ou can learn a lot about a person from first
impressions. Having met Australian actress
Ashleigh Cummings numerous times – on screen
at least – I’m intrigued to meet the woman behind
the myriad complex characters she’s embodied.
There is the engaging but emotionally scarred
Pippa in her upcoming feature The Goldfinch; the
gifted young artist who discovers supernatural
abilities in the new US television series NOS4A2;
the abducted, terrorised but iron-willed
he Australian psychological horror Hounds of Love,
and teenager Debbie in the television remake of the Australian
coming-of-age novel Puberty Blues.
When I finally meet Cummings herself she takes one look at the hand
I’ve extended and instead grabs me in a bear hug. It speaks volumes
about this warm, passionate young woman, who proves to be an
entertaining, fascinating and thoughtful conversationalist whose own
stories take us from a childhood in Saudi Arabia to Sydney, running
away to Los Angeles aged 14; the uncomfortable relationship she’s had
with the shiny world of Hollywood and the regular periods she spends
living off the grid with African tribes.
But first to The Goldfinch, Cummings’s breakthrough film, an
adaptation of Donna Tartt’s cult, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel directed
by Brooklyn’s John Crowley, in which she stars alongside Nicole Kidman,
Ansel Elgort and Sarah Paulson. The film follows young Theodore
Decker, whose life is changed irrevocably during a visit to the Met with
his mother, who is killed when a terrorist bombs the museum.
Cummings plays the small but seminal role of Pippa, a girl with titian
hair who is standing next to Theo, absorbed in Carel Fabritius’s painting
The Goldfinch when the bomb detonates, leaving them with a bittersweet
bond they will share forever.Playing Pippa in the much anticipated film adaptation
of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, award-winning
Australian actor Ashleigh Cummings talks about
making her Hollywood film debut, meeting Nicole
Kidman, her unconventional upbringing and her
passions and principles. By Jane Albert. Styled
by Kate Darvill. Photographed by Hugh Stewart.CUMMINGS
OF AGE
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