Cate Blanchett can't believe she's playing Marvel's first female on screen villain.

Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett

The 48-year-old actress is amazed she has been given the chance to portray Hela, the studio's first female villain, in 'Thor: Ragnarok'.

She said: "I didn't realise I was inhabiting the first female Marvel villain onscreen. I thought, 'Surely not ... well, no actually that's true.'

"There's been many, many, many [female villains] in the comic books, but they've been a little tardy in bringing them to the screen, so hopefully there will be a lot more villainesses."

And Cate was convinced she should take the role after she found out her character was responsible for destroying Thor's favourite weapon, his iconic hammer.

She added: "That had me at 'hello' actually. I thought that was really exciting that they were prepared to destroy Thor's power in the first few minutes. It's a nice entrance."

Cate's character's outfit has a Medusa-style look and the blonde beauty has revealed half of her costume was put together in post-production.

She told E! News: "Half of my costume was done in post. So a lot of the time I was trying to look fierce and bad and indomitable in a mocap [motion capture] suit which is pretty hard to do."

Meanwhile, the film's director Taika Waititi previously teased the movie will have a "fresh style of humour".

He said: "My strength in this is bringing my style of humour, which is probably a very different style of humour. They've had good jokes in them before, but I think where I come from is maybe a fresher style. It could just shake the entire thing up a bit.

"I'm like the new kid in class. They're really cool people. I've already made some great friends, and everyone wants to make the best story possible ... [It's] more collaborative than I think people probably expect. It's not just one person ordering everyone around. It's people discussing and saying, 'What if it was like this' or 'I don't think it should be like that', which is very healthy. And it's actually what I'm used to, coming from theatre and co-ops and collaborating."