SINCE Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for depicting Katherine Hepburn two years ago in The Aviator, you'd think the Aussie star would be relaxing a little. Instead she's busier than ever.

First she played a drug addict in the Australian-made Little Fish. Then she was cornered as an adulteress in the British- produced Notes On A Scandal. Now in Alejandro Inarritu's high-profile international potboiler Babel she plays a tourist randomly shot in Morocco.

These roles will be followed by the wartime drama The Good German and her second turn as Elizabeth I in the historical drama The Golden Age.

"It has been an amazing year," Cate concedes.

Her hectic work schedule initially caused problems for casting Steven Soderbergh's The Good German. "It didn't look like it could fit with my commitments, then the two camps worked it out. But it was a tight fit for me."

The luminous 37-year-old considers herself lucky to be teamed with Brad Pitt and Mexican auteur Inarritu (21 Grams) in Babel. The film's three stories, set in Morocco, Los Angeles/ Mexico and Tokyo, are interlinked by a hunting rifle.

"They came to me, lucky girl that I am," Cate says. "I really didn't want to work but Alejandro's such a flatterer that I sucked it up and went to Morocco. I'm so proud to be part of that film."

In Babel, Cate and Brad Pitt play an estranged couple who leave their children behind for a relationship-mending holiday, only to be thrown into a life-and-death situation when a Moroccan goat herder randomly shoots at their tourist bus. While this is happening their two children in Los Angeles are being accidentally abandoned in the desert by their Mexican nanny.

This is a harrowing film any parent will understand, the mother-of-two says. "It's all about connections between parents and children. It felt very personal for me as a parent. When you see a child in danger it engages you - it's very distressing."

Cate lets out a secret about the handsome Brad: he had to have prosthetic eyebags to look harrowed in Babel. "No, they're not his own eyebags, he's too gorgeous," she says.

Seemingly everywhere on our cinema screens, Cate initially resisted playing Elizabeth I again after 1998's Elizabeth, and had to be talked around by Golden Age director Shekhar Kapur. "I did say no because I'd done it and I thought, I don't need to do that again. But then he and Geoffrey (Rush) and I had a great conversation. I saw it was about being part of the ageing process and taking her to a different level."

"Shekhar wanted to make a film about immortality and also about holy war, which I thought was very timely," she explains. "I just couldn't refuse."

With so many stunning roles coming out in quick succession, you'd think that Cate has been doing films back to back. But that's not the case, the dedicated mum says.

Her workload on Babel only took three weeks. "The secret of doing lots of films is to learn to move in and out of character," she says.

"The more you do as an actor the more facility you have to switch on and off. You learn to concentrate, as a child does, incredibly intensively, and then you sort of have to relax.

"I remember the first film I did, between scenes the lead actor would be reading or sleeping and I'd think, how can you do that?"

Cate and writer/producer husband Andrew Upton have two young sons, Dashiell and Roman. They have returned to live in Sydney and have thrown themselves into stagework as co-artistic directors with the Sydney Theatre Company.

Cate enjoys being away from the celebrity spotlight of London and Los Angeles.

"I'm not particularly public," she says. "I absolutely accept that there's a public side to my job. We get up in front of people so we're bound to be scrutinised. If you pretend that's not the case then you're kidding yourself. But if you don't want to be seen, there are certain places you don't go."

While she is wary of being a celebrity spokeswoman for environmental issues, Cate feels very strongly about pollution and the energy crisis. For a start, Australia is running out of water - that's why she attended a Walk Against Warming protest in Sydney last year.

"It's a sad and sorry day when the environment has to become groovy before people pay attention to it," she says.

With at least three of her roles being talked of in Oscar terms, Cate is being hailed as a movie queen. But the actress would rather her profile was lower.

"If I had my way, I would be on the brink of success my entire life. That great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment. That would be the perfect state."