ENJOYING MATERNAL MOMENTS ON THE SET OF HER NEW FILM CATE BLANCHETT ON WORKING WITH HER HUSBAND BACK HOME IN AUSTRALIA AND WHY HAVING ARGUMENTS HELPS

One of the most gifted and successful film stars of her generation, Cate Blanchett has portrayed characters ranging from Queen Elizabeth I to an elf queen.

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But for her latest role, the actress returned to her roots to work in the Australian Outback alongside her husband.

The star plays a renegade nun in The New Boy, which is set in 1940s Australia. It tells the story of a nine-year-old orphaned Aboriginal child who arrives in the dead of night at the remote monastery where she is in charge.

Cate, 54, and her theatre director husband Andrew Upton, 58, are among the movie's coproducers and worked closely together during filming. Yet she had no qualms about spending so much time with her spouse, whom she married in 1997 and with whom she has four children.

"For us it works, although at first people looked at us in horror, like: 'How could you be with one another 24/7?" she says. "We do argue, but in a constructive way that has good creative results.

But we've always worked together. We've been married a long time, so something is working." Cate started acting more than 30 years ago with the Sydney Theatre Company. She has since won Academy Awards for her role in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine and her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.