I can't give you a direct quote since I returned the book to the library, but I just finished reading "The Hobbit Party" and the authors claim that Galadriel has some of the same characteristics found in popular renaissance and modern depictions of The Virgin Mary. As well as more modern accounts of seers (like at Lourdes where Mary appeared barefoot)
Even given the fact that the Lord of the Rings is not an allegory, it's not out of the way for characters to appear in books as "Types" of other characters from history or literature. Eru being a "Type" of the Creator God and the Istari being types of angels and Melkor being a type of fallen angel.
The key to understanding Galadriel and her affect on Gimli is in the Lady of the Galadhrim’s Marian roots. Tolkien clearly meant her as a figure of the Virgin Mary. Galadriel is beautiful and majestic. She reflects the light of the stars. She is perceptive and gracious. She gives gifts and help and comfort. Many of these qualities don’t quite reflect Mary as the poor and lowly handmaid of the Lord. So, without a Catholic perspective, the allusions could be easy to miss. But Tolkien possessed not just a devotion to his Catholic faith but a devotion to Our Lady as well. So he surely viewed Mary as she truly is, Queen of Heaven and source of perpetual help.
Word on Fire - Gimili Galadriel and Guadalupe
So, given this, it's no altogether unlikely that Jackson, Dickson, Taylor, et al. from WETA would attempt to make the queen appearing in the book with the most abundant intercessory power as much as possible (in little details) like the one in the imagination of millions of people.
As to her rebellion and banishment; Mary is a type of Eve from the Old Testament too (one being the Mother of all the Living, the other the Spiritual Mother of all the Living), and that just rounds out the character of Galadriel as being both the original Eve and the "new Eve" as Mary is often called.
Still, the blog post I linked to said that Tolkien had a semi-confused character developed out of Galadriel who was possibly unfinished at his death.
Interestingly, the character of Galadriel changed over the course of the years as Tolkien developed his world’s history. At first, he wrote that she, along with many of the other elves of her kind, was culpable in the rebellion in Valinor (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry. Just nerd stuff). But, later, he changed his mind on this and wrote that she was innocent of any wrongdoing. Actually, the word he used was “unstained,” clearly an allusion to Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Apparently, Tolkien’s vision of Galadriel became clearer even to himself. In a letter to a priest friend, Robert Murray, Tolkien wrote:
“I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. ”
Letter to Robert Murray, S.J., 2 December 1953
That quote is often used to justify quite a bit of Catholic speculation about the characters in LOTR, but like most people are apt to point out, there aren't a lot of ladies in the books and if one embodies "majesty and simplicity", it's probably Galadriel.
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