Hard line no soft option for Abbie Cornish

Abbie Cornish

At only 23, Aussie actress Abbie Cornish has been through an awful lot - paralysis, homelessness and drug addiction - even if it has all been make-believe. In the Australian film Candy, she plays the title character, an artist whose promising life is almost obliterated by heroin. She is so convincing that it makes sense to ask how she coped with the overdose, the withdrawals, the prostitution.

"I think I separate myself from that," she says on the phone from London, where she is shooting The Golden Age, the sequel to Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett.

"Everything happens between action and cut, but it does look harrowing and dark. But as soon as the word "cut" is called you sort of jump straight out of it. Because it had such depth, you go there, do it, then you go make a cup of tea."

Based on the cult 90s bestseller by Aussie novelist Luke Davies, Candy was adapted for the big screen by Davies and director Neil Armfield, and stars Heath Ledger as her scam-artist boyfriend Dan, and Geoffrey Rush as their unlikely friend and fellow junkie Casper.

Where the book is told from Dan's point of view, the film relies on the chemistry of the film's two leads - of the non-narcotic variety, that is.

Producer Margaret Fink had always envisaged Cornish for the role, particularly after her breakthrough role in the Australian film Somersault a performance hailed by critics as a "knockout", "brilliantly realistic" and "astonishing".

Armfield took a little longer to agree, concerned that Cornish wasn't old enough to imbue the "rage" necessary for the character. But two-and-a half years later at an audition with Ledger, he changed his mind.

"Everything fell in sync," Cornish says. "To think that this would be the person I would be acting with if I got the role was an unbelievable feeling. I knew from that audition that he was a very instinctive, open and generous actor. I was hoping I'd get the part."

Cornish identified with Candy's fiery artistic side, and although she had an open mind about the dark world of addiction there was a lot to learn.

She and Ledger enrolled in Junkies 101, joining Narcotics Anonymous meetings in Sydney and spending time with users and former users, who taught them how to shoot up into a prosthetic arm.

The experience paid off and both actors give extraordinarily realistic performances. But watching Cornish, whose image is untarnished by the tabloids, is like discovering a diamond in the rough.

"I took things from all different places," Cornish says. "And it's funny, sometimes someone would say something to me ... it might have been an abstract idea but it rings true to a certain character or place in a person's life."

She won't talk about Ledger's alleged run-in with the paparazzi while filming Candy. And she won't give much away about herself either. But when talking about her foray into acting, or getting to know a character - an experimental process she describes as being "like a scientist" - she is more than happy to talk.

Born in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, Cornish spent more time outside with nature than inside idolising those on the screen.

After a brief stint in modelling, an agent sent her to an audition. She was given the part of a quadriplegic and "completely fell in love with it. I discovered this world I never knew existed. Because I didn't read magazines, I didn't have any ideas about how a television show was made and it was this whole other world for me".

That led to a role on the cop show Wildside, for which she won an Australian Film and Television Institute (AFI) award, and a small role in the rave film One Perfect Day, where director Paul Currie described her as "one of the most intuitive young actors I've ever worked with".

It was her first lead role in Somersault, as a girl forced to leave home after seducing her mother's boyfriend, that had critics calling her the next Cate Blanchett. Cornish won another AFI for best actress in a leading role.

"It provided a massive playground for me to just go in and do things I knew I could do, and maybe the things I didn't even know I could do."

Since then, casting directors have been hot on her trail. Once filming has finished on the Elizabeth sequel, she'll put on a Californian drawl in a Kimberly Peirce film project about two friends who come back from the Iraq war.

And it won't be long before the publicity round starts on the film adaptation of Peter Mayle's bestseller A Good Year, that Cornish shot in France with Russell Crowe.

But Candy is the film she is most passionate about: "I remember reading the script and thought it was an amazingly honest story and very raw. Candy had so much of a life-force in her which slowly deteriorated throughout the film and I found that an interesting journey - a budding artist on the brink of going somewhere, or going downhill.

"You don't really know what's going to happen to her. To play a character full of fire and earth like that was very inviting."

LOWDOWN

WHO: Australian actress Abbie Cornish
BORN: August 7, 1982
WHAT: Candy, an Australian film about a poet and a painter (Cornish plays the title character) who fall in love with each other - and heroin. Adapted from Luke Davies' bestseller of the same name, it premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year.
SEE IT: At cinemas from Thursday.