She’s the Australian Scarlett Johansson; the next Cate Blanchett or the next Nicole Kidman; an actor tipped to be more popular internationally than Naomi Watts.
Yet 25-year-old Abbie Cornish, back home briefly to join co-stars Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush in launching the Australian release of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, says she’s unfazed by the comparisons.
Despite a cold, she’s on the phone from the venue for the Elizabeth publicity event, the Sydney Theatre Company.
“I take all that stuff as a compliment. They’re all wonderful actresses and to be compared with them . . .” says Cornish, who attracted international film interest with her lead role in Cate Shortland’s 2004’s multiple award-winning drama Somersault.
Critics Down Under loved her performance and, on other side of the world, The New York Times reviewer enthused that the Australian newcomer had “the face of an angel, and a sexual magnetism she wields with only a partial awareness of its seismic force”.
Yet Cornish says she’s happiest back home on her family farm in the Hunter Valley area near Newcastle, mucking around with the animals.
“I live in the Hunter or in Melbourne – they’re home. I travel to where I have to work, but . . . I love Australia and Australians,” she says.
Director Shekhar Kapur knew he wanted Cornish – all but unknown outside Australia – to join Blanchett and Rush and British actor Clive Owen (Sir Walter Raleigh) in his sequel to his 1998 box-office smash, Elizabeth, which earned Blanchett an Oscar Best Actress nomination, with the award controversially going to Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love.
In the much-anticipated sequel, Cornish is the Queen’s young and attractive lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth “Bess” Throckmorton.
The film’s producers wanted someone who expressed freshness, youth and energy, somebody on whom Elizabeth could reflect as being a younger version of herself. Someone who also had the acting ability and charisma to hold her own opposite the charismatic Blanchett.
Cornish confirmed her credentials with her eye-opening performance in Somersault, backed up by her work on Candy with fellow Australian Heath Ledger.
Says Cornish of the regular appearance of other Australian names in her film work, either as actors or directors: “It’s a happy coincidence. It’s wonderful, though, having someone from home. Filmmaking can be foreign and scary, and the Aussies have a way of looking out for one another.
“On A Good Year, Russell Crowe looked out for me, and although I hadn’t met Cate before this film, she was so helpful. (Rush was an earlier co-star in Candy).”
Cornish says she found the character of Bess in Elizabeth: The Golden Age “intriguing”. “She carries both light and dark. Shekhar has an ability to dive in and explore something endlessly and without limits, without any boundaries.”
Costume fittings were long and detailed when preparing for the film, and the uncommon experience of a tight corset made work uncomfortable for the star.
“(Costume designer) Alex Byrne did marvellous work for the film, collecting materials from all over. The costumes are just breathtaking,” Cornish says.
In fact she found them so attractive she hopes to add a couple of items she wears in the film to her wardrobe when the new film has been launched around the world.
“I think there are going to be exhibitions involving the costumes, but there’s a green bolero jacket I wear when I’m riding with the Queen that I have been promised some time in the future. I just fell in love with it.”
Cornish says she did a lot of reading to prepare for the role, and was able to learn much about the background to her character before turning up on set.
“We also had an Elizabethan expert available on set, Justin, and I was always bugging him for information about Bess – how she’d sit, where she’d be sitting at dinner, how low she’d curtsy to the Queen, other things about the etiquette of the period. He was an amazing source of knowledge, and that made it a bit easier.
“I act on cue, but the actual process of thinking about your character doesn’t leave while you’re doing the work – her place in the story. That doesn’t leave you.”
On the telephone, Cornish is as enthusiastic about her work as she was when talking about Somersault three years ago when she was almost unknown – except to dedicated viewers of ABC-TV’s Wildside series.
But her increasing celebrity has added pressures to her private life away from film sets, such as her rumoured romance with actor Ryan Phillippe that may have played a part in his split from his wife, Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon.
Cornish was branded as “the other woman” in the messy break-up, but she’s still not interested in talking on the record about the status of her relationship with Phillippe – her co-star in the Iraq war drama, Stop Loss, which was directed by Kimberly (Boys Don’t Cry) Peirce and will be released next March. Phillipe is also appearing in her next film, the Viking epic Last Battle Dreamer, to start filming “somewhere in Europe – they don’t know yet” in the next few weeks.
“I prefer to talk about my work, not my private life,” Cornish says politely.
Her schedule is filling so rapidly with future film commitments that the girl who enjoys mucking about on the property may find it difficult to squeeze in the regular visits she has enjoyed in the recent past.
From Last Battle Dreamer she will go to work with acclaimed director Jane Campion on Bright Star, a drama centred on the life of English poet John Keats, to be played by English actor Ben Whishaw.
“I’m excited about working with Jane Campion. It’s going to be a really beautiful film about Keats and his love life,” she says.
Cornish will play Keats’s lover, Fanny Brawne.
“Then there’s an Australian film I’m hoping to do next year as well,” she says, without disclosing any details of this project.
The hectic round of press commitments linked to Elizabeth: The Golden Age hasn’t deterred the young star from finding time for a personal project. She reveals that at the end of this telephone interview, she’ll be recording a video message for the annual dinner of the Animal Club, connected with the animal rights organisation Voiceless.
“I will be working overseas and I can’t get to the dinner,” says Cornish, who is an ambassador for the children’s club.
“I love all animals, although I can’t have a pet of my own on the farm. I’m away too much now.”
Her new film may be centred on “the golden age” of the virgin queen, but the in-demand Cornish is also progressing through her own golden age.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age opens next Thursday.
