'We began this conversation a long time ago': Cate Blanchett reveals she'd been planning to adopt for 14 years before welcoming daughter Edith to the family

Published: 00:27 EST, 22 November 2015 | Updated: 21:03 EST, 22 November 2015

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She revealed in March that she had adopted a baby girl with her husband Andrew Upton.

But Cate Blanchett has now admitted the decision was a long time coming - with the couple first discussing the possibility of adoption 14 years ago.

'We actually began the conversation a very long time ago, after our first son was born and he's about to turn 14,' she told Women in the World's Tina Brown, before adding: 'And then we just had two other children and it sort of dropped off the radar.'

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Long time coming: Cate Blanchett, who adopted daughter Edith earlier this year, has revealed she first contemplated adoption 14 years ago

The 46-year-old actress, who now has three biological sons with her husband of 17 years, welcomed adopted daughter Edith Vivian Patricia Upton to the family earlier this year.

But Blanchett said the decision was not based on a desire to have a girl after having three sons - Dashiell, 13, Roman, 10, and Ignatius, six.

'I felt we had space, enough emotional room in our hearts and were privileged enough to have the capacity to have another child, so it wasn't about biology.

'It wasn't about a desire to have a girl, the gender of the children was never particularly important to me,' she added.

Happily married: The 46-year-old actress has three biological sons with her husband of 17 years, Andrew Upton, pictured together in 2010

'It's more about their spirits but it's been a remarkable thing watching them welcome her and become, you know, a little troop.'

The actress also spoke about the importance of 'how we raise our boys' to help eradicate violence against women in the future.

Known for her interest in humanitarian causes, Blanchett is currently working on a very Australian story that she hopes to adapt into a movie.

The true story is about a mentally unwell Australian woman who 'fell through the cracks' of the immigration, welfare and criminal justice systems to end up in a brutal detention centre.

'It wasn't about a desire to have a girl' The actress, pictured with her youngest son Ignatius in 2008, said that adopting a girl had nothing to do with already having three sons

Talk of the project prompted Brown to ask Blanchett her own thoughts on Australia's current system of immigration detention, to which the actress replied that she found her country's recent shift in attitude on immigration 'very strange'.

'We've had a mixed relationship with refugees over the years, Australia,' she said.

'It's very strange because on the one hand we're a nation that's built on immigration and we're signatories to the [19]51 convention and we've had in the past ... [a] very generous resettlement program for refugees.

'But in recent times governments have had, like a lot of governments around the world, a quite reactionary, backward-looking relationship to immigration policy.'

Blanchett added that attitudes towards immigrants in Australia used to be much more tolerant, saying: 'When I grew up there was multiculturalism.'