Sometimes it’s hard to reconcile the public image of Abbie Cornish with her Aussie farm-girl origins.

Watching her, all regal and corsetted, as the queen’s handmaiden in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, or reading about her reported part in the break-up of Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon, it’s tempting to think of her as a femme fatale who might care more about which designer label she’ll be wearing on the red carpet than how we treat animals.

But the moment she begins talking in her unaffected Aussie twang about bonding with the livestock on her father’s farm, or the thrill she gets from helping school kids learn about animal-welfare issues, it’s clear that appearances can be deceptive.

View the complete Abbie article from today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph (Australia) here.