With awards season in full swing, Movieline is launching a new recurring feature called "For Your Reconsideration," where we speak to the talented people whose contributions to the year in film are worthy of a second look. First up: Abbie Cornish from Bright Star.
There's something about the women in Jane Campion's films: They can say so much without saying anything at all. Bright Star's Abbie Cornish certainly gets to talk more than Holly Hunter did in The Piano, but as her Fanny Brawne falls in love with Ben Whishaw's John Keats, her quiet fortitude conveys intelligence, emotion, and deep passion. It's one of the year's most striking performances.
Now that Cornish has been able to carve out some spare time from shooting Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, the actress talked to Movieline about clothes, chemistry, and the one thing Campion and Snyder have in common.
One of the things that really struck me when I first saw the film was how Fanny's wardrobe seems so important to her. What do you think she's using her clothes to say when we first meet her?
I think clothes, for her, are an expression of self because there wasn't any other way to express who she was. Her creative arts...well, I don't want to say they were limited, but they weren't as available as they are today as a young woman. In that day and age, too, women wouldn't make their own clothes, they'd have someone else make their clothes for them. I think it meant a lot to her to express herself in that way, and I think that's where her appreciation of Keats's poetry came from, from her understanding of what it was to think of something creative and bring it to life.
Does her relationship with fashion change over the course of the movie?
I do think it's a big part of her journey. When she fell in love with Keats, whatever was on the exterior became so much less important -- it was so much more about the way she felt and what was going on inside her. She found someone who loved her for who she was, regardless of whether she was wearing a potato sack or a beautiful ball gown. There was something so pure and honest about their love that I think she was swept away by it, and that became her connection to the world. It's interesting that at the beginning of the film, she's sewing a white dress with white thread, and at the end, she's sewing a black dress with black thread. That's a big journey, with all the colors in between.
You know, her time and her interests were consumed by love. As difficult as that love was, with all the trials and tribulations, I think it was one of the most incredible things that happened in her life. After Keats passed away, she was in mourning for a really long time, and she eventually remarried and had a couple of kids. She'd kept all of Keats's letters and she showed them to her children, but not her husband. She told them of this amazing love that she'd had with this gorgeous young poet, and I think that really carried through her life, you know? Even in all its craziness, there's something I think was very liberating about that time in her life. It's such a deep love that they had for each other, and she would have done anything for him, gone anywhere for him.
When I talked to Ben, he said that you hadn't even met each other before you were cast. How could that not scare you to death when so much of the film rests on your chemistry?
We didn't even meet each other until the first day of rehearsals. I had such trust in Jane -- she's such an insightful person and so good at what she does that, to be honest, I never even questioned it. I was a fan of Ben's work, and a friend of mine had worked with him and said I'd really enjoy him. It was very instant, the relationship between us. From Day 1, it was an open, honest relationship, and it was a joy. I can't imagine it any other way.
What was the toughest thing about playing Fanny?
I think it was making sure I got the relationship between her and her mother right, because that was always the trickiest one, you know? The relationship between Fanny and Keats was just so present, it's in his poetry and their correspondence, but the relationship between Fanny and her mother...I mean, Jane really had to concoct that and make that was it was. For me, it was about finding a place where they have a strong connection between them and they care for each other, but at the same time they are mother and daughter, and it's different from a friendship or the relationship with a sister or a brother.
I thought you might say the toughest thing about playing her was having to do press after.
[Laughs]
Now that you're doing all these interviews and navigating the awards circuit, is that daunting for you, or do you regard it as a necessary thing to support a smaller film like this?
It is something that's necessary on a film like this. It's a film that I'm really passionate about and it was so rewarding that I care about what happens to it. It feels like a small family made this film -- we had such a small cast and crew -- so you do want to help get it out into the world. When we got it into film festivals, it was like we'd blown up this big balloon together and we tied it on a string, and at the Cannes Film Festival, we let it go and it went off into the sky. We let the wind take it away, we didn't know where it was going to go. It was a beautiful thing to be there together in that moment.
I'm sure that you'll be sent a lot of scripts with corsets after Bright Star, so are you happy that you'll have an action film like Sucker Punch following that?
Yeah. I mean, it's always fun to try different things and take on new challenges, and this film has definitely been a new experience for me. There's been three months of training, all the martial arts and swords and guns, and on top of that we're dancing and singing. I've absolutely loved it. Playing different characters in different films helps keep you excited about what you do. It always seems like a whole new adventure.
Is Sucker Punch more a of a musical than I had realized? When I interviewed Carla Gugino, she said she had shot a song-and-dance sequence for the film. Do you have one too?
I do. I have a dance in the film and at the end, all of us girls -- and Carla as well -- sing a song together. To be honest, there's a little bit of everything in this movie. It's kind of crazy: Because it's a fantasy and you're introducing a lot of different realities, there's so much in it. it jumps back and forth in time, from the fantasy world to the real world, but it's not quite a musical. There's just a few numbers in it.
To go from the small cast and crew of Bright Star to a big film like Sucker Punch...I can't think of two directors more different on their face than Jane Campion and Zack Snyder. Do you see any unlikely similarity between the two?
The one I thought of when you said that is, there was this one time doing Bright Star where Ben and I were doing a scene together, and he was sick and laying down in Mr. Brown's study. We finished the scene and I looked over at Jane at the monitor, and her face, it was like she was the third person in the scene. The look in her eyes, she had tears coming down her face...she was so in that moment, and it was really beautiful to see. Then, a couple of weeks ago when we were filming a heavy scene on Sucker Punch, I was watching Zack review the take afterwards and the same thing happened. His face! It was like he was in the scene, to see his face contort and shift and change while he was watching the monitor. He was right there with this emotion in his eyes, and it was gorgeous.