Aussie actress Abbie Cornish is profiled in September’s W Magazine, and it is a terrifically boring interview. Most of it is about her new film, Bright Star, directed by Jane Campion (The Piano, one of my faves). It’s a period film about the true romance of poet John Keats and his friend/neighbor Fanny Brawne. Sounds like a tear-jerker, but reading about it is dryer than dirt. For the complete W interview, go here.

The most interesting parts are when Abbie talks about being the girlfriend of Ryan Phillippe. They live together in Los Angeles, where Abbie says, “it was love that brought me here, not work… I think the city feels and looks a little bit different because of that.” Abbie and Ryan met in 2006, when they were cast together in Stop-Loss. There has always been some debate about whether Abbie is a homewrecker, whether Ryan is a cheating douche, or whether Reese played the victimized young wife to great effect. My opinion was always that Ryan and Abbie probably did have something going on, but that Ryan and Reese’s marriage had been on life support for a couple of years before that. I don’t think Abbie was a homewrecker – and I don’t really think either Reese or Ryan is a bad person, they just didn’t want to be married to each other. This is the first time that I can remember Abbie ever speaking this directly about what happened back then:

Why she broaches the subject of romance is inexplicable, since Cornish stiffens when asked directly about her boyfriend. As any celebrity junkie knows, the couple met two years ago on the set of Stop-Loss, the first movie Cornish shot in America after having worked abroad alongside Heath Ledger in Candy, in 2006, and with Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott’s A Good Year. At the time, Phillippe was married to Reese Witherspoon, and when word of the golden couple’s separation leaked to the front pages, Cornish was cast as the culprit, an alluring other woman who tempted Phillippe away from the best-paid and possibly best-loved actress of her generation.

“It was a really difficult time for me,” admits Cornish, who is polite and guarded in demeanor but nonetheless exudes a kind of earthy, unkempt sensuality. “It was just this world of tabloid magazines that I’d never been exposed to. In a normal successful career, someone usually learns these things bit by bit. For me, it was like night and day. I woke up one day and there was this whole new thing I had to process and deal with.”

Cornish seems aware that she’ll have to “deal with” at least some additional measure of personal scrutiny during this interview, and her body language shows that she doesn’t enjoy the prospect. She untucks her legs from beneath her to place her feet more firmly on the ground and raises a hand to cover a pale mole on her left cheek as if it were a secret part of her.

“Have you spent time with Ryan and Reese’s two kids?”

“Of course, yeah.”

Cornish glances to the wicker table beside her, perhaps hoping to find distraction in the plate of berries, glass of rosé and packet of cigarettes there.

“Are you and Ryan engaged?”

“No.”

“Do you have plans in that direction?”

“I don’t know,” she says, adding with a tense laugh, “I think I’m nearly ready to go on to another part of the conversation.”

[From W Magazine]

Is anyone else surprised that she and Ryan are still together? And that we’re not being constantly bombarded with reports of his wandering eye? I am, on both counts. Maybe Ryan has really settled down. As for those engagement rumors, they pop up every now and then. I’m kind of hoping they don’t get married. Just live together, be happy, see how it all works out.

Here are Ryan and Abbie practically pretending not to know each other as they hide from the cameras at LAX on August 7th. Images thanks to BauerGriffinOnline. Header of Abbie at Cannes thanks to PR Photos.com.