A Field Guide to Cate Blanchett

One of the most lauded and respected actresses of all-time, Cate Blanchett has gone from relative obscurity 20 years ago to become the gold standard for actresses in Hollywood. Utterly and completely committed to everything she does, Cate has that rare blend of Old Hollywood beauty and New Hollywood talent, putting her in a class all by herself. Cate's latest film, reprising her role in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, opens tonight, so we thought it was time to get up to speed on this blonde beauty.

Born in Melbourne, Australia on May 14, 1969, Cate began her career with small television roles in her native Australia. Her big break came when she landed the leading role in the TV miniseries Bordertown in 1995, bleaching her already naturally blonde hair to play a young girl with a rough upbringing. It's here that she also makes her nude debut, showing off some startlingly blonde pubic hair to a guy!

In case you missed that quick flash of her silken bush, here's a still...

It certainly put her on the map in the land down under, but it wouldn't be long before Cate would break into international stardom. In 1997, Cate turned heads in the mostly female ensemble film Paradise Road, stealing the thunder of her more famous co-stars like Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. She doesn't go nude in the film, but she does walk around in a sheer top that nicely shows off the outline of her breasts...

The following year, Cate would land the biggest role of her career as Queen Elizabeth I in the lush romantic biopic Elizabeth. After winning a Golden Globe and BAFTA for her performance, she seemed like a solid contender to take home the Oscar, but alas she lost to Gwyneth Paltrow. Even still, it brought Cate's (super brief) topless debut! While in bed with Joseph Fiennes—who romanced both Blanchett and Paltrow on screen that year—we get a quick peek at her left breast as Fiennes works his way down her naked body!

Cate parlayed this success into higher profile roles in bigger films, the biggest of which saw her playing Lady Galadriel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy—and technically those Hobbit movies too—defining one of pop culture's most famous characters for an entire generation. Her ethereal, otherworldly beauty gives her a power in this role that many other actresses would have struggled to bring to the table.

Cate won her first Oscar in 2004 for playing another Oscar winner, Katherine Hepburn, in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, and scored her third Oscar nomination two years later for Notes on a Scandal, in which she showed some scandalous cleavage!

In 2007, Cate scored double Oscar nominations, first for her supporting role as one of the actors playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, and also in the lead actress category for the costume drama sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Sadly she went home empty handed, but she did bare her buns in the latter flick. Well, technically Cate was pregnant with her third son at the time and decided to leave the film's nude scene to a body double...

The following year, Cate was back in the Oscar race for her role in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In this love story, she plays a ballerina who falls for the titular backwards aging man, played by Brad Pitt. She shows off some nice pokies in a ballet scene, though she once again used a body double for her nude scene...

Cate spent the next few years bouncing between blockbusters—Indiana Jones 4, Cinderella—and smaller indie films—The Turning, Knight of Cups—even winning her second Oscar for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine. 2015's Carol, however, gave Blanchett one of her best roles to date, as the titular housewife who falls for a shopgirl played by Rooney Mara in the super-repressed 1950s. Director Todd Haynes tenderly shoots their first lesbian encounter, with Blanchett showing more skin that she had in over a decade!

There is a brief shot of her left breast as she climbs on top of Rooney, which you can see better in this still...

The most amazing thing about Cate Blanchett is that no matter where she shows up next, you just know she's going to give a world class performance—and there's a better than average chance she'll land an Oscar nomination for it.

Check out our other Field Guides by clicking here

All images and GIFs courtesy of MrSkin.com

All non-nude, non Mr. Skin branded images courtesy of IMDb