In the past four years, Frances O'Connor has moved from being the darling of the arthouse crowd to an actress with box-office clout. And we'll be seeing more of her over the next few weeks as Bedazzled (which opens today) and Mansfield Park (December 7) come to our screens.
The records show O'Connor was born in London some time during 1970. But by the time she was two, her parents (father a nuclear physicist, mother a pianist) had packed her off to Western Australia.
She at first went to a Catholic girls' school and developed a love for Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films. She would also later give 'credit' to the school for turning her into an actress. 'They got repression going, and it's very good for acting,' she told CNN. So good that O'Connor earned herself a place at the West Australian Academy for the Performing Arts.
After graduating, she landed a role in the hit Australian television series Halifax, FP, and was nominated for an Australian Film Institute (AFI) award. That brought the film offers - and she chose wisely. In 1996 - there was Love And Other Catastrophes, where she played a lovelorn lesbian. That brought her a second AFI nomination.
Then there was her role as the dodgy con-artist Nikki in 1997's Kiss Or Kill and, yes, another AFI nomination. The same year, she starred opposite Cate Blanchett in the comedy Thank God He Met Lizzie. That drew in (yawn) yet another AFI nomination and a Best Actress award from the Montreal Film Festival.
And so the big studios came calling. She plays Fanny Price in the sexed-up version of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (pictured), and Brendan Fraser's love interest in Bedazzled.