The couple knew each other for 17 years before dating each other, and once they started dating their whirlwind romance did not slow down.
Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett and her husband, Andrew Upton, who is a playwright, have been married for close to 22 years but their love story did not take off smoothly. Blanchett, who is quite funny when she's not playing the intense characters she picks out, narrated how she met her husband and their whirlwind romance during an interview with Ellen Degeneres.
The Hobbit actress told Degeneres that she had known Upton for 17 years socially before dating him, and until the night where they got together, they didn't like each other. Their first night together was when they realized they have feelings for each other. They were playing poker and shared a kiss.
When Degeneres asked her if there was alcohol involved, the mother-of-four said, "There wasn’t actually alcohol – oh no, there was alcohol involved. Alcohol and gambling. And then we got tattooed." That was only day one. By day three, they had realized they were compatible in more ways.
"After three days he turned to me, we were in bed, as you are after three days," Blanchett began. "He said 'Cate,' and I thought, s--t, he's gonna ask me to marry him and I'm gonna have to say yes and then he said, 'No, I'm hungry. Do you want to go get something to eat?'", she told the TV host, according to EOnline. But, as it goes, she did not have to wait long for the proposal.
"I cooked him the worst meal. I somehow decided that to stuff a trout with walnuts and goat's cheese would be a good idea," Blanchett admitted. "He ate it and then he asked me to marry him so clearly he was, I don't know, hallucinating. He realized I couldn't cook."
It seems that Upton had no interest in culinary delights and the way to his heart wasn't his stomach at all. The Lord of the Rings actress joked, "No, you give them food poisoning, they're delirious and then you've got them." She happily said, "He's mine." He proposed to her about 21 days later and she said yes.
After spending two decades together, the Elizabeth actress said that adding a date night to their busy schedules is close to impossible. But when they do, "it’s usually somewhere where we can go and talk. I keep saying I’d like to go away for the weekend or something. We always have a grand plan and then it gets whittled down to going out for dinner," she told People.
The couple welcomed their first son, Dashiell, in 2001 and had two more sons, Roman and Ignatius. However, they wanted more children and in 2015, their brood got bigger when they adopted an adorable baby girl, Edith. "There's a lot of children out there who don't have the good fortunate that our biological children, so it's wonderful(sic)," she revealed to EOnline. "It's wonderful to welcome a little girl into our fold. We're besotted."
The devoted mother shared a hilarious story about trying to turn her children vegetarian like her by getting them baby pigs. “It was this Machiavellian vegetarian plan that I had for my kids, that they would form this deep connection with the piglets, which were very cute and smelled kind of like smelly people. And then I would tell them that if we eat sausages, they’re coming from these pigs. The kids were just totally fine with that and I was horrified. My plan to turn my family vegetarian was a monumental failure," the Carol actress told Observer.
The couple has spent years nurturing their family and their professional front together. The duo owns the production company Dirty Films and is also co-artistic directors and co-CEOs of the Sydney Theatre Company (STC).
"We always talked about work and we always collaborated, so it felt like a natural progression," she said. However, the couple tries hard to keep work out of the home. "We much as possible didn’t bring work home. And when you have children, you have to become much more economical in the way one works — I did, anyway. It was a relief to come home and just be partners," she said. "It's been a great creative partnership with my husband and also a great love affair," the 50-year-old actress told EOnline.
As a family, they are low-key and she loves that about them. "My husband and three sons are always saying, ‘Let’s just stay in our pajamas today,’ and I really understand what they’re saying. We’ve had a lot of adventure, and I think the next chapter is perhaps about being a little bit more still," she told People.
References:
https://people.com/style/cate-blanchett-husband-style-librarian/
https://www.eonline.com/de/news/635958/cate-blanchett-breaks-her-silence-after-adopting-edith
