The 55-year-old Australian star has been on the silver screen for decades and won two Academy Awards during her Hollywood career but admits she thought that acting was just something she enjoyed doing in her youth, and it never occurred to her that she could actually make a living out of it.
"We had an amazing drama teacher. It was really messy and it felt circus-like, with all the girls who didn't fit into other groups, all the mis-matched ragamuffins," she told The Guardian.
"We just made stuff, and when you make people laugh it's quite addictive.
"But I never, ever, ever thought it was something I would do, or that I could do, that one did with one's life."
Blanchett had every intention of getting a "proper job" after she finished her education but ended up auditioning for drama school on a whim, and actually got a place.
"I was doing it for fun, and then I was going to go and get a proper job," she said.
This is where it's a vocation I think – it sounds very precious these days when you say that – but in the sense that I didn't pursue it, it pursued me. Someone suggested I try out for drama school and I did, kind of as a dare, and I got in."
Prior to that she had studied fine arts and economics at the University of Melbourne simply so she could "be around artists" but admitted that she is "not a painter" and doesn't show anyone anything she does these days.
"I'm not a painter. I doodle, I do ceramics and nothing that I show people because it's not [about] the outcome."
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