Cate Blanchett portrayed Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator (2004), Martin Scorsese’s film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes.
The film is based on the non-fiction book Howard Hughes: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes by Charles Higham. The film depicts the life of Howard Hughes, aviation pioneer and director of the film Hell’s Angels. This highly stylized film portrays his life between the late 1920s and the late 1940s, a period in which Hughes became a successful film producer and aviation magnate, while his instability worsened due to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Cate Blanchett’s performance as the actress Katharine Hepburn, one of Howard Hughes’s partners, earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
In The Aviator, Hepburn is introduced during the Golden Age of Hollywood, when the industry was in its infancy of adapting to sound. Aware of the ambitious heights that cinema is reaching, Howard Hughes is set on crafting his movies with realism through daring feats of filmmaking. While a charismatic visionary, Hughes is deeply affected by egomania, which is only fueled by a worsening case of OCD symptoms. After completing Hell’s Angels, Hughes strikes up a relationship with Hepburn, who is still early into her stardom. (Collider)
A native of Australia, Blanchett was faced with the near-impossible task of recreating Hepburn’s distinctive, upper-class New England voice. The actor worked diligently to master her recognizable accent. She outlined her method forms of preparation in an interview with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 2004. To match Hepburn’s athletic exuberance, Blanchett routinely played golf and tennis. Since Hepburn reportedly took cold showers, Blanchett did the same. These activities are demonstrative of a healthy kind of method acting. (Collider)