It seemed serendipitous to Abbie Cornish that she was accepting an award for Excellence in Film at the G’Day USA Gala in Los Angeles on January 22, the three-year anniversary of the death of her Candy co-star, Heath Ledger.
“It was so interesting that the event fell on the exact day and I felt compelled to talk about him and dedicate the award to him, because I was thinking about him a lot,” the 28-year actress elaborates, as we sit in a Beverly Hills hotel suite and she struggles to keep her emotions in check. Abbie retells the story that she told that night in her speech, that she often felt Ledger’s presence, but got a definite sign when she was filming Bright Star a year after he passed away. Arriving on set one day she found a new dressing room trailer had been delivered for her and suddenly her dialect coach, Gerry Grenell, who also worked with Heath, rushed inside ahead of her, shouting, ‘I don’t believe it!’
“He said he just knew as soon as he saw the trailer that it was the same one that Heath had for his last film (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) and he rushed in and started opening drawers until he found Heath’s hotel key card in the bottom drawer and just held it up and said, ‘he’s here!’” she continues. “It was kind of magical, like Heath was somehow watching out for us.”
The wonderfully grounded and talented actress has been watched over by many of Australia’s finest actors during her somewhat speedy rise from ingénue to movie star thanks to films such as: Somersault (2004), Candy (2006), A Good Year (2006), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Stop-Loss (2008) and Bright Star (2009).
“I was really blessed in that transition period from working on just Australian films in Australia to international films,” she reflects, “because the first international film I made was ‘A Good Year’ with Russell Crowe, so on the first day on set there was this guy with a thick Aussie accent who treated me like a little sister and said, ‘if there’s anything you need, I’m here for you.’ I worked with Geoffrey Rush in the beginning of my career in Candy,” she adds, “and then we worked together on Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which Cate Blanchett was also in, and then working on Bright Star with Jane Campion - who is pretty Aussie even though she’s from New Zealand – made me feel like there was always something close to home about those experiences and it wasn’t too much of a leap.”
Abbie is now hotly in demand in Hollywood with three major films due for release this year; the Zack (‘300’) Snyder action film Sucker Punch (which ironically also co-stars Aussie actress Emily Browning), in which she excitedly says she got to “do crazy stuff with fighting and guns and swords”; the thriller Limitless, with Robert DeNiro and Bradley Cooper, and W.E., the film written and directed by Madonna.
“We had a really good time working together but it was an interesting dynamic because Madonna is just beginning as a film director yet she has so much knowledge behind her in regards to other things she’s done in her life and it was beautiful watching her evolve through this process,” Abbie says of her iconic boss on that film. “I play Wally, who is in her 20s in an unhappy marriage and obsessed with King Edward and Wallis Simpson. Her story parallels with theirs and I play a fictional character and a non-fictional character.”
Abbie grew up on a 170-acre farm in the Hunter Valley town of Lochinvar, with three brothers and a younger sister, and she talks about her childhood with an almost poetic rapture. “Growing up in the country, I feel like I had to project, to absorb, to take in nature and animals and what it is to live and breathe and come to those bigger questions when I was really little,” she describes. “I used to love laying on a trampoline at sunset out in the paddock, and you could see the entire sky and hear the crickets and the stars would come out and it made me feel so connected to something bigger.”
The critically acclaimed actress acknowledges her diverse list of film credits is also very much a reflection of her eclectic tastes from a young age. “If I did watch TV, it was SBS or ABC,” she explains, “and when I was 11 or 12, I’d stay up late and watch European films on SBS and learn about foreign languages and cultures and that was my exposure to the world.”
In 2006, Abbie moved to Los Angeles to follow her heart, not her career, after she fell in love with her Stop-Loss co-star Ryan Phillippe (the couple ended their four-year relationship in February, 2010r). “It took so much pressure off what maybe an actor would usually move here for, so it was all about setting up a home and having a life and exploring the city and having solid ground here,” she says. In clothes from her own wardrobe today, Abbie looks relaxed and casual in a simple black shirt and skirt, black tights under black boots, and a black silk scarf decorated with gold stars draped over her jacket. But she’s the first to admit an unabashed love for fashion. “It’s part of growing up and becoming a woman when you get to wear a beautiful dress,” she beams. “I still remember the dress that (Australian designer) Toni Maticevski made for me to wear at the Cannes Film Festival. It arrived twenty minutes before I was leaving for the airport and I pulled it out of the box and this beautiful lilac creation melted my heart it was so special.”
While Maticevski is a favorite (as well as close friend), Abbie says she likes to mix it up with the classics – Prada and Dior – and more contemporary designers such as Elie Saab and Balenciaga. “But I don’t wear any leather, fur or suede,” the avowed vegetarian admits as she brags that the black boots she’s wearing today are vegan and she found them on-line. “It’s always an adventure shopping,” Abbie muses, “but it’s something I’m passionate about so what are you going to do?”
