Cornish, who says she is enjoying herself during the film's release (she's just in from London), doesn't reference music by accident. She's long been rapping and beatboxing during her spare time but, despite Britain's
Esquire
magazine curtly claiming this as a career option ''if the roles dry up'', she insists it's merely another side to an apparently fearless nature.
''I've been rapping since I was 18 years old, with a crew called Blades,'' she says, with the hint of a trans-Pacific drawl . ''We've released a couple of albums. I've been working on other stuff, other collaborations, since. I play the keyboard, piano, I like making beats. I paint as well, actually. I'm a jack of all trades. And I hang out with friends, I surf. I live a normal life.''
Cornish appears to have lost none of that level-headed focus that made her performance in the Australian drama
Somersault
in 2004 opposite Sam Worthington so memorable. The subsequent move to LA with her
Stop-Loss
co-star Phillippe might have seemed risky at the time but to her, the world has always been there to explore.
''I just have this really strong memory from when I was a kid, of playing on a trampoline and looking up at the stars,'' she says. ''And thinking how big this Earth, this world was. Because I lived in the country, you could almost get a sense of the Earth curving - I know it sounds strange - and I was just fascinated by that. That and watching indie and foreign films late at night on television.''
When you have something totally new, it's going to be judged to the 10th degree.
A so-called indie film she made just before that LA move - Neil Armfield's award-winning
Candy
- happened to give her one of two life-affirming experiences: working with Heath Ledger. ''I had never met anyone like him,'' she says of her late friend and co-star. ''He had such a full, open, generous, adventurous magical spirit. He was so filled with light. To look in his eyes, to see him smile. He was incredibly unique. Incredibly talented, very instinctual. Everything just flowed with him, everything was this constant discovery.''
These days, Cornish also counts another ''bright star'' - Madonna - as a friend and collaborator. Her next film,
W.E
, is directed and co-written by the singer and will premiere in Venice later this year. It tells the story of a lonely woman obsessed with the abdication of King Edward VIII, a subject integral to this year's best picture Oscar winner,
The King's Speech
. Cornish says, as with Ledger, that her new co-star has given her something inspirational to add to that teenaged view of a world where anything is possible.
''It's her discovery of love and sacrifice and what [they] mean,'' Cornish says of the film, in which she plays an unhappily married woman named Wally Winthrop. ''And I remember when we were shooting Madonna said, 'I really want to go to Venice.' And sure enough, we're off to Venice. That's Madonna. She's such a force. She's such an amazing woman. If she puts her mind to something, it'll actually exist.''