Blanchett's gruesome websites

Actress Cate Blanchett looked up gruesome web sites showing what happens to bodies when they are mutilated by explosions to prepare for her new film.

The Charlotte Gray star searched the Internet while in her trailer on the set of Heaven, a thriller about a woman hunting the drug baron responsible for her husband's death.

Her character, Philippa, plants a bomb in an office block to kill the dealer but the plan goes wrong and innocent people die instead.

"It was horrible," Blanchett told the Telegraph magazine about the material she found on the web.

"The level of horror Philippa feels at the misfire of her plan is terrible. 'Every time I close my eyes I see them,' she says in one line.

"I didn't know what that was, in my safe, middle-class happy existence.

"So I took off the protective eyeglasses and saw a little bit of it."

Along with her husband, dramatist and screenwriter Andrew Upton, 33-year-old Blanchett has been getting into another role - parenthood.

The couple's son Dashiell John is now seven months old and she said he is a "remarkable little creature".

She added: "It's opened up a whole new universe to us. Maybe we were ready for it, but it's so exciting. We're loving it."

Blanchett's gruesome websites
Cert: N/A