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The Australian star of Alice in Wonderland on her new film, a feminist take on Punch and Judy, and why her costumes need pockets

Australian actor Mia Wasikowska trained as a ballet dancer in her teens before switching careers. In 2010 she was the highest-grossing film star in the world after playing the lead in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and starring alongside Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right. She has since starred in Jane Eyre opposite Michael Fassbender and as the writer Robyn Davidson in Tracks. Now she plays Judy in Judy and Punch, Mirrah Foulkes’s unruly, subversive, feminist take on the traditional puppet show.

How was it working on Judy and Punch?

It was a rough shoot. Low budget Australian film-making is full on. We had babies, dogs, horses, puppets – so many uncontrollable elements – but got through it. Melbourne weather is notoriously...

Sometimes a movie is worth waiting for. If you know anything about the production of motion pictures you may know that it can take years, sometimes decades, to get a film made. One such Hollywood story was the movie Jacob’s Ladder, the script for which became legendary as having been read by almost every producer, director and actor who works in the production of movies. When it finally did get made, well, if you’ve seen it, you probably know its pretty damn good.

In the 1980s I read Robyn Davidson’s book Tracks about her crossing the Australian Outback with camels starting at Alice Springs, the largest town in the outback. The journey was almost 2000 miles and was covered by a photographer from National Geographic, at Robyn Davidson’s request.

Her book was fascinating, and at the time,( this was in the 1980s,) I thought it would make a great movie.