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Cate Blanchett suffers head injury during fight scene
By Frank Thorne in Sydney Last updated at 09:35am on 03.09.09Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett will be back on stage in Sydney tonight after suffering a head injury during a fight scene, forcing the cancellation of the performance mid-show.
Ms Blanchett dropped to her hands and knees and blood poured from her head after she was accidentally struck by a prop radio thrown by co-star Joel Edgerton during A Streetcar Named Desire at the Sydney Theatre Company.
The actress, 40, who was playing Blanche DuBois in the Tennessee Williams drama got to her feet and used a prop nightdress to stem the flow of blood.
The show goes on: Cate Blanchett will be back on stage in Sydney tonight after she was forced to halt a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire after being hit on the head
She continued her lines and but when she was required to climb some stairs, she realised she could not go on and left the stage.
Mr Edgerton continued performing for a few minutes and was lying in a bath when a backstage official asked him to leave the stage.
The audience were told the performance was being stopped due to a 'technical issue.' It was then cancelled.
The Sydney Theater Company is run by Ms Blanchett and her playwright husband, Andrew Upton.
A spokesman for the Company confirmed there was a "minor accident" on stage but that Ms Blanchett was not badly hurt. He said she did not need to go to hospital after being treated at the theatre.
"Everyone is fine. Cate was injured, she got a bump on the head but she will be back on stage tonight," he said.
One audience member, who would give her name only as Kate, said Mr Edgerton was meant to throw the radio out of a window but had missed.
"It sort of slipped and hit her in the head," she said. "She was so good. She just went straight on but then she realised she was hurt and couldn't continue."
Julia Cassuven, also in the audience, said there had been no announcement of what had happened to Ms Blanchett until some time after she was injured.
"No-one really knew what was going on. They said there would be a brief interval because of a technical difficulty and we all left."
She added: "A person came out about 10 minutes later saying that the show couldn't go on because a member of the cast had been injured."
Ms Blanchett, 40, and a mother of three, won an Academy award for best supporting actress for her role in the film Aviator.
