Cate Blanchett thought her "fate" was to be a nun when she was a child

She told Empire magazine: "As a child, I came across this film with Hayley Mills as this really naughty renegade, expelled from every school and she was sent to a convent.

"She became friends with a deeply religious girl and at the end becomes an initiate.

"I was always in trouble, sent out into the corridor.

"At the age of eight, I just completely fell into this film and thought, 'Wow, maybe that's my fate.' "

The 'New Boy' actress turned to religion herself after her father passed away when she was 10 years old, but when the church failed to fill the "massive void" she had, she found solace in nature instead.

She said: "My father died when I was 10, which obviously left a massive void.

"My grandmother used to go to church and I would go with her every week in the hope that the hand of God would come down and say, 'Little girl, he's with me. He's having fun and he's safe. You'll see him again.'

"That didn't happen... So I rejected it and got on my bike every Sunday and rode out to the countryside.

"I connected more to nature."