Her first high-profile international role was a young Elizabeth I of England in the critically acclaimed historical drama "Elizabeth" (1998), directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film catapulted her to international prominence and her performance garnered wide recognition, earning her the Golden Globe Award and British Academy Award (BAFTA), and her first Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In his review for "Variety", critic David Rooney wrote of her performance, "Blanchett conveys with grace, poise and intelligence that Elizabeth was a wily, decisive, advanced thinker, far too aware of her own exceptional nature to bow to any man. builds the juicy character almost imperceptibly from a smart but wary young woman who may be in over her head into a powerful creature of her own invention." Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" wrote that Blanchett's performance "brings spirit, beauty and substance to what otherwise might have been turned into a vacuous role", and Alicia Potter writing for the "Boston Phoenix" stated that, "In the end, Kapur's crown jewel is a tale of twin transformations, that of Elizabeth into one of history's most enigmatic and powerful women, and that of Blanchett into, well, a bona fide screen queen."