Cate Blanchett has proven herself to be one of the most important actors of her generation. Her filmography includes many great movies, and she always adds gravitas to any project she works on. Some of her best work is part of major franchises, including the MCU and The Lord of the Rings. She has collaborated with award-winning directors like Alejandro Iñárritu, Taika Waititi, Guillermo del Toro, and David Fincher, among many others. Blanchett’s range extends from broad comedies to dark and disturbing melodramas.

Blanchett has been nominated for five Best Actress Oscars, winning for Blue Jasmine, and three Best ing Actress Oscars, winning for The Aviator. Blanchett has also been nominated for 12 Golden Globe Awards across various categories and won four times. Her awards plaudits go far beyond those two distinguished ceremonies, but if there is a year with Blanchett in a role, hers will be discussed as one of the top performances.

20 The Hobbit Trilogy (2012, 2013, 2014)

Galadriel

Nearly a decade after leaving the world of Middle-earth behind, Cate Blanchett returned as Galadriel in The Hobbit films. Peter Jackson once again adapts J.R.R. Tolkien’s work into a three-part epic following the adventures of the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. These movies didn't quite stir the same emotions as the original films, but it was still a welcome return to the familiar world made possible on screen by Jackson, and they were as amazingly constructed as the original LOTR trilogy.

Returning as Galadriel, Blanchett has much more to do in these films, even getting an action set piece. She is not on-screen often, but when she is, it’s a great reminder of how naturally she embodies the ethereal Elf queen. Luckily, since her character ages slowly (as all elves do), Blanchett had no problem stepping back into the role of one of the most powerful Lord of the Rings characters in the franchise, helping build a character that was already quite formidable in the original trilogy.

19 Don't Look Up (2021)

Brie Evantee

Though Cate Blanchett's movies don't often include comedies, she held her own in the massive comic star-studded ensemble of Don't Look Up. Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio lead the film as two frustrated scientists trying to convince a disinterested world that a comet is heading for Earth. Blanchett plays Brie Evantee, a morning show host who has an affair with DiCaprio's character. She is also someone more interested in celebrity news than world-ending catastrophes.

Blanchett’s turn as Brie hilariously encapsulates a type of self-satisfied anchor who is only interested in getting the hottest pull quote from her interviewee.

Don’t Look Up was instantly divisive upon release thanks to its touchy subject matter and biting satire of the U.S. political landscape. Blanchett’s turn as Brie hilariously encapsulates a type of self-satisfied anchor who is only interested in getting the hottest pull quote from her interviewee. Despite polarizing reviews, Don't Look Up received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. It was also one of Netflix's most-streamed movies of all time, giving a lot of people a chance to see Blanchett doing comedy.

18 Babel (2006)

Susan Jones

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel is a multi-narrative tale that follows four short stories, all interconnected by a gun. Though the characters are often only tangentially related, the reverberations of one story cause massive consequences in another. Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are a couple going through a difficult time, and they take a trip to Morocco to reconnect. While on the bus, Susan is struck by an errant bullet from one of the other storylines, and the rest of the engers demand to leave her behind.

The film earned six Academy Award nominations, though none for Blanchett. While her performance captures the "entitled American on vacation" archetype, she spends much of the film in medical trauma, giving up more screen time to Pitt. Babel ​​​​​​ultimately only won one Oscar (Best Original Score). However, it launched the career of Iñárritu, who went on to win Best Director for both Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and The Revenant over the next decade.

17 Veronica Guerin (2003)

Veronica Guerin

Veronica Guerin stars Cate Blanchett in the titular role as the real-life Irish journalist who was murdered for her investigations into the Dublin drug trade. Blanchett received a Golden Globe nomination for her role in the life story of Guerin, whose frustration with the impact of crime on her neighborhood led her to uncover the highest reaches of the criminal underworld.

Guerin is clearly irable and heroic for her reporting, but the multilayered Blanchett adds an element of self-importance that makes for a much more compelling performance than one solely of a one-dimensional, courageous figure. While the ending was already known, since this is based on a true story, Blanchett did a much better job of bringing the story to the screen than the earlier effort, When the Sky Falls, which starred Joan Allen in the lead role.

16 Hanna (2011)

Marissa Wiegler

Following his Oscar-nominated films Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, Joe Wright made a very different movie with the action thriller Hanna. Saoirse Ronan reunited with Wright after Atonement as Hanna Heller, a teenager who lives in rural Finland with her father, Erik, a former CIA operative who has trained her in combat and shooting skills. The reason for this is that senior CIA officer Marissa Wiegler wants to kill Erik, and he has trained Hanna to assassinate Marissa to ensure both of their freedom.

This gave Cate Blanchett a big chance to play a villain, as she is the devious and murderous Marissa, and the battle of wits and skills between her and Hanna is a dazzling display to watch. The film received high critical praise despite its status as an action movie, and Wright's direction was a big part of bringing out the acting talent of Blanchett, Ronan, and Eric Bana. It received several awards and ended up with a TV series remake on Amazon Prime Video.

15 Hot Fuzz (2007)

Janine

Hot Fuzz is a cult classic and a beloved Edgar Wright film, part of the Three Flavours Cornettos trilogy. Simon Pegg stars as police constable Nicholas Angel, a London top cop who is sent to a sleepy small country town when his great work makes his other officers look bad. While there, he teams up with Nick Frost's Danny Butterman and soon learns that the Neighborhood Watch Alliance is killing anyone who commits crimes or makes the town look bad. It is a brilliant buddy cop comedy and one of the best movies of the new century.

Cate Blanchett has a wild role in the movie because she is not credited, and her face is never shown.

Cate Blanchett plays Janine, Nicholas Angel's ex-girlfriend. The two broke up before the movie started, and when Nicholas goes to tell her he is being transferred, she tells him he will never be happy until he finds someone he cares about more than his job. While it was one scene and one small conversation, it was her dialogue that set Angel off on his mission to become a better person.

14 Black Bag (2025)

Kathryn St. Jean

In 2025, Cate Blanchett ed up with Michael Fassbender for a new Steven Soderbergh movie. In Black Bag, Soderbergh returned to what looks like a crowd-pleasing bigger-budget movie with a loaded cast and the coolness that fans of Oceans's Eleven might appreciate. The story sees Blanchett and Fassbender starring as a husband and wife who are both secret intelligence agents. However, when Blanchett's Kathryn is believed to have committed treason, her husband is sent to learn the truth and kill her if she is guilty.

The cast is impressive, with Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan, Marissa Abela, and Gustaf Skarsgård in ing roles, and the direction and acting led it to receive almost universally good reviews. The positive reviews praise Soderbergh's film as being "sleek in design and spiked with dry wit," while both Fassbender and Blanchett receive praise as "movie stars" who "light up the screen."

13 The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008)

Daisy Fuller

Brad Pitt and David Fincher team up for their third film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and bring Cate Blanchett along. This epic story centers on the titular man (Pitt) who ages in reverse and his romance with Daisy Fuller (Blanchett), who only have a few years when they can realistically have a relationship. Though Blanchett is not the star, her character provides the wrap-around story.

The film earned 13 Academy Award nominations, winning three in technical categories. Blanchett’s performance is grounded and sad, a human counterpoint to the magical realism with which her character must contend throughout her entire life. While Blanchett had a much smaller role than Pitt, she carried her own and was the heart and soul of the film and of Benjamin Button's life story.

12 How To Train Your Dragon Franchise (2019)

Valka (Voice)

Cate Blanchett ed the How to Train Your Dragon franchise in How to Train Your Dragon 2 and returned for How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. She voices Hiccup’s mother, Valka, who is thought dead until Hiccup finds her. The franchise is noted for incredible visual storytelling and roller-coaster-like action sequences. Parental figures feature heavily in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, and when Stoic, Hiccup’s father, exits, Blanchett’s imperial and motherly voice is an excellent replacement.

While Blanchett was a late addition, it added a lot to the story because it was Valka who set the story in motion when Stoic believed a dragon killed her.

She portrays a loving maternal figure and a young, fiery woman who regrets how she left her family. While Blanchett was a late addition, it added a lot to the story because it was Valka who set the story in motion when Stoic believed a dragon killed her, and it is her return that shows that Hiccup's mission was always the right one. It also allows Stoic to have his tragic, heartbreaking exit, while setting up the story for the future.

11 Nightmare Alley (2021)

Dr. Lilith Ritter

Nightmare Alley from Guillermo del Toro is a remake of the 1947 classic and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Cate Blanchett a SAG nomination for her ing role as Dr. Lilith Ritter. This neo-noir thriller follows a carnival conman named Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) who uses his showmanship and talent for manipulation to gain fame and wealth before his schemes close in on him.

Out of all Cate Blanchett's movies, she is at her most sexy, dangerous, and manipulative in Nightmare Alley. She’s perfectly pulpy in her portrayal, chewing the scenery and mesmerizing Stan and the audience, fitting right in as the old-Hollywood femme fatale. There are many villains in the film, as this is not a world with redeeming characters, but it is Ritter who might be the most despicable, and Blanchett brings sex appeal to the role to cap off a brilliant villainous turn.