Alongside her equally glamorous co-stars, Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush, at tomorrow night’s premiere of Elizabeth: The Golden Age at the Cremorne Orpheum, it will be hard to imagine Abbie Cornish dressed down in her farm gear and gumboots.

Recently returned from a whirlwind press tour for the film, Cornish spent the first half of this week hanging out at her family’s farm at Lochinvar in the Hunter Valley with “the turkeys, ducks, geese, cows and horses … because it is spring and all the animals are having babies, it is just the best season”, a besotted Cornish told Stay in Touch.

Cornish is the ambassador for Animal Club, the kids’ arm of the animal rights organisation Voiceless, run by Brian and Ondine Sherman, from Paddington’s Sherman Galleries.

Cornish was the guest of honour at the organisation’s 2006 annual grants dinner, for schools and community groups working for animal welfare, and participates in school workshops with the organisation when in town.

But with two back-to-back overseas film shoots keeping Cornish overseas until May next year, recipients at this year’s dinner, slated for December, will have to make do with a video message, to be recorded this afternoon, following an early- morning press conference for Elizabeth. Phew.

“As we move into a Westernised world, we move away from a connection with other living things,” said Cornish, who has been a vegetarian since she was 13 and as a child harboured ambitions to be a vet. “There is this disconnection between the steak that is on our plate and where it came from.”

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald