Cate Blanchett says she dressed up and spoke like her daughter's teacher during the COVID lockdown

• Cate Blanchett home-schooled her four children during the COVID-19 lockdown.
• Her daughter Edith, however, demanded that she recreate one of her school teacher's looks.

Cate Blanchett said she dressed up as her daughter's school teacher when she undertook homeschooling duties during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Blanchett — who lives in the UK and home-schooled her four children after the British government closed schools in March 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19 — said her daughter Edith demanded that she recreate the appearance of one of her school teachers before she sat down for lessons at home.

"She wouldn't allow me at all to teach maths or do phonics unless I dressed up as her teacher and put on her teacher's voice," Blanchett told the BBC.

"I had an array of stuffed animals who also had to be taught. It wasn't an offer I made. It was a request she made."

The 52-year-old actor later described her performance as Mrs. Venables Kyrke, her daughter's teacher, as "traumatic" and said she would not be suiting up as her again.

"I've actually put my Mrs. Venables Kyrke to bed. She was her teacher then. She's a saint," she told the outlet.

Blanchett — who picked up a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for her role in Guillermo del Toro's latest film "Nightmare Alley" — said homeschooling her children gave her a newfound respect for the teaching profession.

"One thing that really came home to me was just how incredible teachers are. That is an inherently dramatic situation where you have to stand up in front of a class of 30 often disinterested pupils and try and get them engaged in medieval history," she said.

Elsewhere during the interview, Blanchett said apart from homeschooling her children, she spent much of the COVID-19 lockdown at her home in East Sussex, England, with "the pigs and the chickens and watching HBO's 'The Sopranos.'"

Discussing the show's controversial ending, Blanchett said: "I was happy with the ending, except that it ended."