Steven Soderbergh's acclaimed Black Bag (2025).

Despite Blanchett's continued success and acclaim in Hollywood as both an actor and a producer, she now hints in an interview with Radio Times that her time as an actor could be coming to a close. In the interview, Blanchett suggests that calling herself an "actress" may not be accurate as she is seriously considering leaving the profession for good to pursue other interests. Read her comment below:

“It’s because I’m giving up… My family roll their eyes every time I say it, but I mean it. I am serious about giving up acting. [There are] a lot of things I want to do with my life.”

What This Means For Cate Blanchett

Her Acting Legacy & Projects Explained

Blanchett has been nominated for a total of eight Oscars in her career, winning two. She took home the Best ing Actress statue for her role in The Aviator (2004) and won Best Actress in 2014 for Blue Jasmine (2013). She was most recently nominated for the acclaimed Tár (2022), and was also widely celebrated for her role in Carol (2015). Purely on an acclaim and talent level, then, Hollywood would be losing a supremely important figure if Blanchett were to retire.

Blanchett has also, however, in addition to starring in awards fare, been a major presence in Hollywood projects with broader audience appeal. Her role as Galadriel in both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies remains some of her most widely-seen work, and she also played villains in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and Thor: Ragnarok (2017). This is in addition to her voice acting role as Valka in the animated How to Train Your Dragon franchise.

Blanchett will not be reprising her role as Valka for the live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake.

It's not clear exactly when Blanchett plans to retire, but she only has two projects on the horizon at the moment. One is Father, Mother, Sister, Brother from director Jim Jarmusch, which is expected to release this year, and the other is Alpha Gang, an alien invasion comedy with a star-studded cast that includes Dave Bautista, Channing Tatum, Zoë Kravitz, Steven Yeun, Léa Seydoux, and Riley Keough. The latter is a film that she also produces, and it's possible that she could continue to serve an active role in Hollywood as a producer, which she doesn't address with Radio Times.

Our Take On Cate Blanchett's Possible Acting Retirement

Hollywood Would Be Losing A Singular Talent

Blanchett's effortless ability to bounce between prestigous awards movies and popcorn flicks has made her one of the most interesting and reliably entertaining actors working in Hollywood today. Blanchett has a uniquely commanding and somewhat mysterious screen presence as an actor, and these qualities elevated projects from the celebrated Tár to the far more divisive fourth Indiana Jones movie. It's not clear how many more movies Blanchett will star in before her potential retirement, but each one definitely just became a little more special, knowing it could be the last.

Source: Radio Times