It may come as no surprise to fans of Cate Blanchett’s fierce red carpet fashion that her real estate portfolio is just as stylish. The Australian-born actor is best known for her roles in films as wide-ranging as Elizabeth, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Lord of the Rings, Nightmare Alley, and, most recently, Tár, but before she found fame in Hollywood, Blanchett had built herself quite the following on the Sydney theater scene. She studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) there and is married to acclaimed Australian playwright Andrew Upton.
The pair invested in multiple properties in their home country of Australia after a 10-year stint in Brighton, UK, in the ’90s. In more recent years, they’ve also expanded their holdings across the pond. “Our spirit is jump in, then just keep going until you can make the thing work or not,” Blanchett once told The New Yorker. “If it’s not making sense, you pull it apart and try to put it back together again.” Here, we’re offering a glimpse into the couple’s enviable properties, from their first beachside apartment to their current English manor home.
1996
Blanchett and Upton got to know each other in 1996, while working on the set of one of her lesser-known Australian movies, Thank God He Met Lizzie. Upton told The New Yorker that they were both “taken by surprise” by the relationship that bloomed from their friendship, and that “three weeks into our relationship, Cate says she thought, Oh god, he’s gonna ask me to marry him.” (He did, and the pair wed in late 1997.) At the time, Blanchett was living in her first apartment, a humble one-bedroom beachside pad in Coogee, Sydney, which she sold five years later.
1998
The newlyweds then bought a slightly larger two-bedroom apartment, also in Coogee, which they ultimately sold in 2011.
Late 1990s
