The Australian actress, who appears on the magazine's cover in a headpiece by Sydney milliner Rosie Boylan, was interviewed by New York-based Australian author Anna Funder, about life as a woman in Hollywood, as well as how motherhood has changed her.

Blanchett attributed the success of older women in Hollywood to the industry's female audience.

"Tina Fey wrote in Bossypants that any woman in Hollywood who's no longer considered f---able is ignored. In the era of Judi Dench and Meryl Streep and other actresses we love, can this really be true, or are they exceptions?" Funder asked Blanchett, who turns 46 in May.

The two-time Oscar winner replied: "Female audiences are driving the change, I think.

"Women don't stop consuming cultural product once they stop menstruating."

Blanchett also spoke bluntly about the Hollywood gender pay gap, which emerged during the Sony email hacks, expressing surprise that the revelations, which famously revealed Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid less than their male co-stars for their Oscar-nominated performances in 2013 film American Hustle, had caused such a stir.

"People were surprised? There are countless industries around the world where women in top positions are not equally remunerated for equal work," she said.

It has been a big year for Blanchett. She is doing press for her new film, Cinderella, and she and husband Andrew Upton recently welcomed a new addition to the family, baby Edith, who they adopted through the US system.

Blanchett told Vogue that life with her four children (Blanchett and Upton also have three boys: Dashiell, 13, Roman, 10, and Ignatius, 6) had taught her about compromise.

"I think before having children the idea of compromise rubbed shoulders with weakness or deception in some way," she said.

Despite acknowledging the challenges associated with parenting, Blanchett said that she found it ultimately rewarding.

"Children are spirited, passionate, political, demanding. They are also heartbreaking," she said.

"They constantly extend parents and so parents are constantly confronted with their failures, don't you think? I'd rather presently live life this way than not."

Blanchett and her family have said they will be moving to the US at the end of this year after Upton's term as artistic director at the Sydney Theatre Company comes to an end.

They moved to Sydney in 2007, after nine years living in Brighton, England.