino in 1992 (Scent of a Woman and Glengarry Glen Ross).
Ironically, Blanchett's best actress nomination this year comes for her reprisal of a role that is often cited as the one that propelled her to stardom, that of British monarch Elizabeth I.
Blanchett was nominated for an Oscar in 1998 for Elizabeth and has now earned another nod for last year's sequel to the historical epic.
Only four other actors - Paul Newman, Bing Crosby, Peter O'Toole and Al Pacino - have received separate Oscars nominations for playing the same role.
As Queen Elizabeth Blanchett faces stiff competition for the best actress Oscar from British veteran Julie Christie (Away from Her) and France's Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose).
But she is widely tipped to win her second best supporting actress Oscar, after rave reviews for her gender-bending performance as a young Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' biopic I'm Not There, which earned her a Golden Globe earlier this month.
- SAPA