Andrew Upton (born 1 February 1966) is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, and director.
He is the husband of actress Cate Blanchett.
Career
As a playwright, Upton created adaptations of Hedda Gabler, The Cherry Orchard, Cyrano de Bergerac, Don Juan (with Marion Potts), Uncle Vanya, The Maids, Children of the Sun and Platonov for the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Maxim Gorky's The Philistines for the Royal National Theatre in London.
Upton's original play Riflemind opened with Hugo Weaving, playing an ageing rock star planning a comeback, at the Sydney Theatre Company on 5 October 2007, and received a favourable review in Variety (magazine). The London production of Riflemind, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, opened in 2008, but closed as a result of the financial pressure of the Global Financial Crisis after receiving poor popular press reviews.
In 2008, Upton and wife Cate Blanchett became joint artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company for what became a five-year term.
Upton and Blanchett formed a film production company, Dirty Films, whose projects include the films Bangers (1999) and Little Fish (2006). Upton wrote, produced and directed the short, Bangers, which starred Blanchett. Upton shares writing credits for the feature film Gone (2007).
Upton wrote the libretto to Alan John's opera Through the Looking Glass, which premiered with the Victorian Opera in Melbourne in May 2008.
Upton acted in one of Julian Rosenfeldt's thirteen-part art film, Manifesto (2015).
Personal life
Upton attended The King's School, Parramatta and University of Sydney. He and Cate Blanchett met in Australia in the mid-1990s and married on 29 December 1997. The couple have three sons and one daughter. Their sons are Dashiell John Upton (born 2001), Roman Robert Upton (born 2004), Ignatius Martin Upton (born 2008), and daughter Edith Vivian Patricia Upton (adopted in 2015). The couple's children appeared with Upton in segment 11 of the 2015 film Manifesto. Upton and Blanchett purchased a house in East Sussex, England, in early 2016.
