ROUND-TABLE: 'Bright Star' actress Abbie Cornish

In the past two weeks of Bright Star content I have already spoken glowingly about the film and the efforts of those who worked on it; I have spoken on its brilliance as a period piece that transcends the period in which it is set and I have remarked on the truly magnificent performances that populate this work. Perhaps the most incandescent such performance in the film (and, as I have by now made clear, this is no light praise) is that by Abbie Cornish, who plays Keats' beloved Fanny Brawne with some of the most incredible deftness and honesty I have seen in a very long time. Her portrayal of Fanny is truly an incredible feat of acting, as is consistent with many of her previous film performances, and it is an honor to have gotten to speak with her about Bright Star.

How did you get into this gorgeous piece?
I read the script and instantly I was swept off my feet. And I was lucky because I did my audition with Jane [Campion] which was about two hours long.

What was the audition?
Oh, the audition for Bright Star. It was about two hours long and it was just myself and Jane and the composer of the film, Mark Gretcher, and he’s a young guy: he was about twenty-five at the time, so the same age as Keats and so it was that energy, and it was a really nice day. It didn’t feel as though it was a heavy audition; it felt more like a workshop than anything else. And I was the first person Jane saw and then she went around the rest of the world and auditioned people and then she came back to the beginning and gave me the job.

I think she was impressed with your Australian-ness! She was saying something about Australians being raised to be less submissive. Do you find that to be true?
Yeah, I guess so. A lot of Aussie girls—I don’t know why, though. I grew up in the country, I grew up on a farm and with a brother two years older and one two years younger, so I was riding horses and driving motorbikes and cars when I was eleven, twelve years old. Racing around the alley track behind the house. Frees your, uh, your spirit, y’know? [laughter] And even city girls, a couple of my girlfriends who are from the city, they are definitely sure of themselves and know what they’re doing. I don’t know what it is.

How much of that did you bring to Fanny?
I mean, you bring as much as you can of yourself to a character, I think, and there’s always so much to figure out that you don’t know and so whenever you can bring things that you do know it’s like “Whew!” It makes it a little easier. Each day at work when I was looking at scenes, some of them you understand them, they just make sense, they don’t require much work. And then there’s other ones where you sit there and are like “Okay, how am I going to do this?” You scratch your head and you have to read and you have to research and talk to people. You have to sympathize with scenarios like it and it just takes a little more work.

It’s actually so interesting that Fanny is so headstrong independent and sure of herself just because she grew up in a time that encouraged people to be docile. So how did you really see her in the context of her society?
Well, I think I first studied that whole world and historically what it was like and then I went on the journey of exploration of the character and found Fanny Brawne, regardless of that time. I jut found her and who she was and then put her in the context of that time. And that was kind of the fun part, having this girl and putting her in this scene with her mum and her mum saying “No, you can’t do this,” and it’s like—how does she feel, how does she react to that? Because for me, there’s so much integrity in her character and she just understands what’s going on around her. She’s not stupid, and she knows what she can’t do and why she can’t be with Keats but it doesn’t mean that she won’t be with him. It’s not going to stop her. And I enjoyed her journey because it’s just one that was so pure and full of love and so compelling but at the same time there were all these things being thrown at her. And she just keeps going, and I love that about her.

You have to express so much and there’s so much passion and so like a touch and just really chaste kisses and so I’m wondering if there were notes you took or the way you looked at each other and how you expressed that passion in as minimal ways as possible.
I don’t feel like we overanalyzed; I feel like that stuff just was. And because everything was in its right place, you know, the set, the crew, the costumes, the hair, the makeup, all of that seemed so real. And Ben [Whishaw] became Keats, he was Keats from the very beginning, and I felt like Fanny Brawne, and so when you put that together those moments just come organically. And we knew in the script if it said “Keats reaches for Fanny Brawne’s hand,” that was such a simple direction.

Ben was saying something about sitting next to each other and just naturally putting your hand on his knee and Jane saying “…No.”
Yeah, there were one or two times—because Ben and I just loved each other, as well, so it was easy to… plus, the intensity of the love story between them. But that was in the scene where he’s just about to leave for Italy and they’re having tea and they’re discussing his trip and they’re sitting in the windowsill and I felt really strongly about having my hand on his knee. I still did it, I think! [laughter]

So do you have a favorite line or piece of Keats’ poetry that’s in the film or even not in the film?
‘Bright Star’. I just love that poem. And I spent so much time learning it and investigating it, and it really took on its own life within me, and still today it’s such a gorgeous piece of work. And I really love the sixth verses in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, but my favorite poem as a whole is ‘Bright Star’.

The process of getting into this film, as a period piece or even as a film in general—how did that differ from other, maybe modern set films?
Each film that I’ve done seems to be a journey in itself, regardless of whether it’s a contemporary film. So if I compare it to Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which was also a period film, it’s so different. Even when I compare contemporary films I’ve done they’re different. And so Bright Star was a whole thing of its own, but it was very… The making of this film was very intense; it was very gentle, sensitive, full of life. It was a pretty amazing experience, really.

Is that something you find—you’ve worked with some amazing female directors who’ve raved about you, and so I’m wondering if there’s a comfort level in working on the female set.
I love working with females but I love working with males too.

Is there a different energy?
I think, yeah. You’re working with female energy, which is just different somehow, it just is. But I know working with Jane on Bright Star, she’s an incredible person. Very sensitive. So intertwined with what was going on. I know there’s a couple of scenes that Ben and I did together and I think the first AD called cut because Jane was glued to the monitor, just totally tears dripping down her face… [laughter] And so the first AD would call cut and Jane was just, like, in the scene with us. You know, the invisible person in the scene. It was so amazing. It’s so nice to have a director that invested in what they’re doing.

Do you find that more with females than with males?
Yeah, well, I’ve never seen a guy crying at the monitor! [laughter] No, Shekhar Kapur reminds me of Jane because of how incredibly visual he is and wise and also such an awareness of what’s in front of him and what’s going on to the most minute detail. And, again, he’s male, so it was different, but similarities in direction.

I sort of adore the cat in the movie. [laughter] Between the cat and the butterflies you kind of have these scenes where you’re just completely over the moon. Was there anything that sort of surprised you about the results? Because it seemed as though it came from a very quiet place.
I'm sorry, anything about—

Seeing it onscreen, like, with that little scene-stealing cat. [laughter]
Well, you know that scene where Fanny Brawne’s, like, threatening to take her own life with the… little knife? [laughter] And just the cat’s there. So I think that was the second take and the cat just started trying to kill this butterfly on the wall! [laughter] and it got to the point where it had this butterfly in its hands and I’ve got to do something, because I’m an animal lover and I’m not having this butterfly die on set with me! And then I’m sort of like “No, Topper!” [laughter] And we finished the whole take and it was kind of fun too. I love stuff like that, the things that you don’t expect. Working with Heath Ledger [on the film Candy] was like that. He was always in the moment, capturing whatever it was that was around him. But, yeah, when we finished the take we giggled for a while and then Jane was like “That’s it, we’ve got it, sit down.” And there he stole the show, totally.

Well one of the things I like about Fanny is you see the layers to her; she’s not just this spunky, free spirit. She’s a teenager. And sometimes she gets stalkerific over Keats and petulant and bratty, and… I wonder, what were your notes for her in those sort of younger, more spoiled bratty moments? Was that you as a teenager, like, “I’m not leaving this guy alone”?
I think it was a number of teenagers. Parts of me, parts of my little sister, parts of friends, friends’ kids, Jane’s daughter, Jane. I don’t know, little bits of everything, but also too I think a key for me to Fanny was just to let it be. Don’t judge her, don’t let her judge herself, let her just act and react and feel. You know what I mean? Because I think a teenager can be like that. It’s just however I feel, whatever’s happening, it’s like “Blah! This is how I feel! This is what I want! This is what’s happening to me.” And as we get older we learn to understand how to react in a situation, how to think about it, contain our emotions, try to process things in a certain way, and so I kind of just removed that whole adult aspect of it.

It’s very interesting to see her come up against Brown, who is so protective. I’ve been asking everybody “What’s your take on that relationship?” because you can read it so many ways. And to be a teenager with this guy who’s just defending him, how did you deal as Fanny with that?
Well, that’s sort of a tough question to do also because there are lots of teenagers who wouldn’t know what to do in a situation with a guy like that. Especially when he sends her the Valentine’s letter, that strange sexual tension, which is really weird. Particularly for a young girl who hasn’t had sex before, who’s barely probably held a hand with a guy or kissed a guy on the cheek. It’s kind of really strange and weird. But I liked—and Jane was adamant about her charisma and her sort of vibrancy in the beginning of the film and really wanted to put that in there, and for me too as an actor I knew that I had a limited amount of time to show that because once the love becomes painful, once Keats starts to get sick, I don’t have time to show that side of her! At all. And so that was important in the beginning too but, yeah, I think she was just like that. I think she was really strong and really knew who she was.

Do you think teenage girls will sympathize with Fanny? Do you think they’ll empathize?
Yeah, I think they’ll sympathize and empathize. I can’t wait to show my little sister this movie.

How old is she?
She’s fifteen. And I can’t wait to show my mum and my dad and everyone, but just particularly for young girls I really hope that they can watch it and see it and get a sense of what love is about and maybe it will allow them to be who they are and understand themselves, because I think in this world today it can be confusing for a young girl. And I think it always is, it can be confusing going through that phase, but the accessibility, and how everything on the internet and the television, there’s so many choices. Do you know what I mean? It’s sort of like, “Well, which way do I go?” and at the end of the day there’s a strong purity and a core that I think the film explores. So I hope that that’s what young girls will get out of this.

Well, I think that—I mean, I’m sixteen and I thought that is was very accessible.
Are you sixteen?!?

Yeah.
No way! [laughter] That’s crazy!

Yeah, I felt it was really accessible and I keep on commenting about how modern and relatable it feels because it really did—a lot more than any sort of period film I’ve seen.
Oh, wow, that’s great!

Before you go away, what about future projects? You’ve got a very male project coming up. [laughter]
Yeah, male in direction but full of chick characters!

How is that, is it fun?
It’s so much fun. Yeah, Vanessa [Hudgens] is such a sweet girl. I love her. She’s so self-possessed. She’s gorgeous. It’s a film called Sucker Punch; Zack Snyder’s directing it.

It’s superhero-ish, right?
Yeah—well, it kind of has its moments. It’s drifting out of worlds, so it’s the story of five girls who try to escape a psych ward in the sixties and then the film goes into this kind of sub-reality kind of burlesque world and every time they try to escape it goes into a dream world. So it’s really trippy, you know.

Bright Star is in theatres now. Run, don't walk, to your neighborhood cinema.