Cate Blanchett lost her hair from stress after playing Blanche DuBois in Broadway's 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.
The 46-year-old actress starred as the famous Blanche DuBois in the theatre adaptation of Tennessee Williams' classic play about a woman who arrives unannounced at the home of her sister Stella, to be met by open hostility from her violent brother-in-law Stanley.
And despite receiving rave reviews and standing ovations back in 2009, when asked by theatre bosses to play the character for a further three months worth of shows, Cate explained it would be impossible to accept the challenge.
She told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "I didn't think I could play her for another three months. I'd lost a lot of weight and my hair was falling out."
But the Hollywood star revisited a similar role when she played the lead character Jasmine in Woody Allen's 2013 offering 'Blue Jasmine' who has a fragile mental health.
Despite her experience playing a broken woman, she says she found it tough and was reassured by the director.
Cate said: "Woody kept saying it's not 'Streetcar', but Blanche was clearly a touchstone for me."
Meanwhile, the fair skinned beauty has mastered accents from Dublin to Bronx but thinks South African is the hardest.
She said: "I'm very slow when it comes to embodying the character. That's why I love the theatre. Without sounding too pretentious, saying someone else's words - and making them sound like your own - is very complex in the neurolinguistic sense."
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