Abbie Cornish is young, beautiful, extraordinarily talented -- and now there is Oscar buzz.

Cornish, the latest Aussie darling in cinema, is the 27-year-old co-star of Jane Campion's Bright Star, the tragic romantic story of early 19th century English poet John Keats and his love for free spirit Fanny Brawne. Cornish plays feisty Brawne to Ben Whishaw's delicate Keats.

"I've heard!" Cornish says when the Oscar buzz is mentioned. Even though the film has detractors -- critics impatient with the film's subtlety and measured pace -- Bright Star has gained momentum since its May debut at Cannes and its opening in theatres on the weekend.

"I think it's really cool for the movie," Cornish says. "I think it's really exciting and I think this film is really special to all of us.

"I guess, as an artist, when you put a lot of time and thought and love into something, it's nice for that to get recognized."

For Cornish, Bright Star is her third career-defining performance. Her first was in Cate Shortland's Somersault (2004). The second was in Neil Armfield's Candy, a heroin addiction drama with Heath Ledger.

Bright Star continued this immersion course.

"Literally, as soon as I finished that film, I let it all go," Cornish says of Bright Star.

"I had expended everything that I needed to and could possibly expend during the making of that film. So, on the last day, I was on that airplane straight. I bounded out of there.

"And I felt that way on Somersault, on Candy. Films where I didn't work as much or as hard, I didn't have the same feeling. But on Somersault, Candy and Bright Star, I had that feeling. I was in. I was totally consumed, working as hard as I possibly could and then it was over and I was out -- whew! -- as happy as pie, a big smile, running off set. Still, there are things that never leave and you never forget."

Cornish finished her work on Bright Star 18 months ago and then took a year off before starting on Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, a crazy-ass movie hyped as "Alice in Wonderland with machine guns!"

In her self-analysis, Cornish leaves out Kimberly Peirce's Stop-Loss (2008), a Iraq War drama. This is not surprising. Cornish met and fell in love with her co-star, Ryan Phillippe, on that project. He left his wife, actress Reese Witherspoon, to be with Cornish.

The relationship remains bizarrely controversial to fans who side with Witherspoon as the jilted spouse.

For her part, Cornish is careful not to talk much about Phillippe, referring to him as "the boyfriend" and not even by name. So her interviews for Bright Star are all serious business, as they should be.

"I did a lot of research on the period," Cornish says, "and educated myself really well and knew exactly what was going on and really explored what Fanny would do with her days and how that would affect her: Just reading and sewing and all that sort of stuff. And I definitely incorporated that into my performance. But, when I came down to the emotion of it, that became really real."

Even though Bright Star is set in England nearly 200 years ago, the emotions of the characters are modern and contemporary, Cornish says. That makes the Bright Star story worth re-telling in Campion's film, she says.

"I think the value is to remind people to feel again, to remind people to sense things. What has evolved is technology and all this man-made stuff that is around us. But what does that do for our soul? So I think the film is kind of encouraging people to connect to the core of what it is to be human."

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