While Elizabeth newcomer Clive Owen adds hunk factor to the film, it is Newcastle farm girl Abbie Cornish who has big-name Hollywood directors talking.
Sultry good looks aside, Kapur says it was the 25-year-old’s Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award-winning performance as a teen runaway in Somersault that drew him to her.
“How could you not find Abbie after seeing Somersault?” Kapur says when asked about discovering her exceptional acting talents.
“I saw Somersault and was so taken that someone at this young age could actually give such an internal, but stirring performance.
“I had been thinking about her since then and I was surprised when she called me and her agent said she would like to do this part, because I heard that every part in Hollywood had been offered to her.”
Portraying the Queen’s closest confident and lady in waiting, Bess, the earthy Cornish, who has weathered her fair share of tabloid gossip since arriving in Hollywood, says inhabiting the character for the film was a great experience.
“I feel with Bess, there are layers to her and I sense that there was this real search for spirit that was going on in her mind and dreams,” Cornish reflects.
“There was this person that would conduct themselves in the court, but have this spirit to drift off into her own imagination. She was an interesting character to play. It was a real journey to play a servant to someone whose family was being tortured and killed, to all of a sudden have her life in danger, to find this man who she is having feelings about. It was a nice little journey.”
A nice little journey indeed, and one that will continue for Cornish, who left the family farm in the Hunter Valley at 16. From witnessing the birth of her siblings, to featuring opposite some of the world’s most famous leading men including Russell Crowe in A Good Year and Heath Ledger in Candy, Cornish’s story is in perpetual motion.
She will next sink her teeth into the historical feature, Last Battle Dreamer. The film also stars Ryan Phillippe, 32, the ex-husband of Reese Witherspoon and the very same man Cornish first shared an on-screen chemistry with in Stop Loss, which is due for release next year.
As gossip magazines hit overdrive, reporting Cornish was the reason behind the golden Hollywood marriage of Witherspoon and Phillippe crumbling, the actress was forced to deny rumours of romance, saying simply the pair were “just friends”.
These days the star is more focused on channelling her energy into preparing for Last Battle Dreamer and her following project, as 19th century poet John Keats’s lover in Jane Campion’s film Bright Star.
“I am like a horse at a starting gate at the moment, now that I have had a break I am ready,” Cornish says.
“I am just really focused on the next two films because they are both quite challenging and different roles for me. I have never done them before so it’s kind of scary and exciting. I can’t wait to start.”
