Hail Mia, full of grace

It's less than 18 months since Mia Wasikowska became a global star thanks to Tim Burton's US$1 billion hit Alice in Wonderland. Contrary to popular belief, the Australian with a Polish name who took on a British heroine wasn't exactly plucked from obscurity. In 2008, she'd already made an impact in HBO psychiatrist drama In Treatment, playing a troubled teenager in analysis, a role that required her to relocate from Canberra, when she was 17, to Los Angeles for three months.

Brief film roles followed - alongside Hilary Swank in the aviator yarn Amelia and Daniel Craig and Jamie Bell in the Polish second world war drama Defiance - which may account for how well Wasikowska has coped with her post-Alice exposure. 'The craziest part is doing the publicity and press tours,' she explains. 'But ... I shot Alice two years before it came out. So it's always felt so gradual to me. It's never felt like it's been really whirlwindy. And if it is, it's usually for a week or two weeks when you're doing the press tour.'

Still, given the number of projects Wasikowska has on the boil, she'll probably be on tour longer than U2. In the can is Gus Van Sant's latest teen trauma tale Restless, bootlegger yarn The Wettest County in the World, the Judd Apatow-penned Stainless Steel and Irish period drama Albert Nobbs. In production is Stoker, South Korean director Park Chan-wook's first English-language movie, with a film of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge and the latest Jim Jarmusch movie both on the cards. 'I think I get restless easily,' she shrugs. 'I like working, and I always want to keep working.

'I'm trying to pace things as well,' she says, though it's hard to believe her. 'I usually have a bit of time in between, and I go home. And it's really nice to get that perspective on Hollywood and L.A.' Home is still Canberra, where she was raised, the middle child of three, by her photographer parents, Polish-born mother Marzena and Australian father John.

The way she talks, growing up was both nurturing and creative. 'We grew up in galleries and travelling around with them. They always involved us and encouraged us and showed us interesting films. We lived in Poland for a year when I was eight years old. And there's something about being removed to a completely different place when you're at this age, where you can completely absorb it and soak it in.'

When we meet, Wasikowska is talking up yet another project - the new film from Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed the Spanish-language Mexican gang story Sin Nombre. Recalling Ang Lee's surprising sojourn to England to make Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Fukunaga travelled to Britain to make Charlotte Bront?'s classic 19th century novel, Jane Eyre. Casting Wasikowska as the eponymous headstrong governess, it co-stars Michael Fassbender as her paymaster, the Byronic hero Rochester, who ultimately falls for his employee.

Oddly, Wasikowska first read Bront?'s novel in 2009 and called her agent, asking if there was any script adaptation in development. After all, Jane Eyre has frequently been revisited on film. 'There wasn't anything at the time, but two months later, she e-mailed me a script,' Wasikowska recalls. 'It was a case of really good timing.'

So how did she prepare to play Jane? 'I prepared in the same way I did for Alice,' she replies. 'I reread the book. And the script just made me feel very knowledgeable about all things Jane Eyre.' Having already disappeared into Wonderland to play Lewis Carroll's literary heroine, Wasikowska has no problem convincing us that she's English. 'I really like doing accents,' she says. 'It's one more element that removes you from yourself and allows you to embody someone else's character. I kinda like that challenge.'

With its starched collars and pastoral landscapes, not to mention the casting of period drama stalwart Judi Dench, Fukunaga's Jane Eyre may appear traditional - but it subtly reinvigorates the text with an energetic adaptation. 'I think it's a very modern story and also a very universal story,' Wasikowska says. 'At the core of it is a story of a young girl who is trying to find love and a family and connection, in a very dislocated world ... It's a very universal theme and something almost everybody experiences to a different degree in their life.'

If you detect a certain grace to her screen presence, that's probably because Wasikowska spent five years studying ballet, which she finally gave up when she was 14. 'I've learned so much from dance,' she says. 'You learn to channel your nervous energy before you go on stage. And you're in a lot of high-pressure, high-stress environments on film as well, whether it's a meeting or even a day on set or an audition. So you learn to channel that nervous energy into creativity. And then knowing your body.'

Back when she was a ballerina, she was much less happy with her body. 'I felt incredibly ugly and weird and awkward, and all those things a lot of people feel. When you look at the magazines, you feel so inadequate and so small, and you feel really imperfect when you're constantly seeing these images. I wasn't aware of that until I was a teenager. It was until then that I would buy those magazines or watch those shows where everybody is immaculately perfect. But then I started watching films that were more with real people - like Breaking the Waves and The Piano.'

If she ever was an ugly duckling, this waif-like girl with close-cropped hair and pale skin has long-since morphed into the proverbial swan - apparently immensely confident. US magazine W pictures her and Fassbender close together, the headline suggesting they 'steam up the screen', which in Jane Eyre they certainly do. At the Film Independent Spirit Awards this year to support romcom The Kids Are All Right she carried off a white ruffled Dolce & Gabbana dress effortlessly.

Inevitably, she will be compared with fellow Australian Nicole Kidman, particularly given the Oscar-winner is playing her mother in Stoker. 'I haven't met her yet,' she says. 'I can't wait.' If only, it seems, because watching Kidman at work will prove highly informative.

'Acting is a really mysterious thing for me. There is no formula. There's no way you can be sure that you will get a good performance if you do this, this and this. You never really know what you're doing or why you're doing it. But watching actors is always so cool.' It won't be long before all eyes are on her.

Jane Eyre is screening now