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Cate Blanchett is selling her Sydney home

Actress Cate Blanchett and her playwright husband Andrew Upton are putting their home in Sydney’s Hunters Hill area on the market.

The couple have owned the 5-bedroom, 19th-century property for a decade. But with Upton’s tenure as the artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company drawing to an end in December, they’re looking to relocate their family Stateside.

In 2007, the waterfront home – known as Bulwarra – underwent an extensive $8m renovation. The couple drafted in architects Nadine Alwill and Stephen Lesiuk to collaborate on the project, almost doubling the floor space with the addition of a modern glass-fronted extension.

Cate Blanchett's Sydney home
Photography: via Ken Jacobs

Green features were also added, including a grey water recycling system, solar panelling and a 20,000 litre water tank.

Inside the house – for sale for AUD$20m – a sculptural steel staircase ascends through the three-storey home, connecting the ground floor living space with the private quarters and a veranda that looks out over the surrounding landscape.

The master bedroom is set within a private wing of the house and has its own sky-lit dressing room – somewhere to store all of those red carpet dresses – and Boffi-appointed ensuite.

An outdoor swimming pool pavilion with self-contained quarters underneath was designed to ‘age quickly and disappear into the rocks, trees and hillside’, says Alwill. The twin buildings are set in 3,642 sq m grounds of landscaped gardens designed by Will Dangar.

The Blanchett-Uptons aren’t the first notable owners of the heritage-listed Federation building. Constructed in 1877 for a local brick manufacturer, it was bought by the chairman of one of Australia’s biggest heritage companies, Arnott Biscuits, in 1904 for $750.

The actress and her husband paid $10m when they bought it from merchant banker Jim Dominguez and his wife Suzanne in 2005.

On the market via Ken Jacobs, the property is expected to smash the $12.85m ceiling price for the area, which is Australia’s oldest garden suburb.

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