Even when called to show quiet strength, Abbie Cornish brought characteristic gusto to the role of a poet’s muse in Jane Campion’s new film

Ask a question of Abbie Cornish and before she answers, she puts her head in her hands and practically stares through the table.

All those pauses – not to mention Cornish’s sharp features and long, blonde hair – can remind you of Nicole Kidman, who also doesn’t serve up easy answers to an interviewer. They’re both Australian, but at 27, Cornish is more than a decade younger. They both have been tabloid magnets – Kidman for all the reasons you know, Cornish as the gossiped-about girlfriend of Ryan Phillippe, ex-husband of Reese Witherspoon.

On screen, however, the resemblance disappears. Cornish seems only like herself, an intense actor with vast capacities for radiance and volatility.

She’s made smart professional choices with supporting parts in smallish films. In A Good Year (2006) she was the backpacking wine-lover who surprises Russell Crowe in Provence. The following year, she was the lady-in-waiting who incurred Cate Blanchett’s wrath by seducing Clive Owen in Elizabeth: The Golden Age.’

Now Bright Star, which opens Friday, puts her at the center of a movie and under the tutelage of no less than Jane Campion, who directed Holly Hunter to an Oscar in The Piano.

Set in the early 19th century, it’s a period romance starring Cornish as Fanny Brawne, an outspoken fan of John Keats’s poetry. She befriends Keats (Ben Whishaw) and falls madly in love with him. But his poverty keeps them from being married, and he dies at 25 of tuberculosis.

Brawne is independent-minded and able to articulate why a piece of writing is beautiful or flawed. She’s also a talented fashion designer, sewing her own clothes – elaborate, flamboyant garments with detailed flourishes. The idea, in part, is that this woman’s sewing is as valid a form of self-expression as Keats’s poetry.

Campion said that working with Cornish and Whishaw was different from older actors she’s worked with. “They don’t talk much, which I’m not used to. They have it all figured out, Abbie and Ben.’’

You mean they think they do? “No, they really do. They’re terribly smart and very instinctive creatures.’’

The director mentioned that Cornish bristled with an energy she’d never quite experienced in an actor before. “She’s like a little racehorse,’’ Campion said, laughing. “She jiggles on the side of the camera. According to her, she can’t wait to get going once she hears that camera whirring. And it’s like that in-the-moment buzz. Some people climb mountains to get that feeling. She performs.’’

Cornish came to the Toronto International Film Festival for the North American premiere of Bright Star. She had just started production on Sucker Punch, an all-woman action-fantasy with Vanessa Hudgens and Jena Malone, directed by Zack Snyder, who made 300 and The Watchmen.

Campion’s description of Cornish’s preparation cracked the actress up. “I’m definitely there ready to go,’’ she said.

But there’s also a practical reason for her energy. “I don’t see the point in dillydallying around,’’ she said. “If they need you on set, then you’re on set. As soon as action is called and the camera’s rolling, that’s the moment.’’

That vigor courses quietly through Cornish’s Bright Star performance. The chance to make a character feel completely alive in a costume drama excited her. “Fanny had a lot of gusto,’’ she said. “I could feel that. And Jane wanting to emphasize that made it, in some ways, easier for me to play. [Fanny] wouldn’t be helpless. She’d be vulnerable, sure, but strong.’’

The Snyder movie appealed to Cornish as a chance to do “something really physical, something I could train for, where I had to learn special skills.

“After Bright Star, my skin was translucent, I was so pale.’’ Cornish said. “I felt unfit and unhealthy. And as a bounce-back, I thought it’d be fun to do something where I’m training throughout the whole movie.’’ So that would explain the intimidating tone of her arms.

She doesn’t like to work for working’s sake. She has other areas of her life to maintain. “When I’m not making movies, I’m painting, making music, being with family and friends, which is more important to me than my career,.’’ she said. Cornish plays guitar and piano, makes hip-hop beats, and raps. That shouldn’t be surprising. And yet when the woman sitting across from you, wearing a black lace Vera Wang evening gown and a black cocktail jacket (to fend off the hotel’s chill) says, “I do some rapping,’’ your eyebrow can’t help itself. It just arches.

“My plan is to record an album in the next couple of years. The bummer is that I don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do. But’’ – she lifted the tablecloth and knocked on wood – “I’ll be around long enough to have time to do it all.’’

The reason you root for Cornish to make the time is that Campion is right. She does seem to have herself figured out. It’s no fun hungering for adult movie stars and seeing only insecure starlets. No one wants Meryl Streep’s career. They want Demi Moore’s body.

Unlike, say, Megan Fox, Cornish doesn’t appear to have a naked need for approval. She acts because she’s good at it. She’s already given two impressive, emotionally grueling performances, one as a drug addict with Heath Ledger in Candy and another as a soldier’s girlfriend in Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss. If she wants to rap, she at least leaves you eager to hear what she’d say.

Source: The Boston Globe