While promoting her new film Carol, a lesbian love story alongside Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett has revealed that she has been in”many” relationships with women in the past.

Ahead of the film’s Cannes Festival on may 17, the Australian-born actress sat down for an interview with Variety magazine opening up on bisexual encounters in her younger years. When asked if starring in the Todd Haynes drama was her first time as a lesbian, she replied: “On film – or in real life? Yes. Many times”.

Starring in her second Patricia Highsmith adaption – following 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley – the period drama, based on acclaimed novel The Price of Salt, follows Carol (Blanchett) an older married woman who falls in love with a younger woman played by Mara.

The Oscar-winning actress told the magazine she read “a lot of girl-on-girl books from the period” and talked in depth about the women’s “erogenous zones” wit costume designer Sandy Powell to prepare for the role.

“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,” she explained of her leading role. Although: “It’s not Blue is the Warmest Colour,” last year’s Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film festival, she assures.

The 45-year-old also spoke of the startling gender pay gap in Hollywood, she encouraged “a critical mass of women who have reached a certain place in the industry,” who in that she includes Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon and her fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman. “We have to push forward,” she says. “What industry has parity pay for women? None. Why would we expect this industry to be any different?”

Charlize Theron proved otherwise, demanding the same pay-cheque as co-star Chris Hemsworth for their upcoming blackbuster Snow White and The Huntsman 2. In an interview with Elle magazine this month, she admitted:” I have to give them credit, because once I asked, they said yes,” Theron said in an interview with British magazine Elle UK. “They did not fight it. And maybe that’s the message: that we just need to put our foot down.”

Carol opens in cinemas across Europe in January, 2016 while it will receive its world premiere this Sunday, May 17 at the Cannes Film Festival.