Australian Leading Ladies' Flirtations With Oscar Quiz

Answer: Judy Davis, "Passage to India"

Judy Davis, along with Peggy Ashcroft and Nigel Havers, starred in a "Passage to India" (1984) which was about an ill-fated trip to India by the two female stars, and the consequences of two cultures colliding. The movie was set in 1924, the year in which E.M. Foster wrote the novel on which it was based. Ms Davis' character, Adela, was a well-to-do English woman who sailed to India and was captivated by it. She undertook an excursion to the distant Marabar Caves with an Indian doctor and a local guide. Whilst in the caves, something happened to Adela and the young doctor was accused of rape. It was expected that the Indian would be found guilty but she testified that she was not raped. This surprised everyone. The young Indian doctor withdrew from the ex-pat society whilst Adela went back to England, disillusioned.

Ms Davis, born in Perth, 1955, was well established as an Australian actress domestically and in Britain (she won two BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for her role in "My Brilliant Career" [1979]) before she caught the attention of Hollywood and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in "A Passage to India" (1983). She won a second Oscar nomination in 1991 for Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives", making her the first Australian to have achieved nominations for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.
Toni Collette was not nominated for an Academy Award for either "Muriel's Wedding" (1995) or "Japanese Story" (2003) but she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Comedy or Musical in the former and she won Australian Film Institute Award's Best Actress in a Leading Role for both roles.

Answer: Sean Connery

Diane Cilento was born in regional Queensland in 1933. She had a daughter, Giovanna, from a four year marriage to Andrea Volpe between 1956 and 1960.

She married Sean Connery in 1962 just after Connery had finished filming "Dr No" (1962), the first "Bond" film. She was married to him for eleven years and they had a son, Jason, who also became an actor. Connery married French artist Micheline Roquebrune in 1975. Connery was cleared of tax evasion in 2015 but his wife was charged instead.

In 1985 Ms Cilento married English playwright Anthony Schaffer in Australia They settled in North Queensland. He died in 2001.

Ms Cilento had no professional or personal connection to another "Bond" actor, George Lazenby (but he was, however, an Australian).
She played opposite fellow Australian Peter Finch in "Passage Home" in 1955 (ironically Finch was shortlisted as a James Bond contender).
She played opposite Charlton Heston, an American in "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (1965). (Mr Heston was never offered a role, or was even considered, for a role as James Bond).

Ms Cilento died in 2011.

As an aside, Nicole Kidman was not the first Australian actress to have a role in "Moulin Rouge". Diane Cilento had a major role in the 1952 movie with this name although, apart from the setting, the two movies are unrelated. (The 2001 movie has an exclamation mark (!) after its name to differentiate it from the previous movie.

As another aside, it was the popularity of the movie "Tom Jones" that influenced Tom Jones' manager to change his protege's name from his birth name of Thomas Jones Woodward to Tom Jones.

Answer: Silver Linings Playbook

"Silver Linings Playbook" is about a 30-something teacher's rehabilitation back into the community after a mental illness. He meets Tiffany, a girl with issues of her own. The movie tells of their struggle to establish a relationship.

Jackie Weaver was first nominated for Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 2011, playing Smurf, a diabolical mother of an Australian family of criminals in "Animal Kingdom" (2010). She was nominated a second time, two years later playing the role of mother of Bradley Cooper and wife of Robert de Niro in "Silver Linings Playbook". All four leads were nominated for Oscars with Jennifer Lawrence winning Best Actress.
Jackie Weaver has been married several times, including twice to radio/television presenter Darryn Hinch. She has one son to fellow Australian actor, John Waters who was not one of her husbands.
The other three movies, offered as quiz answers, featured Robert de Niro but not Jackie Weaver.

Answer: Muriel's Wedding

Rachel Griffith, born in Melbourne, 1967, won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in 1994 for "Muriel's Wedding" and in 2009 for "Beautiful Kate". She was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in "Me Myself I" (1999) and "The Hard Word" (2002).

"Muriel's Wedding" (1994) was the story of Muriel (Collette), a girl obsessed with getting married and playing Abba music. She moved to Sydney to be with her free spirited friend Rhonda (Griffiths) who helped in her quest to find a groom. This was the breakout role for both Griffith and Toni Collette. The enormous success of the movie is testament to these two actors' acting skills and talent and the foresight of the producers who cast two unknowns as the two female leads. To this day, you cannot mention the fictional town in which the movie was set, Porpoise Spit, without raising a smile on any Australian who has seen this very popular, feel-good Australian movie.

Ms Griffiths married Andrew Taylor, an Australian artist in 2002. They have one son and two daughters.

Answer: Keisha Castle-Hughes

Keisha Castle-Hughes played the title role in the New Zealand film "Whale Rider" (2003). She was only 13 at the time of filming. She was born in Western Australia in 1990. Her mother was Maori and her father an Australian. She and her mother left for New Zealand when Keisha was very young and she completed all her schooling in Auckland. "Whale Rider" was her first role.

She has played in numerous other productions in film and television, most notably, "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" (2005) and joined the cast of the "Game of Thrones" in 2015. She applied for New Zealand citizenship in 2001.

Answer: Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn was an American actress born in 1907. She was very independent and had a 26 year relationship with Spencer Tracey until he died in 1967. Ms Hepburn won four Best Actress Oscars between 1934 and 1982. In 1999 she was named Greatest Female Star of Classic Hollywood Cinema by the American Film Institute.

In 2004, Cate Blanchett was nominated for the first time in the Best Supporting Actress category for "The Aviator" (2003). She won, and this was the first Oscar winning performance for portraying another Oscar winner. Ms Blanchett played Katharine Hepburn opposite Leonardo DiCaprio's Howard Hughes.

The following firsts also been achieved by Blanchett:
In 2007 she was the first Australian to be nominated in both Leading and Supporting categories in the same year for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" (Best Actress) and "I'm Not There" (Best Supporting Actress).
She was nominated in 1998 ("Elizabeth") and 2007 ("Elizabeth: The Golden Age") for playing the same character, Queen Elizabeth I.
As she was also nominated Best Supporting Actress for "Notes On a Scandal" in 2006, the previous year, she was the first Australian actress to receive two Best Supporting acting nominations in consecutive years.

Answer: 2002 "The Hours"

"The Hours" is about the novel, "Mrs Dalloway", written by Virginia Woolf (Kidman) and the effect it had on three generations of people in the 1920s, the 1950s and present day. In 1923 Virginia Woolf (Kidman) has started writing her novel "Mrs Dalloway". In 1951, Julianne Moore escapes from her so called American Dream lifestyle by reading "Mrs Dalloway". In 2001, Clarissa (Meryl Steep) is the embodiment of Mrs Dalloway as she cares for her ex-husband who has depression. The stories are interwoven and ends with Woolf's suicide in 1941.

In 1995, Nicole Kidman won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for "To Die For". She won a second Golden Globe in the same category for "Moulin Rouge!" and this was her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress. She did not win but won the following year in the same category for playing Virginia Woolf in "The Hours".
In the 2000 movie "The Others", she was nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for her role in "The Others", a movie in which she also won a Saturn Award for Best Actress.
She married actor Tom Cruise in 1990 and Australian singer Keith Urban in 2006. She has an adopted son and daughter with Mr Cruise and two daughters with Mr Urban.

Answer: False

This movie is about a jaded child psychologist who treats a boy who can talk to people who do not realise they are dead. Toni Collette plays the boy's mother.

In 1999, "The Sixth Sense" was the second highest grossing movie in the US. Toni Collette was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category but did not win. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor for Haley Joel Osment, and Best Supporting Actress for Collette. It was also nominated for four BAFTAs. It won none of these ten awards.

Toni Collette, born in Sydney in 1972 is one of Australia's most consistent performers. After her breakthrough role in "Muriel's Wedding" in 1994 and the international acclaim of her performance in "The Sixth Sense", she has received numerous awards for her roles in independent features such as "About a Boy" (2002) and "Little Miss Sunshine" (2006). In the US she is most well-known for her Golden Globe winning performances in the Television series "The United States of Tara" (2009 - 2011).

Answer: The Impossible

Naomi Watts was born in Kent, England in 1968. She moved to Australia when she was 14 and rose to national prominence for a television commercial where she turned down a date with Tom Cruise to have a roast lamb dinner with her family. (It was Australian lamb!).

This was followed by appearances on the popular Australian sit-com "Hey Dad...!" (1990) and she became friends with Nicole on the set of "Flirting" (1991). In 2001, Watts received several awards for "Mulholland Drive", including a Best Actress Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

She won Saturn Awards for Best Actress in 2002 and 2005 for "The Ring" (2002) and "King Kong" (2004). In 2010, she was nominated for a second Oscar as Best Actress for her role in "The Impossible" (2010), a true story of one family's battle against the 2004 tsunami that killed thousands and badly damaged several Indian Ocean countries.

Answer: Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett was born in Melbourne, in 1969, to an Australian mother and American father (who died when Blanchett was ten). She was interested in drama at school in the Melbourne suburbs and studied fine arts and economics before travelling overseas and not completing her degree. She was cast as an extra in a movie in Egypt whilst travelling, and enrolled in the National Institute of Dramatic Art upon her return to Australia.
She has four children, three sons and a daughter and is passionate about climate change projects
Ms Blanchett is one of Australia's most awarded actress. Can one say that Cate Blanchett has flirted with Oscar more than any other actress? Only time will tell.