Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett will play Blanche DuBois in the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, which will play Australia's Sydney Theatre, September 1-October 10, 2009; Washington D.C.'s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, October 29-November 21; and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, November 27-December 20. The production will be directed by award-winning actress Liv Ullman.

Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton recently took over running the company. She is currently directing The Year of Magical Thinking and is expected to participate in the company's War of the Roses in early 2009.

Blanchett has appeared on stage in such works as Hedda Gabler and Plenty. She received the Academy Award for The Aviator and was nominated twice this year for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and I'm Not There. Her other films include Notes on a Scandal, Babel, Elizabeth, and Pushing Tin.