“One night I was having dinner with Bradley Cooper and he was like, ‘If [the cast of the A-Team] had played paintball with [the cast of Sucker Punch] you would have kicked our butts.” It’s like, “Yeah, we know.” – Abbie Cornish

GALLERY LINKS:
- Photoshoots: Nylon
- Magazine Scans: Nylon (US) – April 2011

“I think it’s really important to live in the moment,” she says. “Something I’ve noticed as I get older is that I do think about the future more. It’s all positive thinking.” For example, she says, “I can see (having) a child one day, and so I start to take more care of myself.”

GALLERY LINKS:
- Photoshoots: USA Today

Q: Was the nature of intelligence something you addressed in preparing for Limitless?

A: Particularly, there were discussions of what it would feel like to use 100 percent of your brain. It’s hard to imagine, you know? They say we only use, like, 10 percent of our brains. So it’s not like we use 50 and you just have to times it by two; we have to times it by 10.

Q: Did you have to confront that in a practical way, because your character takes the drug?

A: I imagined if you could have all your senses working at optimum form, how would that feel? Everything just heightened. I guess it’s almost animalistic in a way, the way certain animals can use their senses as we can’t – a dog’s sense of smell, for instance. Also the idea of instinct, the sixth sense, being able to predict an outcome. I tapped into that.

Q: What is your Sucker Punch character like, and what is the film about?

A: Sweet Pea is the older sister of Rocket (played by Jena Malone) … she’s in there as her protector, her mother, her nurturer. She’s very strong, but in the beginning of the film she’s playing by the book, and that book is not one you can trust. Of course, the film is entertaining; it’s girls kicking butt and all that sort of stuff, but there are a lot of existential ideas explored. What is fate? Do we have a hand in our own destiny? Who is it that sets us free? All these things are explored in the film. What it is to be a girl, to be a woman.

Q: Your combat was particularly convincing.

A: I’ve always loved it. My mum was Australian national karate champion. She won the full-contact championship when I was about 9. When she went into the final, she was up against a younger black belt; she was a brown belt. I remember being incredibly scared – this is my mother! It was the most amazing thing ever. I’ll never, ever forget it. My mum fought so hard, round after round, and she won. She was so fierce and amazing and strong. So I would go with her and train a little bit. I’ve dabbled in mixed martial arts; a little bit of ninjutsu and taekwondo and karate and kickboxing and that sort of thing, so I was ready to go, day one.

Q: When this is published, your fan base is going to expand alarmingly in a new direction.

A: (laughs) I loved training with these guys. There was a moment where I actually felt like this could be my life. I bounced out of bed every single morning. I would do anything to do it again. Even with all the swords and guns and stuff, and being a vegetarian – I love people and animals so much, I never thought I’d be excited or interested in guns, but when you’re using them and not harming anyone, it’s amazing. So yeah, I loved making that movie.

Limitless (PG-13) opened this weekend at Bay Area theaters.

To see a trailer, go to www.iamrogue. com/limitless.

Sucker Punch (PG-13) opens March 25 at Bay Area theaters.

Source: SF Gate

To see a trailer, go to suckerpunch movie.warnerbros.com.

Cooper is Eddie Morra, a guy who gets hooked on a new illegal drug called NZT. The little clear pill gives the user the ability to use their brain’s full potential ultimately making them smarter and stronger. Cornish’s character, Lindy, is Eddie’s former flame. She ditches Eddie after he hits an all-time low, but the two reunite when Eddie becomes super Eddie courtesy of NZT. However, Eddie’s new life isn’t entirely noble and he gets mixed up with some shady characters and, of course, Lindy gets a little too involved for her liking.

With Limitless hitting theaters on March 18th and Sucker Punch arriving on the 25th, Cornish is in full press mode and came ready to spill on anything and everything from her awe of Robert De Niro to her tactics when choosing roles. Check out all of that and much more in the interview below and be sure to keep an eye out for Cornish’s big moment in the film. You won’t believe the lengths she goes to!

Can you tell us about the character of Lindy and how you came to this project?
Abbie Cornish: Neil Burger sent me the script a while back and he really wanted me to do it and I thought it was a really interesting film and I felt like the character had room to grow and evolve within the scenes that were already written because it is a small part. So, as an actor, you always want to have a journey to go on, you want to have something where you can sink your teeth in and get your hands dirty. And so I felt like that was possible with this role and I was a fan of Bradley Cooper’s. We had never met and through the process of making the film, we became really good friends and I just thought Neil, as a director, would be a very present and caring and collaborative director. The genre of the film was something I hadn’t explored before and also the idea of this drug and what it could do and the possibility that it could really exist in our everyday lives. Even though it’s far-fetched, at the same time it kind of felt possible and real.

How does it feel to have your name above Robert De Niro’s name on the poster?
It’s interesting, I remember when we did the script read-through, the seats were very much like this, but close together so if you imagine the seats being like this (pulls the chairs closer together) and there’s a little card that says “Abbie Cornish,” there’s one here that says “Robert De Niro” and one here that says “Bradley Cooper,” and Bradley sits down and I sit down and we were talking over Bob De Niro’s chair to each other like this and then all of a sudden I look and I saw his placard and I said to Bradley, “Look, in a moment this chair will be filled by Robert De Niro.” I said, “How surreal is that?” He goes, “I know, I can’t believe it,” and it was just that moment of realizing that. We were leaning over his chair and that moment of realizing and all of a sudden we were making sure his chair was ready for him. [Laughs] It was just the most amazing thing for me because, as an actor, his performances are incredible. He’s such a talented and amazing actor and has had such a wonderful career. I think when you meet him, for me, it was like this fog for a moment, or more so, it sounds silly [laughs], but when people talk about near-death experiences, their life flashes before their eyes; when I saw Robert De Niro’s face, all his characters and his performances flashed before my eyes and then that and I saw this man who is Robert De Niro. It is, of course, surreal and wonderful and amazing and awesome.

Would you ever take NZT yourself?
I think if you could have the ability to take a drug like that without any side effects, without any consequences, without having to face addiction and all that sort of stuff; if you can just go on an adventure with it and feel what that is like. If you could open your mind and utilize 100% of your brain for a moment and feel that. I feel like so many of us have these infinite lists of things to do. I want to learn a language, I want to learn how to play the piano, I want to evolve as a painter, I want to run faster. Whatever it is, I feel like we always have these aims and aspirations and so the idea of taking a drug where within half an hour you could read a novel or within two hours learn a language or learn how to play the piano overnight and read classical music, it’s kind of fascinating. Imagine that. I don’t know why I would ever say no to the concept of that.

There’s also a very serious side to this concept because we’ve got kids today taking drugs to perform better in school. Can you weigh in on that topic?
Yeah, that was something I was talking about today actually. The closest things to it that I can think of are things like Ritalin and Adderall are these drugs that make you focus that are meant to accelerate the process of study and learning and all that. It’s interesting. For me, I very much feel that each is to their own. I feel like you can have a debate about it and you can express your own personal opinion on whether you yourself would want to do it or not do it or whether you’re against it or for it, but at the end of the day, how much can you really judge someone else’s existence and their life and what it is that they choose to do? I think as long as it’s not harming anyone else, I don’t know how much judgment can be placed upon it. I kind of feel like that with a lot of things in life. You know, I’m a vegetarian and very much active in regards to how I feel about animal rights and protecting animals and giving animals a voice, but at the same time, I appreciate and respect other people’s decisions to eat meat. The only thing that I hope is that people are educated, that they’re aware, that they’re living a conscious lifestyle. The only time where my hair stands up on its ends is when someone is very ill-informed, when they’re arrogant, when they haven’t educated themselves and they feel like they know what is right, but at the same time, they haven’t explored the truth of the situation.

How do you choose what roles you do and does it affect you personally if a movie does or does not do well commercially?
I’ll answer the second question first; I feel like I’ve been really blessed with the career that I’ve had and the work that I’ve been able to do as an actor because it originated from a place of films like Somersault where it’s a smaller budget film, great director, very hard working crew and you make that film with your heart and your soul. You don’t even think about what’s going to happen with it. I remember making Somersault and I didn’t even think about what was going to happen with the film when it was actually a film. I just thought about the film we were making.

Was that the first movie you made?
That was the first lead role in a feature film. I’d done a couple small roles in films and I’d done a bit of television, so it felt like the first time. And I remember when that film finally came out and then I got this phone call that said we were going to Cannes, I couldn’t believe it. It’s the most amazing, awesome thing that we went to Cannes, then we went to Tokyo and we went somewhere else. It was so beautiful and so amazing. And so I think that is always alive within me where, for me, the process of making a film is where all the energy goes and what’s really important and I feel that if you’re passionate, if you pour yourself into it and you’re surrounded by people doing the same thing that it doesn’t matter. And not a lot of people have seen Somersault, but I’m so proud of that film. That, for me, I don’t really think of things in those terms. Even with Sucker Punch, it’s a $100 million dollar film, it’s Warner Bros., I’ve never done a film like that, I’ve never been in a movie of that budget and you see big billboards everywhere and it’s on the internet, it’s on the television; it still feels the same to me. The process of making it was the same and I really care about the people I made it with.

Then the first question, choices that I make, yeah, it’s kind of the same thing. I make choices based on my instinct, I make choices based on the story, the character, the people that I’ll be working with. The more I work actually, the more I realize how important it is the people you make the film with.

So the decision-making process doesn’t correlate with the work you’ve just done?
No, not at all. And you know what? In the last couple of years, I’ve worked with some really, really awesome people and developed friendships and relationships that I will take with me for the rest of my life. For example, on Sucker Punch, the five of us girls bonded like you wouldn’t even believe and Zack Snyder and Deb Snyder, just the way they make films. I don’t know if you guys have done conferences with them, but you just get a sense very fast that they’re like a team and so when you work with them, it feels like you’re part of their family. We were all so sad when we wrapped on that film, because we felt like the family was sort of breaking up and I still stay in contact with everyone. For example, Jena Malone, she’s one of my best friends. It’s wonderful that feeling to me. Sometimes I call it play, sometimes I call it work, because it’s not defined just as work because it’s so enriched.

Source: Cinema Blend

A substantial portion of Cornish’s life is her dedication to being a vegetarian and supporting animal rights. “But at the same time, I appreciate and respect other peoples’ decisions to eat meat,” said the Australian actress, who received accolades for her work in Bright Star. “The only thing that I hope is that people are educated, that they are aware, that they are living a conscious lifestyle. The only time when my hair stands up is when someone is very ill informed, when they are arrogant, when they haven’t educated themselves and they feel like they know what is right but at the same time they haven’t explored the truth of the situation.”

Cornish grew up in a hobby farm (in Lochinvar) where the nearest corner store was 5 kilometers away, and the store was a “a post office, news agency, a fish and chips shop.” The nearest theater for the Australian actress was a 15-20 minute drive. “You’re driving in the country, 80 kilometers an hour sometimes with no traffic, so it’s a fair way,” she adds.

Source: Hollywood Outbreak

“I’m a vegetarian – I’m not the type to want to go shoot a gun – then I actually got to the range and totally fell in love with an M4. It was kind of amazing.”

On top of the Marie Claire cover story, which we’ve reported about previously, Abbie is also featured in another American magazine in April; she has a gorgeous pin-up snap and a short article inside the pages of GQ. Photoshoots from both magazines are now available in the gallery and the articles may be read in the press section.

The Limitless film page has also been updated with some critics’ quotes regarding Abbie’s performance. Pretty much all reviews that I’ve come across so far agree that Abbie is heavily underused in the movie but that she does well with the given material. Sad to hear that she doesn’t have all that much to do in the movie, really. She is so talented and truly deserves to be front and center in films. You’d think this would have happened especially following her spectacular turn in Bright Star.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Photoshoots: GQ
- Photoshoots: Marie Claire

With Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper on board, the rest of the cast fell quickly into place, starting with Abbie Cornish as Lindy, Eddie’s girlfriend.”

Lindy, a magazine editor, has given Eddie her complete support. But even she has reached the end of her patience with him and ends their relationship as the film opens. When he discovers NZT and becomes wildly successful, they get back together again. “Abbie has a luminosity that makes it especially sad to think that Eddie could have blown it with her,” says Dixon. “And indeed, one of the things the drug does is help him get her back.”

Along with the opportunity to work with two actors whose work she admires, Cornish was drawn to the overall quality of the script. “It’s extremely well-written,” says the Australian-born actress. “This is a story you can lose yourself in because it feels like it could actually be happening. It’s totally believable and very contemporary.”

Lindy reconciles with Eddie after his amazing transformation, but she remains the voice of reason in the story. “Neil always saw the role as being pivotal, even though it’s a smaller one,” says Cornish. “She’s the only one who takes the drug and is able to understand the consequences. It changes what it is to be fallible, which is essential to being human.” Working with Burger was an intensely collaborative experience for Cornish. “He’s a very sensitive person who listens to the actors,” she says. “It makes the process of filmmaking feel collective and that’s very refreshing.”

Cornish brought the right mixture of smarts and beauty to the role, says Burger. “Abbie is fantastic,” says Burger. “She’s so lovely and so talented. Abbie has this mischievous energy, but she’s also incredibly bright. And the chemistry between Abbie and Bradley was immediate. They are pretty amazing together. You could feel the connection and get a sense of the history of their characters.”

Cornish, almost all of whose scenes are all with Cooper, says his enthusiasm for the work was infectious. “Bradley took on the role wholeheartedly,” she says. “It was awesome to watch. He has a great sense of humor as well as great depth to him, so he has that enormous range as an actor. He’s perfect as Eddie, because he can go from the guy in a downhill spiral to someone who has completely got it together. He’s also generous, and very engaging, which makes it a lot of fun to work with him.”

Her next picture will be a small, small indie film by relatively forgotten filmmaker David Riker who was hailed in 1998 for his debut picture, La Ciudad, which was nominated for several awards that year including the Independent Spirit Awards, The Gotham Awards and the SXSW Film Festival . While it’s been almost 13 years since La Ciudad, Riker, who penned Sleepdealer in the interim, is finally set to shoot his next picture, The Girl, starring Cornish, who replaced Emily Blunt earlier this year.

“It’s the story of a 25-year-old Texan girl who lives quite close to the Mexican border,” Cornish explained about her character Ashley. “She has a five-year-old son that she’s lost to the welfare system, she sees an opportunity to make money bringing illegal immigrants across the border. So she does it as a one-off and during this incident in a river, she’s left with the responsibility of a 9-year-old girl. So it’s her journey with a 9-year-old Mexican girl through Mexico to get her home.”

With a nine-week shoot planned in Mexico later this Spring, it occurred to the actress that it’s the most challenging film she’s ever done so far and she’s actually learning Spanish for the role as well. “I’m prepping more on this film than I have on any other film before. The only one that would come close in regards to preparation is Sucker Punch but that was very much physical preparation, because we trained for three months before we started filming. 70 percent of my dialogue is in Spanish. I don’t know how to speak Spanish, if only the NZT drug was real!” she said, referring to the smart drug in Limitless that allows its users to unlock the other 90 percent of their brain and therefore unleash an intelligence that makes learning new languages an afternoon task.

“I wish I had a year up my sleeve before I made the movie,” she said of her prep time. “I’ve only got a couple of months, but I can only do what I can do. I go to Mexico really soon. I’m going to spend a lot of time with the little girl, her name is Maritza, she’s a non-actor and doesn’t speak a word of English, so it’s pretty awesome.”

Cornish also spoke about her role in Madonna’s upcoming sophomore feature-length effort, the two-tiered romantic drama W.E.. And while the actress said making the film was enjoyable, it was also one of the hardest shoots she’s ever had to work on because of the surplus of material they had to get through in a limited amount of time. “There was so much in the script. I was amazed, we shot it all,” she said. “I know Madonna had to work hard in the editing room because it could be like a four hour film—you have two stories that run parallel. So you have two whole lives that you are trying to express and tell, and get [the film] under two hours.” [ed. W.E. is bifurcated and focuses on the affair between King Edward VIII and American divorcée Wallis Simpson plus a contemporary romance between a married woman and a Russian security guard.]

The actress had nothing but praise for the musical icon-turned-filmmaker, though noted her approach to visuals was atypical. “Working with Madonna was great,” she said. “It was different because she comes from a music background, but she’s a natural director that’s for sure and it’s in her blood, because throughout her life she’s dealt with choreography, dance and orchestrating things in that way, it was definitely a forte for her during the process of filmmaking.”

Cornish, who first broke out in the 2004 Aussie film, Sommersault, extolled the virtues of working with first-time feature-length filmmaker Cate Shortland as a near-magical experience and said she would certainly be game to work with the director again, who is busy tending to her family. “Who knows when she’ll make her next film. She seems to be taking her time, but if I get the opportunity, I would love to work with her again.”

Source: Indie Wire

The film’s co-star, Abbie Cornish, not only confirmed the possibility of a Venice debut to MTV News, but also revealed the mysterious role Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes, will be playing.

“I heard yesterday,” Cornish told us about Venice, while promoting her upcoming thriller, Limitless. “That’d be amazing.”

W.E follows a Julie & Julia-esque dual story line, one featuring Cornish as a contemporary woman obsessed with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and another focusing on the royal couple itself. News that Lourdes would appear in a small role surfaced last fall, when photos of the teen in a schoolgirl’s uniform popped up online, but until now the nature of her part was unclear. Cornish’s character, it turns out, has a deep connection to that of Lourdes.

“She actually plays a younger version of my character,” Cornish said, adding that because they portray the same person, they never got to share actual screen time. “She’s a super-cute, younger version of my character.”

W.E. marks Madonna’s second feature following Filth and Wisdom, which hit only a handful of theaters in 2008. The new project, the pop star turned filmmaker said last year, has been an obsession of hers even before Filth and Wisdom and took her two-and-a-half years to write. “I made Filth and Wisdom because I realized that I didn’t really have a right to make a bigger film until I made a smaller film — and learned how to make a film,” she said.

According to Cornish, though, the Queen of Pop is a born filmmaker. “Madonna is a natural director,” the actress told us. “It’s in her nature. She’s a Leo and she really represents the Leos very well. She’s a very smart woman, very well read. She really absorbs a lot about whatever she’s involved in. I think she really loves learning. It was interesting to see her evolve throughout the filmmaking process. She’s such a cool woman.”

Source: MTV

Of the film’s many strengths, the five actresses at the core of Sucker Punch are at the forefront. Emily Browning leads the pack as Baby Doll, but she’s supported by an excellent cast that includes Jena Malone as field medic Rocket and Abbie Cornish as the fierce Sweet Pea, Rocket’s sister.

When we spoke with those two actresses on the set of Sucker Punch in late 2009, it was a particularly good day to talk to Malone. You see, while a healthy chunk of Sucker Punch dwells on action and adventure, there are also numerous dance sequences. The day we were on set just so happened to be Malone’s turn on stage, delivering a provocative dance routine that’s about as personal as it gets.

Malone: “Today’s dance scene was crazy. Each of us girls, except for Emily – because her dance becomes the tipping off of the fantasy worlds – we each have our own burlesque dance. It’s our persona coming out, all of the different icons that we represent. Mine’s sort of the nurse, because the first time that Baby Doll sees me, I’m done up as a nurse. It’s a crazy-dead-zombie-robot-nurse dance. It’s going to be so crazy and going to be so awesome.”

She added that even considering the grueling training process to become an appropriately skilled action star, that day’s dancing sequence was far scarier for her than any of the film’s battle scenes.

Malone: “This was the most terrifying thing of the entire film. I could shoot orcs until my fingers fall off. I could be in the gym doing deadlifts until my body gives out. But this dance is totally terrifying me. You have to get out of your mind, which is what they’ve been training us for – the physical discipline, the mental discipline – and get back into the body – the rhythm, the sex, the breath. We were doing the fighting sequence in the morning and you’re there and pumped up with your guns, then you have to let it all go and remember the languid curves and the softness of the body, too.”

Switching between sultry dancer and capable fighter isn’t an easy task, especially considering the preparation that each actress went through during pre-production.

Malone: “The first three months that the three of us girls were training together didn’t come until August – that was the rehearsal. All three of us girls were sweating, crying, figuring out what our pain threshold was. In a weird way, it was like an asylum. We had to eat at a specific time. We had to push ourselves to the limits. We were wearing these sweat uniforms and being instructed. Everything was a regiment. It was a far more interesting style of rehearsing. Getting to know the physical body of the character, the character’s pain threshold, how you can work together as a team. Horrible moments, like when I’m doing my twentieth farmer’s carry and I’m freaking sobbing and you want to do it for the other girls. You all become strong together. I think that any form of round-the-table, reading-the-scenes, we never would have gotten to that point of closeness and how connected we were in those first three months.”

Cornish: “And it was such an unspoken thing. We did talk about it, but there were so many moments when we were all just going hard and doing this thing. For me in particular, during those three months, there was this feeling inside me that was almost zen-like. It was so peaceful, because coming in and doing martial arts and working out and learning how to use a gun, you have to be so careful with a gun — it’s a deadly weapon. There was something very focused about that process, very disciplined. Just to be able to exert that much energy and let it out every single day was really fun.”

Although Sucker Punch boasts a heavy action component, both Malone and Cornish insisted that the film’s character work is just as strong.

Malone: “I think that’s a tribute to Zack and the script. He was really adamant about finding these characters amongst absolutely crazy feats of strength and confidence and out of this world of action. But in the midst of it being like, ‘Okay, yeah, I messed up. I’m sorry,’ there are still the women that we know in the other worlds. It’s not all just action: it’s humanistic, realistic. Also, he allows us to develop things on our feet. If there’s a little look that we can give, he allows those moments to happen. It’s about adding the characters to the fantasy.”

Cornish cited one of the film’s major action set pieces — a scene that sees our heroes battling against an army of mechanical gas-filled German soldier drones in the trenches of World War I — as especially demonstrative of the marriage between violence and drama.

Cornish: “Story-wise, for me in World War I, it was very much about Sweet Pea worrying about Rocket. She’s only here for her. Throughout that whole WWI sequence, everything they did, that was my intention. Where’s my sister? What’s she doing? It’s kind of fun, too, because even though you’re in this kill-crazy martial arts world, the story still exists.”

In his previous films, Snyder has proven time and time again that he’s a masterful action director. But Sucker Punch could prove his weight as a dramatic director, as Malone and Cornish had nothing but glowing things to say about Snyder’s skills in that department, particularly his ability to write for women.

Cornish: “I think Zack himself is very much in touch with his femininity as much as he is his masculinity. He’s very sensitive and caring.”

Malone: “Also, the script speaks for itself. If I’d read the script and felt that he didn’t know what he was talking about, I don’t think any of us would be here. He’s exploring so many different levels of female archetypes and allowing them to break and bend and expose themselves, amazing different forms of strength and insecurity, and allowing these women to really be fully-fleshed characters. I was thinking that they could really be men or women. In an action movie, we’re so used to seeing these men, but literally we could almost be sexless were it not for the specificity of the world that we’re in.”

Cornish: “The thing about Zack that I’ve found really fun is that he knows what he’s doing. He’s a great filmmaker. He’s super technical. He’s had this film in his head from start to finish. It’s all there, all storyboarded. But at the same time, he’s constantly exploring it. He’s very instinctual. You don’t feel confined or restricted. Every day is that day. He’s so in the moment. He’s a lot of fun to work with. I’ve had the most fun on this film than I have on any film.”

Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch arrives in theaters on March 25.

Source: SpinOff

The Cupid’s-bow lips, the downy-soft cheeks, the button nose: 27-year-old Abbie Cornish has those Ivory-soap-girl features we’re so familiar with, and yet hers is a face it’s hard to stop staring at—testament to the intelligence, vulnerability, and sensuality she brings to her characters. Her breakthrough for American audiences came with fellow Australian Heath Ledger, as a junkie in 2006’s Candy, free-falling from invincible heroin highs to soul-seizing anguish. Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss saw her fleeing the law with Ryan Phillippe’s character. (Enter some real-life drama: Phillippe, then the husband of Reese Witherspoon, would soon become her boyfriend.) She may have been her loveliest in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, playing John Keats’s muse, the flirty and forthright Fanny Brawne.

Cornish jumped on the phone earlier today to discuss Bright Star, but it was her enthusiasm for Punch which was most apparent. Shooting began in Vancouver last month and Cornish says Snyder’s latest is “seriously, six films in one almost.”

An original story by Snyder and Steve Shibuya, Sucker centers on Baby Doll (Emily Browning), a young girl trying to escape a fate of being lobotomized by her evil stepfather. In order to do so, she believes she has to steal five objects before she is caught by a vile man. With only five days until the operation she descends into different imaginary worlds searching for the objects and recruits some of her institutionalized friends to help. Sweetpea is one of those buddies and Cornish says you have to imagine her character like a cube, each with a different side in every dimension.

“In these different worlds you’re constantly turning it and different parts of this character [appear],” Cornish says. “I have had a field day not only play the girl in the psych ward, but the girl in crazy action sequences killing 20 guys in row. Every day is different on this film.”

I’d spoken to another “Sucker” lady, Vanessa Hudgens, before shooting began and the actress was visibly pumped up about her own character’s massive gun. It turns out her co-stars are in awe of the weapon as well.

“Vanessa definitely has the biggest gun. It’s called ‘the saw’ and one day Jena Malone and I fired that gun off for fun, just for therapy,” Cornish says. “It has this blast of light that is so intense. I can see why she’s so fascinated.”

Cornish’s Sweetpea is no slouch, however. The actress notes, “I have a good shot gun, a knife and a broad four.”

Moreover, Sucker Punch is a completely different animal than Bright Star, but it’s the period drama that may put Cornish in a whole new stratosphere.

Already one of the better-reviewed films of the year, “Bright” finds Cornish portraying Frances “Fanny” Brawne, the true love of legendary British poet John Keats (played by Ben Whishaw). The film depicts their unconventional romance that was cut short by Keats’ untimely death at the age of 25. Bright Star is actually the name of one of his most famous poems that professes his love for Brawne. Cornish said that while the letters that documented their affair were helpful the biggest assist came from Keats’ poems themselves.

Cornish says, “Just to read Bright Star again helped so much to understand their relationship and the trials and tribulations.”

Both leads received strong notices for their work, but it’s Cornish’s performance that has garnered the most attention. But even while Cornish may be a major player for year-end awards, she insists she couldn’t have done it without Whishaw’s support.

“Sometimes as an actor your job is made a whole lot easer by being alongside an actor that you admire and respect,” Cornish says. “I absolutely love Ben. I think he’s just a gorgeous human being. To be able to work that way — really makes it a much more pleasant and, I guess, easy experience to go through. It’s not just two people going to work doing their job.”

As the weeks go by, however, Cornish is slowly joining a select group of candidates for the best actress Oscar. That can be daunting for anyone, but Cornish honestly sounds perplexed regarding the increasing buzz.

“I think I am still figuring out how I feel about the whole thing,” Cornish says. “I definitely am so excited that the film is being received the way that it is. Really, it’s a great honor for me for people to say the things they are saying. Bright Star was a very passionate experience. We all put a lot of ourselves in that film and it meant so much to us and it still means so much to us.”

Cornish adds, “I have never been through this experience before, it’s all so new to me.”

Unless some surprise contenders appear on the scene, Cornish will be an old pro by the time Oscar comes around.

Bright Star is now playing in select cities across the country.

Source: Hitflix

As the maligned and socially imprisoned Brawne, Cornish gives one of those ferocious performances that audiences love to cheer. Her Brawne is a strong, witty and determined proto-feminist, a steel buttercup who only looks like a delicate confection made from milk, butter, and spider-web icing.

If she has the energy, Abbie Cornish really ought to give herself a good pat on the back.

Actresses have told me that working with a female director is different than working with a male director. You’ve worked with a handful of women, and just finished working with a female director. So, does it make a difference?

Uhh … in some ways yeah, but the difference is not so striking that I could just compartmentalize all the male directors and all the female directors that I’ve worked with into their own boxes. I mean, I definitely know working with Cate Shortland on Somersault , my first film, was amazing. We talked to each other a lot in rehearsals, really full on, and we did a lot of hashing out of the script and scenes and characters – so when we went to shoot, we hardly spoke! We just did it.

Was it the same with Jane Campion ?

No, Jane likes to keep a constant dialogue. And things change and shift when you’re on set, and in the clothes. But, I just, I don’t know … I think with female directors there’s more emotional sensitivity attached to the process of making the film and talking with actors. But the investment in the project and the story is similar. I worked with Shekhar Kapur in Elizabeth: The Golden Age , and he’s incredible. He’s a very sensitive guy, very aware, and very switched on – kind of a little bit similar to Jane, in just how connected they are. They are both extremely visual, very smart directors with a lot of wisdom behind them.

Bright Star is set circa 1819. Did you have to learn to carry yourself and speak in a way that matched the era?

I did, but it surprisingly came quite naturally. You know, I think when you’re in those clothes that already makes you go like this [sits bolt upright, as if in a binding dress]. It definitely changes things. And I read as much as I could, as much as I could find, and I did a lot of work on the dialect as well, I had this really great dialect coach, and we did intensive work. All that definitely helps, but at the end of the day, once I found her voice, that was the best – I could just switch in and out of her [Brawne], and she seemed complete then, because I couldn’t do Fanny Brawne with my Australian accent! Ha! It doesn’t work at all!

This is a film about poetry – how it is created and how it affects people. And while audiences seem to love it, nobody reads poetry any more .

I’ve always been interested in poetry. I remember in school I used to love when we would do poetry. We would talk about what the poet was trying to say, the rhythms, the structure of the poem, and finding the tempo. I used to love it, like, front row.

Excuse the flattery, but you are very beautiful in this film (and in person). What’s it like to be filmed as if you’re an objet d’art?

It’s funny that you say that, I haven’t really thought that at all … I don’t know, I mean … yeah, I dunno. I’ve never felt that, didn’t feel that.

I’m assuming you’ve seen the film?

Ha! Yeah, I have seen it, but I guess I just see that as all Jane’s work. She’s filmed everything so well. Also, that’s not how I look at things, do I look good or not – I was just so into the film. When I saw it in Cannes, I really was watching the movie, I wasn’t watching myself.

Films about artists rarely get it right, because they never show the actual working lives of artists. In this film, your character is a clothing designer, and we see her making everything by hand. Did you have a sewing coach?

I did have to learn how to sew, but it was fun, because I like sewing anyway, and I already knew how to sew, um, a little bit. Ha! But learning the proper way, how to hem things, different stitches, how to embroider. The only thing was, it was really time consuming. I had this one piece of embroidery I was working on, it was just freestyle flowers and vines, but it just took me forever and ever! I’d sit at home and kind of get into it for about 45 minutes, and then I’d be like, “Okay, I’m done with that!”

Are you tired of being told how much you resemble the young Nicole Kidman?

It happens to me a lot! Especially when I do interviews.

Well, sorry. But it’s not like we’re all saying ‘You remind us of Jack Klugman.’

Ha! I don’t know what the comparisons are – physical, or because we’ve both worked with Jane? But I don’t really mind. I don’t mind at all. It’s flattering, and, ultimately, it’s only someone else’s opinion.

Source: Globe & Mail

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

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’s interpretation of her in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, which chronicles her attachment to Keats, who died of tuberculosis at 25. The film opens Friday.

“They seemed like two peas in a pod,” Cornish says 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.”

As portrayed by Cornish, Brawne is young in years but not in maturity, and is filled with unexpressed brio. From her first audition, Cornish brought unusual strength to the role, says Campion, who has created vivid female characters in such films as Sweetie, An Angel at My Table and the Oscar-winning The Piano.

“She was very different from the way others played the character. They were scared, a little wounded,” says Campion, explaining that Cornish played Brawne “mentally very healthy. A little young. A little bit of a fashionista, a little ridiculous. Then [Fanny] found her moral courage and strength. She falls in love. It was very winning. You look back on the audition tape and couldn’t watch it without falling in love with her.”

On a recent Saturday morning, Cornish showed up for tea at the Chateau Marmont, not far from her home in Los Angeles, where she’s lived for the last year. She wears a simple black structured sundress, her hair freshly washed, and radiates a kind of farm-fresh wholesomeness.

It turns out Cornish actually grew up on a 170-acre farm along with four siblings and a brood of animals, including a baby kangaroo that slept in a sling hung from her doorknob. “Casey Rooster was his name. It was like having a dog in kangaroo form. You could call him from across the paddock and he’d come bounding up and follow you around,” she says with a laugh.

She also seems possessed by a free-spirited, independent quality. This is a girl who stumbled into acting after winning a modeling contest as a teenager, worked in Australian TV, and then upon high school graduation, traveled alone through Europe and America.

“The only time I felt any sort of fear or realization of what I was doing was after my mum dropped me off at the airport,” she says. “My mum is so strong and she had tears in her eyes. As a child when you see tears in a mother’s eyes, it makes you think.”

“I think she shows an incredible amount of independence for someone so young,” Campion says. “Fanny is very similar to Abbie. She takes her own advice. She goes against the perceived wisdom of her friends.”

Cornish did return from her travels in one piece, and seized the attention of the Australian film industry with her first major role in 2004′s “Somersault.” In it, she plays Heidi, a sexually inquisitive teenager who runs away from home, a part imbued with an unexpected and heartbreaking curiosity.

Cornish serendipitously found her way into the character when she came across a huge concave metal semicircle — an art installation at a local gallery. As she walked toward it, she watched her various reflections in the metallic surface and felt the instinct to let out a little song — “Coo-ee,” which vibrated and echoed. “I was like, ‘This is so Heidi. She’d sit here and make weird noises and play with it.’ I then explored this art exploration as the character. It was such a huge key into her mind frame, and it just came from nowhere.

“Sometimes you have this puzzle” — a character — “and you force pieces in,” she explains. Other parts are “researched or are history, or what other people tell you. Sometimes, it’s just, ‘I don’t know.’ They shift and slide and when you’re open to it, it all seems to fall in place.”

For Fanny Brawne, Cornish went to the books, specifically Brawne’s letters to Keats’ sister, and her diary. “That was an incredible love for her. The pain of his death never went away.”

There was also, of course, Keats’ poetry — including the work that inspired the film’s title, which reads in part: “Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art” — and his letters to Brawne.

“You read them and it melts your heart and spurs your imagination,” says Cornish, though she adds, “you do as much research and experimentation as you can until you feel like that character is in your mind, your spirit, your skin and your body, and then you trust it and let it go. You let the moments be what they are.”

Source: LA Times

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.”

As portrayed by Cornish, Brawne is young in years but not in maturity and is filled with unexpressed brio. From her first audition, Cornish brought unusual strength to the role, says Campion, who has created vivid female characters in such films as Sweetie, An Angel at My Table and the Oscar-winning The Piano.

“She was very different from the way others played the character. They were scared, a little wounded,” says Campion, explaining that Cornish played Brawne “mentally very healthy. Then (Fanny) found her moral courage and strength. She falls in love. It was very winning. You look back on the audition tape and couldn’t watch it without falling in love with her.”

“I think (Cornish) shows an incredible amount of independence for someone so young,” Campion said. “Fanny is very similar to Abbie. She takes her own advice. She goes against the perceived wisdom of her friends.”

Cornish grew up on a 170-acre Australian farm along with four siblings and a brood of animals, including a baby kangaroo that slept in a sling hung from her doorknob.

“Casey Rooster was his name,” she said. “It was like having a dog in kangaroo form. You could call him from across the paddock, and he’d come bounding up and follow you around.”

Cornish also seems possessed by a free-spirited, independent quality. This is a girl who stumbled into acting after winning a modeling contest as a teenager, worked in Australian TV and then upon high school graduation traveled alone through Europe and America.

“The only time I felt any sort of fear or realization of what I was doing was after my mom dropped me off at the airport,” she said. “My mom is so strong and she had tears in her eyes. As a child when you see tears in a mother’s eyes, it makes you think.”

Cornish did return from her travels in one piece and seized the attention of the Australian film industry with her first major role in 2004’s “Somersault.” In it, she played Heidi, a sexually inquisitive teenager who runs away from home.

To play Brawne, Cornish went to the books, specifically Brawne’s letters to Keats’ sister, and her diary.

“That was an incredible love for her,” Cornish said. “The pain of his death never went away.”

There was also, of course, Keats’ poetry — including the work that inspired the film’s title, which reads in part: “Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art” — and his letters to Brawne.

“You read them and it melts your heart and spurs your imagination,” Cornish said. “You do as much research and experimentation as you can until you feel like that character is in your mind, your spirit, your skin and your body, and then you trust it and let it go. You let the moments be what they are.”

Source: Kansas City Star

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.

From: EW

But Campion’s big-sisterly encouragement of Cornish’s lovely, openhearted performance — and Whishaw’s well-matched response — results in a character instantly, intimately recognizable to anyone remembering her own first love.

From: Rolling Stone

And Cornish is glorious, making Fanny a force of womanhood able to take on Brown (Schneider is a sharply witty irritant) when he tries to break the connection between her and her beloved. Cornish catches the fertile mind that Fanny poignantly tries to nurture, knowing she’ll grow closer to Keats by deciphering the words that possess him.

From: Buzz Sugar
The force that really carries the movie is Abbie Cornish’s portrayal of Fanny Brawne; the film belongs to her and her emotional portrayal of the girl left behind. She makes you feel every stage of her involvement with Keats, from crush to infatuation to heartbreak when she fears she’s been forgotten — and finally, to devastation when she loses her beloved to death. It’s almost unbelievable that Brawne was supposed to have been seen as a silly girl only interested in fashion and flirting, because Cornish plays her so earnestly and with so much depth.

From: San Fransisco Chronicle

When Brawne (Abbie Cornish) first meets Keats in 1818, she’s unimpressed but flirts with him anyway. Cornish and Whishaw bring off a quiet but considerable feat: They portray monumental emotions with barely a glance or a brush of skin. And as the plot demands more melodrama, they dish out swooning erotic malaise.

First she steals your eyes, then she steals the movie. And not to be too graphic, she works her tail off.

GALLERY LINKS:
- Photoshoots: Esquire (2009)

She steps out into the brilliant blue light of a Malibu afternoon wearing flip-flops and a diaphanous little black sundress, a look suggestive of a young woman on holiday, a role she loves to play above all else, to hear her tell it. Like so many of her fellow Australians, her wanderlust seems almost genetic, an inbred need to see something more of the world, someplace else, as if to confirm its true existence. She leans against the railing and searches the horizon, the array of lean-muscled surfers in the middle distance, her honey-colored eyes behind green-tinted aviators, the breeze touching her golden, flyaway hair. She talks about soaking up sun in San Sebastián, on the Basque coast of Spain; of Morocco’s sensual dichotomy between light and dark; of living in an empty house in a village in Brazil with two male friends, sleeping in hammocks, studying the martial art capoeira. She drinks Asian “bubble tea” from a plastic cup, compliments of her publicist. There are tapioca pearls at the bottom; they rise in single file through an overlarge straw, her lips the naked pink of an ingenue.

At twenty-seven, Cornish is perhaps most widely known for contributing to the breakup of Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, with whom she costarred in (and from whom she stole the last third of) Stop-Loss, Kimberly Peirce’s Iraq war tale. One of five children raised on a 170-acre farm in the Hunter Valley region north of Sydney, the former Aussie TV star has been praised as an actress since the morning after her first public performance, at age fifteen, a guest turn as a paraplegic on the down-under series Children’s Hospital. Like generations of precocious actresses before her, she never looked back.

Often touted as the next Nicole Kidman or Naomi Watts, often described by directors and producers as “luminescent,” she is a naturalistic indie actress wrapped inside the skin of a sex kitten, Chloë Sevigny meets Scarlett Johansson. Playing Heidi in 2004′s Somersault, she is unnervingly convincing as a young runaway, trading her innocence for necessity and love. In Candy, as a heroin addict, she holds her own against a powerful performance some critics have called one of Heath Ledger’s finest. Even opposite fellow Aussie Cate Blanchett’s Oscar-nominated turn in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Cornish manages to steal your eyes at times. Playing Bess Throckmorton, the angelic lady-in-waiting who falls for the charms of Clive Owen’s lusty Sir Walter Raleigh, she is light and radiant against the dim gloom of the Virgin Queen’s castle.

Next for Cornish is Jane Campion’s latest, Bright Star. With her hair dyed brown, her charms swaddled in an entertaining assortment of oddly whimsical period costumes as befits her fashion-obsessed character, Cornish portrays Fanny Brawne, the eighteen-year-old muse to the young poet John Keats. While living next door to her family between 1819 and 1820, the ill-fated, tubercular Romantic master produced his most beautiful and enduring works, including “Ode to a Grecian Urn.”

Cornish has just flown in from Vancouver, where she has begun three months of training for her next movie, Sucker Punch. Cowritten and directed by Watchmen‘s Zack Snyder, the film costars Vanessa Hudgens and is listed as an adventure fantasy. After two period pieces, Cornish says she’d been hoping to do something physically demanding, something for which she had to train, “something really trippy like a concept film, where I’d have to really use my imagination and do crazy things.”

Now she’s busting her butt five days a week, five to six hours a day. “Mixed martial arts, fighting, swords, weapons, choreography, personal trainers,” she enumerates proudly, the beguiling accent of a proper sheila. “We add gun stuff at the end of the day.”

Moving a bit stiffly, she takes a seat at a patio table, in the shade beneath an umbrella. There are bruises visible up and down her (luminous) arms and legs. She reaches again for her Moroccan-mint-blended green-tea boba, from a little café she loves. When she arrived at the interview, she’d found it waiting. “It was funny to want to do that kind of movie and then it just comes along,” she says brightly, and then she takes a lingering sip. The beads of tapioca flow in single file. It makes her smile.

Source: Esquire

On Friday night the 26-year-old looked every bit the movie star as she stepped onto the red carpet for the opening of the world’s most prestigious film festival, on the French Riviera.

Wearing a lavender gown by Australian designer Toni Maticevski, Cornish lived up to her promise as the leader of Australia’s next generation of film stars.

Standing alongside her co-stars and the director of Bright Star, Jane Campion, Cornish showed the confidence and poise of a future Oscar winner.

Cornish’s boyfriend, actor Ryan Phillippe, is believed to be with her, but he didn’t walk the red carpet on Friday night.

It was a very different story in 2001 when her first feature – low-budget Aussie flick The Monkey’s Mask – was being sold in the market section of the festival. Back then, Cornish paid her own way to Cannes.

“I remember being by myself at the airport, and thinking, ‘wow, the world is a wonderful, amazing place, but I’m going on this six-month journey through the Far East and Africa and Europe, and who knows if I’ll be dead or alive at the end of it’,” she said.

In 2004, she returned to the Riviera, this time as the star of Somersault, which screened in the Un Certain Regard competition. She was earmarked as one of the faces to watch.

Cornish made her acting start on ABC TV series Wildside, for which she won an Australian Film Institute Award in 1999.

She has since begun to make a name for herself in Hollywood with roles in films including Stop-Loss, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and A Good Year.

At the Bright Star premiere she was flanked by co-stars Ben Wishaw and Thomas Sangster.

At a photo call for the film earlier in the day, Cornish was radiant in a sleeveless white dress, by Chloe, with matching open toe heels.

Bright Star, an English period drama, is one of 20 movies vying for the top prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or competition. It depicts the love affair between 19th century poet John Keats (Wishaw) – who died of tuberculosis in 1821 aged 25 – and his young neighbour, Fanny Brawne (Cornish).

“Cornish has the acting skill to match her striking beauty and she makes the small, loving gestures that the British might call soppy both real and touching,” wrote Hollywood Reporter reviewer Ray Bennett.

For Campion, 55, the premiere also marked a return to Cannes.

Campion is the only woman to win the Palme d’Or – for The Piano in 1993 – in the festival’s 62-year history. She used her time in the spotlight to highlight the lack of opportunities for female directors at the top level.

Campion said she admired the passion and dedication Cornish brought to the role of Brawne.

“I so loved what Abbie gave to the character,” she said.

Source: The Daily Telegraph