“Sometimes they’re the ones that need a hug. And you need to say, ‘Why don’t you step away and clear your head a little bit?'” Blanchett told the audience at TIFF.

Sometimes, even the industry’s most well-respected directors require a gentle nudge to get their creative visions back on track, as Cate Blanchett revealed Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Oscar-winning Australian actress told a TIFF audience gathered for a Q&A about her career thus far (plus upcoming projects like the Apple TV+ series Disclaimer and the film Rumours) that she’s learned over the years that there’s a push and pull between actors and their directors, and that stars of any given project need to create an equally safe space within which filmmakers can work.

“One night we were shooting a scene in Carol, the house was kind of a strange abandoned house we were shooting in that was really hard for Ed [Lachman] to get the light in to light the scene properly. It was really complicated. You could tell Todd [Haynes] was finding it really difficult,” the 55-year-old recalled of the 2015 Oscar-nominated drama, in which she starred as a woman who falls for another (Rooney Mara) in 1952 New York City.

“You expect a director to have everything together and hold it together all the time,” she continued. “Sometimes they’re the ones that need a hug. And you need to say, ‘Why don’t you step away and clear your head a little bit?’ In the way that he’d make the space for the actors to do that, we make space for them.”

Blanchett recalled that Haynes obliged her suggestion, and that “he stepped away so we could figure out a different way to position it,” stressing that “you always want to do the best for a director like that” so that the work can come together in the end.

“It was quite fluid, but there’s no conflict with him. He’s sort of conflict-averse. That doesn’t mean you necessarily have to agree,” she continued. “There’s a sort of misconception somehow that making a film, when it’s great, is like summer camp. I’ve been on a couple of those, and the films have been f—ing awful. Polite disagreement, respectful disagreement is super important in the creative process, and know you’ve got a healthy relationship with someone when you can really fight for things, but then allow your mind to be changed.”

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to a representative for Haynes for comment.

The pair’s work paid off, as Carol — adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt — earned rave reviews upon its release, and six total Academy Award nominations, including one each for both Blanchett and Mara’s performances. The film also competed for the prestigious Palme d’Or prize at Cannes, where Mara was honored with the Best Actress prize.

Elsewhere during her TIFF talk, Blanchett jokingly resisted the thought of watching clips from some of her films that the festival eventually played on a screen behind her to highlight her career achievements, including performances in The Aviator and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

“Is there a barf bucket?” Blanchett joked, later leaning into the camp of her Elizabeth performance and elaborate costuming by telling the crowd, “I keep waiting for RuPaul to ask me to go on the Drag Race.”