Over the last decade she has made 20-plus films back to back, travelled around the world with filming commitments and split her time between the bright lights of Hollywood and international movie sets with her parents’ home back in Canberra.
It was a period that ultimately left her feeling “discombobulated” and exhausted. So she stopped, bought her first apartment and proceeded to nest (Wasikowska’s interview with Vogue took place in a park near her beachside home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.]
On her time off from acting and the bright lights of Hollywood, she says “I think it’s so important for your mental health not to only do one thing and be in one world over and over again,” she says. “So it’s been really nice to have this time off.”
“Especially because people get really caught up in films, and if you don’t have any experiences outside of films and you just go back to back to back, it’s just exhausting. I don’t know what you can be putting out if you’re not putting stuff back in. I think it’s so important to take some time.
“It seemed like a good time to have a break and connect back to who I am, and my friends and family and whatever else is important. I’ve been nesting in my home: I’m very much a home body. It’s so cliched to say the simple things are the best but they are! And it’s so nice to wake up in my own home, have a cup of tea and chat with my brother [who is also her flatmate] and then have a friend over and go for a walk. And be on my own clock. Because when you’re on a film you don’t own your time, you’re on such a strict schedule and therefore you don’t really feel like you own yourself either.”
Wasikowska is one of those unique actors who you would not recognise on the street. On the day of her Vogue interview she is make-up free and dressed in her usual uniform of preppy chic: crisp white shirt, knee-length skirt, brogues and a satchel. In person she is unassuming. Yet send her down the red carpet in one of her favourite designers — Miu Miu and Rodarte, for example — and she transforms.
“I only feel that kind of public persona for very specific moments in the year, when I’m on a press tour or a red carpet, because otherwise I have a completely anonymous life, which is really great, and I’m probably only ever recognised for a second when a film comes out and then it goes away and everyone forgets,” she says.
Obviously, that’s just how she likes it. She appears to have made a life where she is finally comfortable in her own skin and operating on her own time.
“I feel like I’ve found my middle ground, which is awesome,” she says. “I’m super-happy and grounded here [in Sydney], and a massive part of keeping grounded is feeling like I have created a life outside of films and that not everything hinges on my next role.”