Golden CATE

There’s no doubting Cate Blanchett’s sheer talent. The two-time Oscar winner has a rare ability to make you forget she’s an actor playing a part rather than the real deal, whether she’s playing the Virgin Queen or the Nordic Goddess of Death.

Now the 50-year-old actor has expanded her already impressive range with two almost opposing roles that share one characteristic: they’re conversation starters for a much deeper problem in our society. The nine-episode Mrs America sees Cate embody conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, and in the Netflix series Stateless she’s a singing, dancing cult leader (it sounds funnier than it is).

‘It’s ironic, isn’t it, not having entered the television space at all, that my last year has been taken up with acting in, and producing, two pieces of television,’ she says. ‘But they were two things