For her Variety Uncovered interview, Cate Blanchett shared her thoughts on topics ranging from the Cannes Film Festival, over which she is presiding, to changes in the industry regarding women to the future of the movie business.

“Change is not really polite and nice at first,” she said, of the recent movement surrounding gender equity issues in the industry. “I feel like the dam has broken. There were cracks in the dam for an incredibly long time and we were trying to put putty on them and, ‘We can hold this together.'”

“But it’s not just women, it’s also men, it’s also people of different sexual persuasions,” she continued. “Our job is yes, to be creative, but one of our primary jobs as artists is to be fearless. And I think we’re fearlessly examining the issues in our industry.”

She added that she felt we are in a “particularly violent place towards women and have been for the past decade or so,” but that women have achieved a lot — “though universal suffrage was quite a long time ago.”

“I feel like we’ve let a lot of things go as women, and we’ve put up with a lot of things for a long time, but the dam has broken. And I don’t think there’s any point in putting it back up,” she said.

“In the best possible way, women have stopped being patient.”

Watch the full interview above.