Cate Blanchett reveals what secret Lord of the Rings cameo she pitched to director Peter Jackson

Cate Blanchett played the elegant elf Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. 

But the actress, 51, wanted to make a far more rugged cameo, asking director Peter Jackson whether she could act out her secret dream role as the ‘bearded lady’.

Speaking on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast on Monday, the Oscar winner said that despite appearing in every LOTR film, her experience was too short. 

‘For me it was super quick,’ Cate said of her experience on set.

‘There’s not too many chicks in the Tolkien universe. I loved it so much and I did say to Peter [Jackson] and Fran [Walsh, producer], they were doing a banquet scene with a whole lot of, I think it was a whole lot of dwarves.

‘I always wanted to play the bearded lady, so I asked them, “Could I be your hairy wife woman when you pan across the banquet table of dwarves?”‘

Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to fulfill her bearded lady dreams due to timing constraints.

‘Of course I couldn’t because the timing shifted. But it takes them forever. For me, Galadriel was just three weeks,’ she said.

Cate went on to explain that she only discovered J. R. R. Tolkien’s books as a ‘demi-adult’. 

Despite her acting résumé proving her good taste, Cate admitted she used to prefer the ‘bad fiction you’d pick up in the supermarket’.

Cate first appeared as Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001.

Despite her relatively brief filming schedule, Cate was the only actor to appear in every LOTR and Hobbit film.