Abbie Cornish is reaping the rewards of her performance in Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” scoring a role in Neil Burger’s sci-fi-thriller “Dark Fields” alongside Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper.
The actress will presumably play the role previously rumored for Elizbabeth Banks in the pic that follows a writer (Cooper) whose dependency on a designer “viagra for the brain” drug hits a stumbling block when his stocks dwindle. The writer must then venture into the drug’s dark past to feed his habit all while suffering the drug’s side effects of sanity-splitting headaches, spontaneous blackouts, violent outbursts.
De Niro will play a financial mogul who begins pursuing Cooper’s protagonist with no word yet on who Cornish will play. Shooting will begin this May in Philadelphia.
Cornish has also been confirmed for Madonna’s sophomore directorial effort in the drama, “W.E.” The actress will star alongside Vera Farmiga in the dual-narrative story of the affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson — which led to the royal’s abdication — and the contemporary story centering on a woman, Wally Winthrop, with romantic problems of her own in addition to an obsession with the life of the Duchess of Windsor.
Farmiga will portray the Duchess while Cornish plays Winthrop with males leads currently being sought by Madonna. Shooting will take place in London this summer with stints in the South Of France and New York.