Abbie Cornish: a country girl worth betting the farm on

In Somersault, a tiny Australian movie from first-time director Gate Shortland, Abbie Cornish plays Heidi, a 16-year-old girl who, after clumsily trying to seduce her mother's boyfriend, leaves home on a journey of self-discovery that manages to cram every mistake that a woman can make with a man into a little less than two hours of vigorous sexual awakening. For Cornish, who has won an armful of Australian acting awards for her work in the film--and miraculously manages to keep her clothes on through most of it--avoiding the usual cliches of playing a young woman at the moment of her inglorious blossom proved the biggest challenge. "There is a fearlessness to Heidi that I drew upon from my own life--that ability to put one foot in front of the other without any regard to the consequences," says the 23-year-old actress, who at 16 left the farm where she grew up in rural Lochinvar and moved to Newcastle, where she lived in a warehouse and pursued acting professionally.

Having recently wrapped production on her next film, Candy, in which she and Heath Ledger play a couple of heroin-addicted bohemian-types, Cornish is now cooling her jets in Melbourne, writing songs--which is something she does--and plotting her next move. "Making a movie is, for me, like painting," she says. "I just enjoy the care that goes into every brushstroke and the choice of every color. I enjoy the intensity of it."

Stephen Mooallem is Interview's senior editor.

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