Cate Blanchett Will Preside Over 2018 Cannes Jury
Australian stage and screen actress Cate Blanchett will serve as President of the Jury of the 71st Festival de Cannes (Tuesday May 8 through Saturday, May 19). She’s the tenth woman to be jury president, following Olivia de Havilland (1965), Sophia Loren (1966), Michele Morgan (1971), Ingrid Bergman (1973), Jeanne Moreau (1975 and 1995), Francoise Sagan (1979), Isabelle Adjani (1997), Liv Ullmann (2001), Isabelle Huppert (1999), and Jane Campion (2014), the only woman to ever win the Palme d’Or.
Blanchett follows President Pedro Almodóvar, whose jury awarded the Palme d’Or to Ruben Östlund’s eventual shortlisted Swedish Oscar entry “The Square.”
“This festival plays a pivotal role in bringing the world together to celebrate story,” said Blanchett, “that strange and vital endeavor that all peoples share, understand and crave.”
Blanchett has long switched between independents and studio features. She starred in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy by Peter Jackson, David Fincher’s “Benjamin Button,” “Babel” by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic,” “The Good German” by Steven Soderbergh, and “Coffee and Cigarettes” by Jim Jarmusch, as well as other top auteurs including Steven Spielberg, Terrence Malick, Sally Potter, and Ridley Scott.
Blanchett won the 2014 Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in “Blue Jasmine” by Woody Allen and in 2004 Best Supporting Actress in “The Aviator” by Martin Scorsese as Katharine Hepburn, the first time that an actress won an Oscar for playing another actress. Cate Blanchett was also nominated for her performance in Todd Haynes’ Cannes entry “Carol” and his prior “I’m Not There” in 2008, the same year she was also nominated for Best Actress for Shekhar Kapur’s follow-up to “Elizabeth,” “Elizabeth the Golden Age.”
In 2012, Blanchett was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister for Culture and also the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society. In 2015, she won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts before she was made a Companion in the Order of Australia in 2017.
Most recently Blanchett starred as the villain in Marvel’s “Thor: Ragnarok” and will be appear in the all-women “Oceans 8,” set for spring release after Cannes 2018. She will later star in the film adaptation of Maria Semple’s “Where’d You Go Bernadette?” directed by Richard Linklater, and Eli Roth’s “The House with a Clock in its Walls.”
