Cate Blanchett Admits Lesbian Encounters Before 'Carol' Cannes Premiere

This comes as a real shock from Cate Blanchett. The Academy Award winning actress who is next going to be seen in 'Carol' has admitted of something which will leave everyone shocked.

While promoting her film, 'Carol' ahead of the movie's Cannes 2015 premiere, Cate Blanchett revealed her past relationships with women. 'Carol' is a lesbian love story between Cate Blanchett and a young woman Rooney Mara.

In an interview with Variety magazine ahead of the film's premiere at Cannes 2015 on 17 May, The 'Blue Jasmine' actress was asked if playing the title role in the Todd Haynes-directed period drama was her first turn as a lesbian.

"On film - or in real life?" the actor asked back. When asked on whether she had ever had a relationship with a woman, Blanchett told the interviewer: "Yes. Many times."

The 2013 Oscar winning actress also told Variety that she had read "a lot of girl-on-girl books from the period" to prepare for her role in Carol, and "talked a lot about erogenous zones" with the film's costume designer Sandy Powell. "We asked: ‘what is the most erotic part of the body?'" she said.

"I think there are a lot of people that exist like [Carol] who don't feel the need to shout things from the rafters," Blanchett said of her character, adding that the film was similarly discreet. "It's not Blue is the Warmest Colour," she insisted.

Based on Patricia Highsmith's romance novel, The Price of Salt, Carol is set in a 1950s New York department store where an older married woman (Blanchett) falls in love with a younger shop-girl (Mara).

Cate Blanchett married Andrew Upton in 1997, and is the mother of three sons and a daughter, Edith, whom the couple adopted earlier this year.