Eight ears ago Abbie Cornish spent her first Cannes Film Festival as a backpacker, sleeping in a friend’s hotel room.

On Friday night the 26-year-old looked every bit the movie star as she stepped onto the red carpet for the opening of the world’s most prestigious film festival, on the French Riviera.

Wearing a lavender gown by Australian designer Toni Maticevski, Cornish lived up to her promise as the leader of Australia’s next generation of film stars.

Standing alongside her co-stars and the director of Bright Star, Jane Campion, Cornish showed the confidence and poise of a future Oscar winner.

Cornish’s boyfriend, actor Ryan Phillippe, is believed to be with her, but he didn’t walk the red carpet on Friday night.

It was a very different story in 2001 when her first feature – low-budget Aussie flick The Monkey’s Mask – was being sold in the market section of the festival. Back then, Cornish paid her own way to Cannes.

“I remember being by myself at the airport, and thinking, ‘wow, the world is a wonderful, amazing place, but I’m going on this six-month journey through the Far East and Africa and Europe, and who knows if I’ll be dead or alive at the end of it’,” she said.

In 2004, she returned to the Riviera, this time as the star of Somersault, which screened in the Un Certain Regard competition. She was earmarked as one of the faces to watch.

Cornish made her acting start on ABC TV series Wildside, for which she won an Australian Film Institute Award in 1999.

She has since begun to make a name for herself in Hollywood with roles in films including Stop-Loss, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and A Good Year.

At the Bright Star premiere she was flanked by co-stars Ben Wishaw and Thomas Sangster.

At a photo call for the film earlier in the day, Cornish was radiant in a sleeveless white dress, by Chloe, with matching open toe heels.

Bright Star, an English period drama, is one of 20 movies vying for the top prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or competition. It depicts the love affair between 19th century poet John Keats (Wishaw) – who died of tuberculosis in 1821 aged 25 – and his young neighbour, Fanny Brawne (Cornish).

“Cornish has the acting skill to match her striking beauty and she makes the small, loving gestures that the British might call soppy both real and touching,” wrote Hollywood Reporter reviewer Ray Bennett.

For Campion, 55, the premiere also marked a return to Cannes.

Campion is the only woman to win the Palme d’Or – for The Piano in 1993 – in the festival’s 62-year history. She used her time in the spotlight to highlight the lack of opportunities for female directors at the top level.

Campion said she admired the passion and dedication Cornish brought to the role of Brawne.

“I so loved what Abbie gave to the character,” she said.

Source: The Daily Telegraph