For a list of other celebrities who made the list, check out PEP.

Happy birthday to Abbie on behalf of Abbie-Cornish.com and all of the fans! May all of your dreams come true on your special day!

GALLERY LINKS:
- Modeling: Maticevski

The Aussie thesp has signed on for the female lead opposite Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro in Relativity’s The Dark Fields.

The Dark Fields centers on a down-and-out writer who comes across the experimental designer drug MDT. A more detailed, but slightly spoilery synopsis is on IMDb.

Abbie will begin filming the thriller in May near Philadelphia. The movie will be directed by Neil Burger with Leslie Dixon adapting the Alan Glynn novel.

“Madonna’s a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man to define her – and that’s admirable.

“She’s studied every aspect of what happened with Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII. It’s a fascinating insight into class and romance.

Madonna’s created a contemporary woman – whom I will play – called Wally, who is fascinated by what happened to Mrs Simpson, and in a way, her story mirrors certain aspects of what happened decades before.”

The movie tells parallel tales about Wallis Simpson in the 1930s and a contemporary woman called Wally Winthrop, who has romantic problems of her own – in addition to the fact that she’s obsessed with the Duchess of Windsor’s life.

Abbie wore a halter-style black dress with a snazzy beaded neckline and diamonds and amethysts from Martin Katz Jewelry. She carried a black clutch and wore purple eyeline (which really brings out her stunning eyes if I say so myself.)

Reportedly she caught up with some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including her good friend and Somersault co-star Sam Worthington, Sucker Punch co-star Vanessa Hudgens and Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan as well as Best Director winner Kathryn Bigelow.

Unfortunately, Bright Star did not win Best Costume Design. That award went to The Young Victoria.

The movie, W.E., tells parallel tales about Wallis Simpson in the 1930s and a contemporary woman called Wally Winthrop, who has romantic problems of her own – in addition to the fact that she’s obsessed with the Duchess of Windsor’s life.

Cornish, who starred opposite Ben Whishaw in Jane Campion’s film Bright Star, is being pursued to play the part of Wally.

Vera Farmiga is set to portray the duchess.

Madonna has written the script for the film with Alek Keshishian, who directed the Madonna: Truth or Dare tour documentary in 1991.

The superstar singer will direct the project and is having a firm say in who she wants to play the major characters in the film.

Filming is expected to begin in June on locations in London and surrounding counties, with short forays to New York and the south of France.

Source: Herald Sun

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.

Check out this sneak peek below.

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

Turns out though, she’s more of a TuPac. “Yeah for sure [I'm a romantic],” she said. “I do read and write poetry and lyrics as well. I love music. Music’s a big thing for me. I guess the most contemporary version of poetry would be rap and hip-hop. And I love hip hop. I emcee. I’m a rapper as well.”

Unfortunately, Abbie wouldn’t spit a rhyme or two for us but promises that “next time” she meets up with reporter Josh Horowitz then she just might do it. And, maybe next time she’ll also bring a few of the poems that she says have been written about her by lovers- past, and, perhaps, present.

“Ah yeah,” she responded when asked if she’s ever had a real-life suitor write her romantic poems. But she wouldn’t reveal if one of those suitors include Ryan Phillippe. “Oh, take it easy! Good try though.”

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