AceShowbiz - Cate Blanchett has been constantly thinking about quitting acting. Despite being tipped to win her third Oscar for playing an obsessive conductor in the critically-acclaimed film, the "Tar" star, 53, says she considers every day and week giving up her career as she falls "in and out of love with it."

"It's not occasional - it's continual. It's a love affair, isn't it? So you do fall in and out of love with it, and you have to be seduced back into it," she told the February issue of Vanity Fair magazine. She has also rejected several roles since finishing "Tar" as she felt it was time to be "quiet" due to how demanding the part was.

The star - who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2004 for her role in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" and took home a Best Actress Oscar for playing a stressed socialite in Woody Allen's 2013 film "Blue Jasmine" - is one of the favourites to win another Best Actress gong at the 2023 Academy Awards.

She plays Lydia Tar in the film, who rises to become the first female conductor of a German orchestra. It has been nominated for a total of six Oscars including Best Picture.

Cate told "The Sunday Project" last month about thinking about retirement, "I think it was because ('Tar') was such a physical role, the echoes of it are still with me and I think I'm like a lot of audience members, I need time to process it. Obviously I'm lucky enough to work with some amazing directors who have changed my life, but when it all comes together like that, it does stay with you. So I don't ever want to work again."

Cate, who has three sons and a daughter with her screenwriter husband Andrew Upton, 56, added her work across the globe has left her pining for her family and she has been left "profoundly homesick over the last four years" and dreams of returning to her native Australia so she can garden and be near water.

She added, "I'm very obsessed, as most Australians, obsessed by water. I want to be by the water, in the water. I would love to learn to be patient, to be still and think. My grandmother was a wonderful gardener and my mother is likewise an excellent gardener and she lives with us, and I really want to spend time in the garden with my mum."