Cate Blanchett has won the 2014 Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Woody Allen's “Blue Jasmine.” This is her second Academy Award after winning the Best Supporting Actress prize in 2005 for her performance as Katharine Hepburn in “The Aviator.”
“As random and as subjective as this award is, it means a great deal in a year of extraordinary performances,” Blanchett said upon accepting her Oscar before going on praise each of her fellow nominees. “I'm so very proud that 'Blue Jasmine' stayed in the cinemas for as long as it did…and to the audiences who went to see it — to those of us in the industry still clinging to the idea that female-driven films are still niche: they in fact make money.” It was a culmination of sorts, after she dominated the precursor circuit with wins at the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards and the Critics' Choice Movie Awards. Blanchett becomes one of 19 actresses to have won two Academy Awards.
The win also comes just over a month after Dylan Farrow, daughter of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, penned an open letter in the pages of The New York Times, re-stirring accusations of sexual misconduct and naming Blanchett specifically to make a point. “What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett?,” the letter rhetorically asked of the actress, to which Blanchett later simply expressed a hope for the family finding resolution and peace when cavalierly asked for a response at a Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute to her work.
Talking to HitFix last year about her work in the film, Blanchett said she helped build the character by people-watching in the Upper East Side neighborhood of New York, but of course that only went so far. “Something I find quite pathetic, in the true sense of the word, is the loss of identity that happens to a lot of women when they attach themselves to a partner,” she said at the time. “They lose a sense of self. That's something you don't necessarily observe sitting in a restaurant.”
“Blue Jasmine” was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars.