She usually sleeps with her phone on silent. But six months ago, Abbie Cornish was awakened by her aggressively vibrating phone. “I thought, ‘Why is my phone blowing up?’’’ she says. “I got so worried.” More worried were her mom and her friends because someone had started a rumor that she’d died. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?” she says. Her death hoax died down within hours, but for the doubters: the Australian actress, 31, is alive and well and ordering a mint tea at West Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont.
She’s barely recognizable, what with the black beanie she has pulled down over her blond hair and the little dog in her arms — that’s Soleil, an 8-month-old mutt she found in the south of France and brought home to join her four rescue cats and a parakeet. But Abbie looks cool: She’s in a black lace Tory Burch top, metallic red Rich & Skinny jeans (the same ones her character wore in “Seven Psychopaths”) and black peep-toe Vivienne Westwood pumps. She also has a cute pair of brown plastic sunglasses tucked into her shirt — vintage, handmade, from France. “I own about a hundred pairs of sunglasses,” she says, as she pets Soleil. “Sunglasses are definitely my obsession. I think there’s lots of history in them.”
On the other side of history is her next project, which looks 14 years into the future: the blockbuster film “RoboCop,” in theaters February 12. Abbie plays Clara Murphy, the wife of a police detective turned RoboCop. The cyborg is built by Dr. Dennett Norton, played by Gary Oldman, and is played by Joel Kinnaman — cable’s hippest detective, Stephen Holder, on AMC’s “The Killing.” And though the film is full of special effects and explosive stunts, “I think the most exciting moment,” she says, “was meeting Gary Oldman. I love Gary Oldman. I noticed my knees were shaking a little bit when I met him.” And? “He’s just an incredible man. He’s so wonderful at what he does. He’s such a great actor. He’s so warm. He’s so funny.”
That’s some kudos for Oldman, considering Abbie has worked with some of the hottest men in Hollywood, from Heath Ledger in “Candy” to Bradley Cooper in “Limitless” — and, on the Discovery Channel’s recent mini-series “Klondike,” she co-starred alongside Richard Madden (Robb Stark in “Game of Thrones”). And yes, Abbie is the actress who dated one of her early co-stars, Ryan Phillippe. She met him while filming 2008’s “Stop-Loss,” and she was accused of being the reason for the breakup of his marriage to Reese Witherspoon; Cornish and Phillippe dated for four years. Today, Cornish is single, but “totally open to having a relationship.” And despite the big names on her IMDB roster, and those days on the covers of tabloids, Abbie manages to lead a very private existence. Perhaps it’s because she was born into one.
She grew up on a 170-acre farm in the small town of Lochinvar, in New South Wales, Australia. “It was all about motorbikes and horses and cows,” she says. Fashion simply wasn’t around on the farm for her three brothers [one older, two younger] and her 19-year-old sister Isabelle, a model. “Most of the time,” she says, “we ran around in our undies, swimming in the river, building rafts.” After high school (she graduated a year early) Abbie planned to travel for a year before heading to university to study veterinary science, but after moving to LA to be with Phillippe — she told W magazine in 2009 that “it was love that brought me here, not work” — she’s never looked back.
Still, the fashion bug didn’t hit her until recently. Lately she’s found style inspiration from one of her best friends, Jamie Chung, who blogs on whatthechung.com. “She looks incredible, like, literally, every single day,” Abbie says. And Abbie likes to support up-and-coming designers like Toni Maticevski — “the way he drapes around the female body, it’s exquisite,” she says — and jewelry designer Colette. But she’s most thrilled to be working with stylist Jen Rade. “She filters, filters, filters, filters. Then [she] presents to me, ‘Hey, I like this stuff. What do you reckon?’ We really click,” says Abbie. “We have a similar sense stylistically. She has an edginess to her.”
Abbie’s got her own edge: She’s also a rapper. “Some people call me ‘MC Dusk’ ” she says, “but my MC name is just ‘Dusk,’ ” chosen for her favorite time of day, “when the sun sets and you see all the different colors and the animals are going to nest. It’s magic hour.” She got into hip-hop as a teenager, listening to Ice-T and Ice Cube. “I started Dj-ing, graffiti writing, breakdancing and rapping,” she says, and was in a band from ages 18 to 22. She’s been influenced by Mos Def and Jay-Z, but by far, she says, “my favorite rapper is Eminem. I would love to meet him. I think he’s incredible.” This year she began making an album, which is now half-written and recorded. Dusk is keeping mum about the details (though she says the tracks will include violinists and cellists), but she expects to release it by the end of this year.
In the meantime, as Fashion Week hits New York in the coming days, Abbie plans to fly East to join in the fun. But before she sees any shows, she will pop into the museums and art galleries and then stop for hot chocolate at Locanda Verde at the Greenwich Hotel. “I have hot chocolates everywhere I go,” she says. “And for me, they have the best hot chocolate in the world.” Then, perhaps, she’ll take a stroll along the water downtown, from the West Side for views of the Statue of Liberty, to the East for views of Brooklyn. “I like walking along the edges,” says Abbie.
She’s heading, alive as ever, toward the future.