Oscar winner Cate Blanchett is moving to the US with her family

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian Oscar winner Cate Blanchett plans to leave her Sydney home and move to the United States where her artistic director husband Andrew Upton will pursue freelance writing opportunities, a report said on Monday.

The actress, who won Oscars for her roles in The Aviator (2004) and Blue Jasmine (2013), will make the move later this year.

"It was a very hard decision," Upton, the artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"But the deciding factor was that our children are still of an age where they can be mobile without disrupting their education too much.

"We spent nine years living in England and we loved it. But now we'd like to try America. They have terrific (opportunities in) television there and Cate has a very strong film career there, too, obviously."

Blanchett started out as a theatre actress in Sydney, where she won critical and popular acclaim with a string of successes for Sydney Theatre Company.

She was also joint artistic director with Upton of the company from 2008 to 2012 and is patron of the Australian Film Institute.

Upton said he wanted to return to writing in the United States.

"I want to get back into the freelance writing lifestyle, which I have been missing," he said. "I am interested in writing for television and film, as well as theatre."

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.