Actor Cate Blanchett scoffs at the notion that she's some kind of ultimate perfection woman in the pages of W Magazine's December issue.“The wheels are constantly falling off.” She paused and then (sort of) changed the subject. “When Andrew and I decided to run the theater company, in 2008, I didn’t think I’d have a movie career to go back to. But that was okay: When I consider the characters I might play, I find turning points to be very interesting. There’s a line from the novelist Jeanette Winterson: ‘What you risk reveals what you value’—and that’s always stuck with me.”

Blanchett's movie 'Carol', a 1950s love story between two women will open on November 20.

During the shoot for this story with Tim Walker, when Blanchett slipped into Prada pajamas, she immediately transformed into Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince. As Carol, Blanchett wears a strikingly huge mink coat with a shawl collar that symbolizes her wealth and social status. Carol is not only older and more sophisticated than Therese, who works as a clerk in a department store, but she’s from a different world altogether, a point the coat conveys without words. “The mink was old and it kept falling apart,” Blanchett told me. “Between takes, Sandy Powell, the costume designer, would sew it back together by hand. I considered changing coats, but when you find the right thing, you know immediately: That coat was the one to tell Carol’s story. It was perfect.”

Jacob K styled 'A Rose Without Thorns'.