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WASHINGTON - It was a theatrical convergence of three continents. Over lunch in London, the actress from Australia and the actress from Norway decided they had to find a way under the skin of the neurotic belle from the American South.

At that meal, Cate Blanchett and Liv Ullmann sketched out the beginnings of their assault on Blanche DuBois, the high-strung butterfly of "A Streetcar Named Desire." Ullmann, ethereal star of Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage" and "Cries and Whispers," by now a director, had wanted Oscar-winner Blanchett for the role of Nora in a film version of Ibsen's "A Doll's House."

But the money could not be raised, and now they turned their thoughts to Tennessee Williams and the stage. Which was fortunate, because Blanchett was running a major theater company back in Sydney, with her husband, writer-director Andrew Upton.

"Liv got really excited about that," Blanchett recalled over lunch recently at the Kennedy Center, where the U.S. premiere of Sydney Theatre Company's "Streetcar," directed by Ullmann and starring Blanchett, began performances on Thursday. "I think it's really great when an idea creeps up on you from behind, and particularly with a play like this."

Haughty, needy, broken Blanche is one of those potentially breath-stopping career markers for a great actress, a role that originally belonged on Broadway to Jessica Tandy and in film to Vivian Leigh, and has been assayed to varying degrees by star actresses ever since "Streetcar's" 1947 debut. Uta Hagen, Blythe Danner, Jessica Lange and Natasha Richardson all gave Blanche a go on Broadway; five years ago, Patricia Clarkson played her at the Kennedy Center. This summer, Rachel Weisz slipped into the role at London's Donmar Warehouse.

Now Blanchett, 40, supermodel-svelte and creamily-complected, is taking her turn. That audiences are eager to see an actress whose adventurous range has been on display in her breakout turns in "Oscar and Lucinda" and "Elizabeth" is borne out by the box office. With Blanchett as the only marquee name in the Australian cast, the entire 24-performance run of "Streetcar" sold out weeks ago. (The production heads to New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music at the end of November.)

For all her cerebral glamour, her renown for roles in movies as varied as "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "The Aviator" - the last one earning her an Academy Award - Blanchett is actually a theater kid, or a theater nerd.

From the time she left Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art and was cast in the Sydney Theatre Company production of David Mamet's "Oleanna" opposite Geoffrey Rush, she's maintained a stage life. Of her wildly provocative 2006 portrayal of the title character in "Hedda Gabler" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which prompted both critical plaudits and finger-wagging, Ben Brantley wrote in an amused New York Times review: "Ms. Blanchett is giving roughly a dozen of the liveliest performances to be seen this year, all at the same time."

Now, to that voracious metabolism she has added the role of co-artistic director of Australia's largest theater company, whose 2010 season she formulated with Upton includes a whopping 15 productions in three theaters. "Uncle Vanya," "Long Day's Journey Into Night," "Our Town," "The Oresteia" and the Broadway musical "Spring Awakening" are just a few of the enormous heaves in an eye-popping lineup. "Streetcar" closed there 1 1/2 weeks ago, giving Blanchett, a mother of three young sons, barely time to catch her breath. She still makes movies, such as the new Robin Hood flick she recently completed with Russell Crowe in which she plays Maid Marian.

"Andrew had a very close relationship with the company, and was approached and said to me, 'Why don't we do this together?'" she says of their three-year contract with the Sydney institution.

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