The 19th-century gentlewoman Fanny Brawne might have been lost to history were it not for her love affair with the great romantic poet John Keats.

Most certainly, Brawne would have been lost to the Twitterati generation were it not for 27-year-old Abbie Cornish, who portrays Brawne in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, which opens Friday. It chronicles Brawne’s attachment to Keats, who died of tuberculosis at 25.

“They seemed like two peas in a pod,” Cornish said of the couple. “The sense of humor, the sensitivity that was in her was also in him. That was a very rare thing to run into a man like that for her. She grew up in the country. She was just very enthralled by his zest and enthusiasm, and his appreciation of beauty and the smaller things.”

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Bright Star is getting rave reviews, here are some that pay special attention to Miss Cornish.

From: NY Times

The movie really belongs to Brawne, played with mesmerizing vitality and heart-stopping grace by Abbie Cornish.

Ms. Cornish, an Australian actress whose previous films include Stop-Loss, Candy and Somersault, has, at 27, achieved a mixture of unguardedness and self-control matched by few actresses of any age or nationality. She’s as good as Kate Winslet, which is about as good as it’s possible to be.

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The reviews are in, and they’re terrific. The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott praised Abbie Cornish’s performance in Jane Campion’s period drama Bright Star, saying that she plays John Keats’ young lover Fanny Brawne “with mesmerizing vitality and heart-stopping grace….She’s as good as Kate Winslet, which is about as good as it’s possible to be.” My own colleague Lisa Schwarzbaum cited “Cornish’s lovely, open-hearted performance.” In Part 2 of our OscarWatch interview, Cornish tells me why she was a loner on the Bright Star set, and what it’s like to have butterflies as your costars.

EXTERNAL VIDEO LINKS:
- Watch Part One
- Watch Part Two

Abbie is featured in the September issue of W magazine.

If home is where the heart is, as the saying goes, then for the past year, Australian­-born actress Abbie Cornish’s home has been in Los Angeles, where she shares a house with Ryan Phillippe not far from where she’s sitting at the Chateau Marmont on a recent summer afternoon.

“I guess I was lucky because it was love that brought me here, not work,” says the 27-year-old Cornish, the star of Jane Campion’s new movie, Bright Star, as she unexpectedly allows a bland question about residency to steer the talk from professional accomplishments to personal attachments. “I think the city feels and looks a little bit different because of that.”

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It’s very likely many have seen at least one 2009 best picture nominee, or maybe even the winner. And now that Cannes is only a memory, it’s time to shuffle through the possibilities before the onslaught of Venice, Telluride and Toronto speculation.

Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” is probably the most likely film from the Cannes competition to make inroads with awards season. Campion is one of only three women to be nominated for a best director Oscar (for The Piano, back in 1993). And while her Bright Star didn’t win over the Cannes jury, it’s got the Academy written all over it: Brit-produced, beautifully shot, romantic period piece that’s likely to be a big hit with critics. Stars Ben Winshaw and Abbie Cornish seem like they have shots at lead acting nods, Paul Schneider has been singled out for his supporting performance, and art direction and costume design nominations seem as likely as Up getting an animated feature nod at this point. If the film takes off when it’s released this fall, denying Campion nods for her screenplay and perhaps even directing might be hard for a group that has vastly under-rewarded women in these categories.

Source: IndieWire