Yahoo Movies Who Is Cate Blanchett's Husband? All About Andrew Upton
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Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton have a love story for the ages.
While they may not have liked each other at first, it didn't take long for the Tár actress and the playwright to change their minds. Within three weeks of meeting, the couple were engaged, and they went on to tie the knot in 1997. Now, nearly three decades later, they are still going strong and are the proud parents of four children: Dashiell, Roman, Ignatius and Edith.
Their creative temperaments and talents make them a powerhouse pair in Hollywood and onstage. Not only do they pursue their own personal passions, but they also work together and inspire one another constantly. "He's one of the few grounded people I know whose head is in the stars," Blanchett told Vanity Fair of her husband in 1999. "He's able to stretch between the sky and the earth. Those people are very rare."
So, who is Andrew Upton? Here's everything to know about Cate Blanchett's playwright and director husband.
He's Australian
Like his wife, Upton is from Australia. He was born in Sydney and attended the University of Sydney.
He's a playwright, screenwriter, director and producer
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Upton wears many hats in the theater and entertainment world. He's worked as a playwright, screenwriter, director and even an actor in a few small projects.
The multihyphenate has done everything from adapting famous plays for the National Theatre in London to serving as director of the Sydney Theatre Company's Waiting for Godot adaptation. He even wrote a libretto for an opera.
Upton has also worked with actress Rose Byrne and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
He and Blanchett share four kids
The proud parents share sons Dashiell, Roman and Ignatius, and daughter Edith. The couple prefer to keep their children out of the public eye and in fact, Blanchett has said that her children are "disinterested" in their mom's fame.
"They have no idea," the actress said, adding that their lack of amusement is "in the best possible, healthiest way."
He follows a specific structure when starting a new project
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Upton opened up about his creative process while speaking at the University of Melbourne in 2020, explaining that he tends to follow a five-act structure to help him get started with a new project.
"It comes down to the very simple syntactical notion of beginning, middle and end," he shared. "You get an audience together and if you get them right on the edge of their seat and your actors are right on the edge of their readiness and everything's unformed, then you have a genuine beginning. And if you have a genuine beginning and people come to the party and there's a contact made, then I think it's very, very satisfying to complete that."
He and Blanchett didn't like each other at first
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Like many Hollywood couples, Blanchett and Upton first met through work. According to Blanchett, she was acting in a Chekov play when she encountered the man she would eventually marry in 1997, but it wasn't love at first sight — the two didn't like each other initially.
"He thought I was aloof and I thought he was arrogant," she told Vanity Fair in 1999. "And it just shows how wrong you can be. But once he kissed me, that was that."
Blanchett added that her newfound happiness with Upton had an impact on her performance, saying, "Every night I would come to the theater so happy, so fulfilled, and I thought, 'How am I going to get to the last scene, where my life has to be destroyed?' I thought, 'O.K., if I can't cry I'll just apologize to everyone afterwards.' But because the play was so good, and because joy and grief actually come from the same wellspring, I was just carried along."
He and Blanchett got engaged quickly
The couple didn't waste time once they got together. Blanchett later told Ellen DeGeneres in 2015 that Upton proposed three weeks into their relationship, just after Blanchett prepared what she called a "terrible" meal.
When asked about the moment she knew Upton was the one, the actress revealed that it only took three days. "We were in bed, as you are after three days, and he said, 'Cate,' and I thought, 'S--- he's gonna ask me to marry him and I'm gonna have to say yes.' " she recalled, laughing. "And then he said, 'No, I'm hungry, do you want to go get something to eat?' "
She added, "Then he asked me after about 21 days and I said yes."
He and Blanchett are business partners
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The director and the actress have no trouble working together and they have combined their talents for various projects. Blanchett and Upton formed their own production company, Dirty Films, where they both work behind the scenes to produce TV and film projects such as The New Boy and the Apple TV+ series Disclaimer. Upton also executive produced Blanchett's 2015 movie Carol, for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The pair served as artistic directors for the Sydney Theatre Company as well.
Upton told PEOPLE that he enjoys working with his famous wife. "It's great. We've always worked together in a way. You have your odd, 'No, no, no, we have to do this,' but in the end you can say, 'Oh, all right, I'll fight for that next year, then,' " he said in 2008. "That collaborative approach is a really important part of theatre — it's compromise that adds, not detracts."
Blanchett, too, finds creative purpose in their partnership. "It's been a great creative partnership with my husband and also a great love affair," she told E! Online in 2015. "Working together, running a creative company in Australia. It's been fantastic."
He's a practical gift giver
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When it comes to anniversary gifts, Upton prefers to stick to "modern" ideas and eschew the more "romantic" traditional recommendations. "My first wedding anniversary my husband gave me a vacuum cleaner and then he gave me a mixer," Blanchett joked to the Mirror in 2020, adding that she called their anniversary the "microwave" anniversary.
"It used to be silver and gold but now that list includes coffee makers and irons and gone is the sense of getting to the gold and diamond anniversary," she added. "Now it's the microwave anniversary. It's so less romantic now and timeless."
