Cate Blanchett to receive BFI fellowship at London Film Festival

Blanchett will receive the award during the London Film Festival, on the same night as the UK premiere for the highly-anticipated movie “Truth” in which she stars with Robert Redford. ‘And Cate Blanchett’s mesmerising screen presence has captivated audiences since her earliest roles’.

Each year at the LFF Awards Ceremony a BFI Fellowship is bestowed on a film luminary.

“She has the uncommon present of seeming completely to inhabit the characters she performs and has an unimaginable capacity to convey complicated layers of emotion to lovely impact”, the Institute added in its reward.

Blanchett has twice won Academy Awards, for her roles in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2005) and Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2014), on top of four other nominations for Elizabeth, Notes On a Scandal, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and I’m Not There.

In Carol, set in 1950s Manhattan, Blanchett plays a woman trapped in a loveless marriage who falls for a young woman (played by Rooney Mara).

The film is based on the true story of Mary Mapes, an award-winning CBS News journalist and Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes producer, and the risks she took to expose a controversial story on the then American President George W. Bush.

Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan, will open the London Film Festival on 7 October, while Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic will bring it to a close on 18 October.

BFI chairman Greg Dyke says the institute is delighted to honour Blanchett’s “extraordinary talents”. Al Pacino and Mel Brooks have also been awarded BFI Fellowships.