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.''