Making Eyre rock

Mia Wasikowska, the 21-year-old Australian actor, was the highest-grossing female at the box office last year. She talks to TARA BRADYabout her latest role as Jane Eyre

DAINTY AS A SNOWDROP and younger looking than her 21 years, Mia Wasikowska smoothes down her skirt as she sits with a deft little movement that might pass for Victorian propriety. She’s immediately a paradoxical proposition; girlish yet solemn, wee yet possessed of a deep, womanly voice.

It's four years since Tim Burton cast an unknown Australian teenager in the title role of Alice in Wonderlandbut even back then, the director was calling her an "old soul". It's a phrase she hears a lot from filmmakers and fellow thespians.

“It’s really nice that they see that and say it,” says Wasikowski. “It’s strange to think about for me. I don’t necessarily see myself in that way. But I think I know what they mean. I love old clothes and old music and old things.”

Whatever its origins, it's a quality that appears to travel well. Last year, Wasikowska was the highest-grossing female at the box office and placed on Timemagazine's 100 most influential people in the world list. She's now eligible to vote in the Academy Awards and big enough to turn down the opportunity to play Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's forthcoming adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

“It’s all been so fast,” she nods. “I’m super lucky. It’s much more than I ever expected. Quite surreal, really.” If she’s a natural on camera, she ought to be. Born and raised in Canberra, the middle child of Polish-born photographer Marzena Wasikowska and Australian collagist John Reid cannot remember a time when she and her siblings were not being snapped and documented.

“Mum was always taking pictures of us as kids,” she says. “We wouldn’t play up for the camera and we were never asked to pose or perform but we were definitely aware of being watched.” In 1998, the family returned to Szczecin, Poland, after her mother received a grant to produce a collection of work based on her experiences with emigration.

“We were there for a year at that time,” says Wasikowska. “Poland was still really hardcore in the 90s when I was a kid. It’s changed a lot. Polish people were always lovely and warm at home. But they’re a bit more open now generally. We spent time in Russia and Germany as well. I remember getting to Paris for three weeks and thinking oh, it really is gay Paris compared with everywhere else.”

The Wasikowski kids were raised to prize high culture. When she signed on for Alice she was familiar with the animated version from Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer but not the Disney movie. It was, says Wasikowska, an inspiring way to grow up: “Mum would bring home library books and we’d sit together and look at them. Kieslowski films were playing all the time in our house. Cassavetes films were playing. That’s the sort of family we are.”

She trained as a ballerina but found it a tough calling. “It’s much tougher than film,” she insists. “We are so pampered as actors. Dancers don’t get anything like the support we do. It’s hard work for nothing more than the work. But I couldn’t have been an actor without it. Ballet teaches you discipline, of course, but you also yo learn physicality and how to control your nerves when you’re in really intense situations. You take nervous energy and turn it into excitement and control. I did 35 hours a week for years so I got good at holding myself together.”

There is, not coincidentally, an impressive degree of gravitas about the Wasikowska CV. By 17, she completed high school by correspondence in order to play a suicidal gymnast to Gabriel Byrne's therapist in the heavyweight HBO drama In Treatment. The role brought enough acclaim to see her share big screen time with Daniel Craig in Defiance, Sam Worthington in Rogueand Julianne Moore in The Kids are Alright. By next year she'll have been directed by Chan-wook Park, Gus van Sant, and Jim Jarmusch.

“The cool thing about the people I work with is that they are amazing talents who are surrounded by other amazing talents,” she says.

“They always have amazing cinematographers and I get to soak up a bit of their knowledge. I treat every film like film school. It’s one thing to be an actor. And you learn heaps each time from that perspective. But when you have all these people that are incredible at what they do and a lot of sitting around waiting between takes, that’s my lecture time.”

Her curious mind and self-possession made her perfect for the title role in Cary Fukunaga's stately new adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. "I'd just started reading it about two months before I knew there was a film," says Wasikowska.

“I was trying to get up on my English classics. I got about five chapters in before I e-mailed my agent to say if this ever, ever comes up. And two months later it did. I loved that she has so much self-respect at 18. I’d seen representations of her before but somehow that part hadn’t clicked with me. She’s so young but she knows exactly who she is.” Wasikowska’s appropriately otherworldly Jane finds a perfect match in Kerryman Michael Fassbender’s darksome Rochester. “I’ve never had as much fun working with anybody else,” she says.

"We had a very similar way of doing things. Just have fun and alleviate the tension and intensity and channel that into everything. You need to get your energy from somewhere for something as intense as Jane Eyre."

Between takes she found time to fall even more in love with photography. Her shot of director Fukunaga and co-star Jamie Bell was recently shortlisted for the 2011 National Photographic Portrait Prize in Australia. A photo by her mother was also a finalist.

“I’ve always been around cameras but it was always my parents’ thing,” she says. “It was only a couple of years ago I got into it for myself ... As an actor you suddenly get this incredible view of everyone essentially focusing from behind a camera. The attention is bizarre. But it gives you a very unique perspective.”

Will she fall into the family trade or stick with movies? "I'd love to find a way to do both. I'd love to get dance in there too. I just need to figure out how. I'll keep this up while I can. I love that acting takes me to places I never thought I'd go or places I've always wanted to go. I lived in Dublin for two months for the shoot of Albert Nobbsand I got so familiar with the people and the places. And I love that I now have cafes there I like to go to. But I love doing that over and over in new places and projects.

“I’ve always been a nomad so this suits me just fine.”

Jane Err: just because I’m poor and plain...

In person, she’s dainty and pretty but Mia Wasikowski scrubs down fairly convincingly to correspond with Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Sadly, others have not been quite so faithful to the text.

JOAN FONTAINE, 1944It's 1808. Jane Eyre says she is "almost 19" when she takes up her first teaching position in a country school. It's 1944. Joan Fontaine is "almost 28" as she takes up a position opposite Orson Welles in Robert Stevenson's Oscar-nominated adaptation.

CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG, 1996

Franco Zeffirelli’s version did well to call in Gainsbourg  and Anna Paquin as the younger Jane. Sadly, there’s no chemistry between Jane and William Hurt’s caring, 1990s Rochester. When Jane spouts the famous line: “How can you be so stupid? How can you be so cruel? Just because I’m poor and plain, I’m not without feelings,” you half expect him to fetch her Tampax and green tea.

SAMANTHA MORTON, 1997

“I felt no fear of him, and but a little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked.” Samantha Morton (right) can be normally be relied upon for mad acting skills. But she can’t quite stretch to shyness and “not daring”.

ANDREA CORR, 2010

“I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer,” explains Jane Eyre. “I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth: I desired to be tall, stately and finely developed in figure: I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so marked.” No wonder the Gate Theatre sought the services of well-known grotesque Andrea Corr.