Cate Blanchett Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

EXCLUSIVE: Nina Hoss (Tár) and Nicholas Pinnock (For Life) have closed deals to join the new film Hedda from MGM’s Orion Pictures. While details as to their roles haven’t been disclosed, they join an ensemble that also includes Tessa Thompson, Callum Turner and Eve Hewson, as previously announced.

Fantasy on TV was once the preserve of teen-skewing shows like Xena and Hercules, until Game of Thrones made things bigger but bloodier with its blockbuster eight-year run. Now, however, the genre is expanding in unexpected ways, typified by Amazon’s The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power. Where we might have expected another adaptation about obviously good folk fighting clear evil, the show that emerged offers a look at power, obsession and conflict set thousands of years before J.R.R. Tolkien’s foundational text. After Thrones (and its own prequel), it is a coming-of-age for the genre, proof that fantasy is capable of offering subtlety and complexity as well as large-scale adventure.

Christopher Vourlias Celebrating its tenth anniversary as part of the industry program of the Transilvania Film Festival, the Transilvania Pitch Stop — one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for filmmakers from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the wider Black Sea region — will showcase 10 projects by first- and second-time directors searching for potential European partners on June 15 in the historic medieval city of Cluj. The selection, which includes projects from eight countries, is a diverse crop that ranges from intimate personal dramas to stories casting a wider net, capturing their protagonists in the throes of historical forces.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International The documentary “This Changes Everything” is getting a Canadian adaptation. Geena Davis and New York-based production house CreativeChaos will again partner for a new edition of their Gracie Award-winning film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was released in U.S. cinemas in 2019 and globally distributed by Starz and Netflix. The doc included interviews with top women in Hollywood discussing discrimination and the #MeToo movement, which was still in its nascent stages at that time. Actors involved in the original film included Davis, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Taraji P. Henson, Reese Witherspoon, Cate Blanchett, Tiffany Haddish, Jill Soloway, Shonda Rhimes, Jessica Chastain, Yara Shahidi, Chloe Grace Moretz, Amandla Stenberg, Alan Alda, Sandra Oh, Anita Hill, Rashida Jones, Rose McGowan, Judd Apatow, Rosario Dawson and Maria Giese.

K.J. Yossman Sean Bean and Miranda Richardson are set to star alongside John Malkovich in the biopic of Romanian composer Sergiu Celibidache, Variety can reveal. Also joining the cast is Ben Schnetzer (“The Book Thief”), who has replaced Rupert Friend after scheduling difficulties meant Friend had to drop out of the project. Schnetzer will play a young version of Celebidachi while Malkovich will play the composer later in life. They will be joined by Kate Phillips (“Downton Abbey”), Anton Lesser (“Game of Thrones”) and Charlie Rowe (“Rocketman”). “The Yellow Tie” tells the story of controversial classical conductor Sergiu Celibidache, one of Romania’s best known classical music artists. He battled homelessness and prejudice before becoming the youngest ever conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

star-studded stints at Leeds and Man United saw him win five league titles in six seasons.  Upon hanging up his boots in 1997, Cantona began accepting film roles, his first part in English that of the French ambassador Monsieur Le Foix in Cate Blanchett vehicle Elizabeth.

Bread and Roses) followed suit, in Dior eye-popping lipstick red (with precedent smashing flip flops!). The face of Louis Vuitton – Cate Blanchett – switched up LV black and white numbers for different premieres. Marion Cotillard just tossed on a Chanel mini tweed coatdress.

Guy Lodge Film Critic One night before the winners in the Cannes Film Festival’s main Competition are announced, the festival’s second-most prestigious awards ceremony is currently under way, with Un Certain Regard jury president John C. Reilly and his fellow jurors Paula Beer, Davy Chou, Alice Winocour and Émilie Dequenne announcing their picks from a lineup that includes such breakout titles as Rodrigo Moreno’s “The Delinquents,” Molly Manning Walker’s “How to Have Sex” and Warwick Thornton’s Cate Blanchett starrer “The New Boy.” Updating list of winners below: Best Director: “The Mother of All Lies,” Asmae El Moudir Freedom Prize: “Goodbye Julia,” Mohamed Kordofani Ensemble Prize: “The Buriti Flower,” João Salaviza, Renée Nader Messora, cast and crew

Warwick Thornton is no stranger to La Croisette. His debut feature, “Samson and Delilah,” won the Camera d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where his latest feature, “The New Boy,” just had its premiere.  READ MORE: 2023 Cannes Film Festival: 21 Must-See Movies To Watch “The New Boy” never gives its protagonist, the titular New Boy, a name.

Kobe Bryant has faced criticism over the clip - with some accusing her of 'blackface'. TikTok user @easy_baobo, who is Asian but believed to be living in the US, posted footage of herself wearing an LA Lakers vest before using makeup, a latex cap and fake facial hair to look like the basketball star, who died in January 2020 in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles.  More than 180,000 people have since liked the clip but many of the comments in reaction to it are negative - while others defend the footage, saying it's clearly a fan paying tribute.

Martin Scorsese unveiled “Killers of the Flower Moon” at Cannes on Saturday, debuting a sweeping American epic about greed and exploitation on the bloody plains of an Osage Nation reservation in 1920s Oklahoma.

Aussie filmmaker Warwick Thornton joked that Cate Blanchett “elbowed” her way into his crafty sixth feature, The New Boy, as he introduced the pic at Deadline’s Cannes Studio shortly before its festival premiere.

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent Cate Blanchett debuted her latest acting role in “The New Boy” at the Cannes Film Festival this week, but the Oscar-winner wouldn’t mind staying behind the camera a bit more. “I’m always trying to get out of acting,” Blanchett said. “I’ve been trying to stop acting my entire professional life.” Speaking at her Kering Women in Motion talk at Cannes, in conversation with her producing partner, Coco Francini, Blanchett said that her recent producing work behind the camera “feels an extension, for me, of my work as an actor.” “I remember an Australian film director saying to me really early on in my career that I had to stop taking small roles,” Blanchett recalled. “And I said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘That was the most interesting role.’ I didn’t want to play the lead. I want that one.”

For about half an hour or so, Warwick Thornton’s “The New Boy” could almost fool you into thinking that it’ll be a gentle, evocative and beautifully atmospheric movie about a small group of people who mean well. But then things change, and an understated film that might have quietly dealt with Australia’s original sin – the decades-long removal of indigenous children from their parents – turns complex, spiritual and surpassingly unsettling, a mixture of religion and magic that doesn’t really trust in either.It’s still beautifully composed, but it cuts that beauty with some thorny ideas and puzzling turns; it starts out beguiling, but it may end up getting under your skin.Best known for “Samson and Delilah,” which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009, Warwick has largely been working in television since then, with the notable exception of 2017’s “Sweet Country,” which looked at the conflict between white settlers and Aboriginal people.

Cate Blanchett is keeping busy while attending the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

The battle for gender equality in the cinema industry is gaining ground but victory is a long way off, representatives of Time’s Up! UK, L.A.-based org ReFrame, France’s Collectif 50/50 and Brazil’s Mulheres group told a panel in Cannes on Friday.

Guy Lodge Film Critic The new boy doesn’t get a name, and he doesn’t give one. Arriving at an isolated orphanage in rural South Australia in the early 1940s, he’s taken in with brisk kindness by the two nuns who oversee the place, but privileges like names are for children a little further along in their understanding and acceptance of this establishment’s firm Christian principles: Until he’s ready for baptism, the shirtless, mostly wordless Aboriginal newcomer will be acknowledged but not identified. It’s a limbo state that evocatively represents the tension between Australia’s Indigenous population and even the most notionally inclusive of their colonizers; in Warwick Thornton’s thoughtful magical-realist fable “The New Boy,” spiritual differences aren’t treated with violence, but echo bloody territorial conflict just the same.

Alissa Simon Film Critic Australian helmer-screenwriter-cinematographer Warwick Thornton won Cannes’ Camera d’Or with “Samson and Delilah” in 2009. Now he’s back with his third feature, “The New Boy,” competing in Un Certain Regard. The film turns on the story of an Aboriginal child, who arrives at a remote monastery run by a renegade nun. The new boy’s presence disturbs a delicately balanced world in this story of spiritual struggle and the cost of survival. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Deborah Mailman and Wayne Blair, and is produced by Kath Shelper, Andrew Upton, Blanchett and Lorenzo de Maio. Veterans is selling in Cannes.  How did the Cannes Golden Camera influence your career?

William Earl Variety has announced the initial lineup for the Kering Women in Motion talks at the Cannes Film Festival. Moderated by Variety’s Senior Correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister, this year’s talks include some of the most important women working in cinema and offers a mix between up-and-coming talent and iconic figures such as Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh. On Thursday, May 18, playwright, actor and philanthropist Jeremy O. Harris, who stars in Directors’ Fortnight premiere “The Sweet East,” will kick off the Women in Motion series to discuss female representation in his work. Following Harris’ talk, actress and director Katie Holmes will speak about her work as a director and how the industry has changed in its approach to female directors since she first began working in television.

Cannes is ready to party again with the likes of Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, Alicia Vikander, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett all set for a Côte d’Azur hoedown. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) look at some of festival festivities on deck at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off Tuesday and runs through May 27.

Sophia Scorziello editor The 2024 Independent Spirit Awards are set to take place in Los Angeles on Feb. 25. The 39th annual awards will recognize achievements in American independent film and television and celebrate the power of independent visual storytelling. The February date, on a Sunday, puts the awards two weeks ahead of the March 10 Oscars, rather than the day before as the Spirits had been in some previous years. This year, the Spirit Awards embraced non-gendered award categories. ““For the first time in history, all the men will know how all the women feel when they find out they are competing against Cate Blanchett,” said the host of the evening, comedian, producer and writer Hasan Minhaj. The joke was met with a close-up of Blanchett looking quite confused.

Marta Balaga As high-profile international productions continue to flock to Italy, its film commissions have joined forces, leaving producers’ old divide-and-conquer playbook in the dust. “We believe that the success of one member is the success of all members,” says Cristina Priarone, president of the Italian Film Commissions Assn. The organization was created — alongside the Italy for Movies web site, with a searchable database — to help potential collaborators easily access information about available regional funds, and other advantages offered by different regions. “This network has increased Italy’s talent to attract productions, welcome them at the highest level and easily move their sets from one region to another,” adds Toscana Film Commission’s Stefania Ippoliti.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor From the royalty of Elizabeth I to the betrayal of superhero villain Hela, Australian sensation Cate Blanchett is one of the most revered performers of her generation, with some of the most riveting turns in modern cinema.  To celebrate her birthday, Variety ranks her 15 best performances of her career (so far). Beloved by critics, audiences,s and awards bodies, Blanchett has displayed a career that aspiring actors dream about.

Cara Delevingne and Shailene Woodley are set to star in a creative biopic about acclaimed author Patricia Highsmith.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Warwick Thornton’s “The New Boy” has been set as the opening title of next month’s Sydney Film Festival, which will celebrate its 70th edition, June 7-18. The film, a tale of sprituality and survival in 1940s Australia, starring Cate Blanchett, Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair and Aswan Reid, will also play in the festival’s competition section.

Apple’s comedy series Bad Sisters and Martin McDonagh’s latest feature, The Banshees of Inisherin, took the top honors at this year’s Irish Film & TV Awards (IFTAs). Scroll down for the complete list of winners.

SAG-AFTRA, in partnership with the Motion Picture Association and a host of other industry unions and organizations, has launched the Green Council Initiative to promote eco-responsible entertainment. Founded by SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, the initiative’s top priority is the reduction of single-use plastic on set, on screen and in audience homes, while normalizing the use and depictions of reusables – much like the “Buckle Up Hollywood!” movement pushed to promote seat belt awareness back in the 1990s.

EXCLUSIVE: Nordic programmer Viaplay has set the slate of projects it will debut on the North American version of its streaming platform this summer.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Gwyneth Paltrow said on a recent episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast that her 1999 best actress Oscar win for “Shakespeare in Love” led to an unhealthy identity crisis. Paltrow was only 26 years old at the time when she won the Academy Award against the likes of Cate Blanchett (“Elizabeth”) and Meryl Streep (“One True King”). “Once I won the Oscar, it put me into a bit of an identity crisis, because if you win the biggest prize, like what are you supposed to do? And where are you supposed to go?” Paltrow said. “It was hard the amount of attention that you receive on a night like that and the weeks following, it’s so disorienting. And frankly, really unhealthy. I was like, ‘This is crazy. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know which way is up.’ It was a lot. Not that I would give it back or anything, it was an amazing experience, but it kind of called a lot of things into question for me.”

Chukwudi Iwuji was a kid growing up in Nigeria and Ethiopia, he imagined he could fly. The second youngest of five, he would spend hours on his own, meticulously reenacting scenes he’d seen on TV, playing every part himself. Virtually all of what captured his imagination were American shows and films from the 1970s and ’80s: “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Godfather” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” via broadcast reruns and bootleg VHS tapes. After he first saw “Star Wars,” he would stare intensely at a plastic cup, willing it to move. And “Superman,” of course, convinced Iwuji he could leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Anne Hathaway returns to the Met steps! On the first Monday of May, the 40-year-old actress made her return to the Met Gala at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, wearing a look from the Versace Icons collection.The star looked stunning in the strategically-slashed cream-colored gown, with gold accents pinning it together. The look was completed with long, matching gloves and white platform heels.Hathaway even got a chance to reunite with co-star Jared Leto, who rocked yet another show-stopping Met Gala look, dressing up in a full, furry, white mascot costume, in honor of Karl Lagerfeld's beloved cat, Choupette.Hathaway last attended the fashion event in 2018 when she co-chaired alongside Rihanna and Amal Clooney.

“Don’t Look Up” writer/director/producer Adam McKay has inked a deal to bring his upcoming film “Average Height, Average Build” to Netflix.The comedy will star Robert Pattinson, Amy Adams and Robert Downey Jr. McKay will also write and produce the film, Netflix confirmed to TheWrap Sunday.As expected with any McKay film, the cast of “Average Height, Average Build” is star-stacked.

Spring has sprung — which means it’s time to look ahead to winter. Organizers of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival said today that its 39th annual event will run February 7-17 in the coastal California town.

William Earl Nicholas Stango has been promoted to executive producer of video for Variety, a role where he’ll oversee all editorial video production for one of the biggest brands in entertainment news. “Nick is a thoughtful, innovative leader who has created some of our most successful video franchises,” say Variety co-editors-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh and Cynthia Littleton. “Under his watch, we can’t wait for Variety to continue to grow as the No. 1 destination in the digital space for videos about the entertainment industry.” Since Stango was promoted in February, Variety‘s video team has been on a winning streak. In the 24 hours following the start of the 2023 Oscars red carpet, Variety notched its highest-ever day of social traffic, racking up 122 million video views across platforms. 

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Steven Soderbergh’s beloved 2001 heist comedy “Ocean’s Eleven” remains one of the director’s most star-studded affairs thanks to an ensemble that included George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Don Cheadle and more. It turns out the group wanted even more star power, as Clooney recently confirmed reports that both Mark Wahlberg and Johnny Depp were approached to star in the movie (via Entertainment Weekly). “Steven had just done ‘Erin Brockovich’ and ‘Traffic,’ and he was nominated for [an Oscar for] directing both films,” Clooney said during a discussion with Soderbergh at the TCM Film Festival. “So, people really wanted to work with Steven.”