Australian actor Abbie Cornish impressed more than boyfriend Ryan Phillippe on the set of her new film Stop-Loss.

The 25-year-old star of local films such as Somersault and Candy was director Kimberly Peirce’s first choice to play a Texan soldier’s girlfriend because of her duality – being “one of the guys” and, at the same time, the woman they all fantasise about.

Peirce said that combination of qualities was impossible to find in American starlets vying for the role.

“When we were writing the character we knew we needed a Texan girl who, if you got a flat tyre on your truck she’d go change it, if you needed a gun shot she’d shoot it, and if you got in trouble and you needed to be bailed out, she’d do it,” Peirce said.

“She was one of the guys, and yet she was totally a woman. She was the one they would all fantasise about.

“You don’t find that in American actresses – I mean you really don’t – so she was my top choice.”

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Abbie is featured in the new issue of US Details magazine with Ryan Seacrest on the cover (April 2008). It’s a stunning new photoshoot and very lengthy article with Miss Cornish.

The article states that she is set to begin filming Bright Star next month.

Maybe it’s that she’s fresh from the beach. Or it could be the homage-to-bohemia outfit: white lace top, military-style jacket, red rubber Wellies, and thumb ring. But at a diner in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz, as Cornish slouches against a wall and twists her wavy blond hair into a ponytail, she looks more like a lovely, disheveled wanderer (the kind every guy hopes to meet on his soul-searching trip to Europe) than a movie star who got a standing ovation at Cannes in 2004 for her first leading role… read more

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.

As if having Hollywood at her feet isn’t enough, Australian rising star Abbie Cornish plans to release an album.

“I love to play music,” the Elizabeth: The Golden Age star told Insider.

Cornish spends her down time between films – not that there’s much of that these days – working on music at her family’s farm in the Hunter Valley.

Being able to hold a note will also come in handy when Cornish begins her next film, Last Battle Dreamer, alongside Ryan Phillippe.

“There’s a scene where we recite a poem to each other, and it’s half-singing and half- spoken – it’s very melodic,” she says.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

Rising Aussie star Abbie Cornish has advice for those who question the history of Elizabeth: The Golden Age – go and see a documentary.

Pedants and trainspotters need not apply to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Abbie Cornish’s advice to those who will take inevitable issue with the facts, which have been stretched, tweaked, and in some cases just plain stomped on? Go see a documentary.

“This is a film and in order for it to work certain things have to be compacted and moved and if people want to know exact times and dates and places, they’re quite free to research that,” she says.

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