Debicki in a scene from The Great Gatsby. Debicki with Richard Piper in the MTC's production of The Gift. 29/04/2013 AUS FEATURES: Leonardo DiCaprio and Director Baz Luhrmann on the set of The Great Gatsby Supplied by Warner Bros Pic. Debicki in Sydney in July last year, after shooting the film. Picture: Sam Ruttyn Source: The Australian The 22-year-old landed the role that will make her famous, that of golfing glamazon Jordan Baker in Luhrmann's 3D Art Deco reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, mere months after leaving the Victorian College of the Arts. She spent the spring of 2011 on the giddy Jazz Age sets, dancing the Charleston in sequin-smothered frocks, tossing back gin rickeys under crystal chandeliers and trading lines with Leonardo DiCaprio. And now here she is in civvies, spatula in hand. From flapper to flapjack flipper. "Oh, everything is so surreal," she says with the melodic cadence of the classically trained. The speed at which it has all occurred ...  Upon graduating in 2010, Debicki sent in an audition reel and was stunned to receive notice, while performing in the Melbourne Theatre Company's The Gift, that Luhrmann wanted her to test for the part of Fitzgerald's "wan, charming, discontented" pro golfer, with whom Tobey Maguire's naive Midwestern narrator, Nick Carraway, falls "halfway in love." "Meeting Baz was huge," says the Paris-born, Melbourne-raised blonde, whose sole screen credit at that point was a bit part in Stephan Elliott's comedy A Few Best Men. That whole audition was one of the strangest experiences of my life. I'd never been to LA before, it was like a crazy whirlwind - I got on a plane and then I was in LA, the sun was shining and I did this crazy audition and came home. Within five days it had all occurred and I lost a day somewhere in between. Then Baz called me on a tea break in rehearsals and it was a very, very weird moment. You imagine you would react a certain way, like, 'That's wonderful' and you'd be very graceful, like in a Hollywood movie, but it wasn't like that at all. I don't remember saying anything remotely intelligent. I said something like, 'Are you serious?' but I said it quite a lot. He kept saying 'Yes' and then I thought I probably shouldn't ask him again in case he thinks twice. She pauses. Breathes. It was a really amazing day. Luhrmann is said to be thrilled by his find. "It was a surprising result," he said at the time. But Elizabeth's grasp of the material and her chemical connectivity to Tobey Maguire, in addition to her striking, athletic appearance, had us in a place where we were fully confident and ready to take the leap of giving the role of Jordan Baker to what, I guess, people would term 'a discovery'. Here's what Baz saw: Debicki is tall, very tall - 1.8m in her 1920s-era stockings. She carries herself with perfect poise and self-containment, what her former acting teachers refer to as an "old-soul" demeanour. An instinctive feel for language, great attention to detail and a sophisticated intellect set her apart from your garden-variety starlet. Beyond that, she has a cool, lucent beauty, a balletic athleticism and the filigreed elegance of a young Cate Blanchett. Of course, every Aussie blonde who ever flicked through a script has been dubbed "The Next Cate" but Debicki has a better shot than most at the enviable career the 44-year-old Oscar winner has enjoyed. "The second I heard she got Gatsby I thought, 'Of course she did'," says Stephan Elliott, who snapped her up for A Few Best Men within "18 seconds of her opening her mouth." Any role she wants she will get - she really is that unusual and unique. There are so many 'new Cate Blanchetts' but I haven't seen anybody in a decade that truly has that possibility. This girl is going to be huge. Tanya Gerstle, the VCA's senior lecturer in theatre (acting), auditioned Debicki for her place at the college - she was one of 25 chosen from 700 wannabes and, at 18, one of the youngest ever - and taught her for three years. "She has a rare talent," she agrees. She's highly intelligent, with a very good connection to language and imagination, and at the same time she has an enormous emotional range. She's an incredibly lovely young woman, also. Elizabeth reminds me of Cate in her translucency and her beauty but also personally in a way, like she's in this zone where people can't think bad things about her. Since The Weekend Australian Magazine spoke to her in a rented kitchen on that day during filming in late 2011, Debicki's rising star has hit turbo. A dash of luck, sure - the right look at the right time seen by the right people - but discipline, diligence and commitment to a dream still count for something in a cynical world. She now has one elegant foot firmly set on the celebrity carousel that will change her life. A fashion shoot for Vogue Australia. A flattering piece in Vanity Fair ("She Can Charleston Too.") And she follows Rose Byrne and Rachael Taylor as the new face of Australian haute-jewellery label Jan Logan. The metamorphosis from lanky drama grad to smoky-eyed glamourpuss is complete. Gatsby's splashy world premiere in New York on May 1 will be one-upped by a high-profile climb up the fabled steps of the Palais des Festivals at the Cannes International Film Festival next week. Next month, the young actress makes her debut with the Sydney Theatre Company, appearing on stage in the key role of Madame in Jean Genet's The Maids. Her co-stars? French screen legend Isabelle Huppert and Cate Blanchett. For Elizabeth Debicki, the Gilded Age begins now. Debicki was just six when Leonardo DiCaprio and Baz Luhrmann joined forces to create the anarchic, neon-lit Shakespeare adaptation Romeo+Juliet. Ponytail, knee-highs and all that jazz. So how many times a day does she pinch herself to be working with the planet's highest-paid actor - this generation's Marlon Brando - and one of its most relentlessly inventive filmmakers, as well as A-listers Maguire, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton (who play Daisy and Tom Buchanan)? "A lot," she says. Less now, more at the beginning. That whole movie star thing starts to disappear as you get to know them more as people; that's a natural progression. There's something very grounded about the whole cast - they're all very committed actors. When you're all working towards a common goal, you feel like you're in it together. I learn from everybody - it's one of the greatest acting classes you could ever ask for. As well as the cream of the Hollywood crop, the $150 million production shipped in to Sydney a daffodil-yellow 1929 Duesenberg roadster, a wardrobe of opulent Prada costumes and a swag of Tiffany & Co diamonds. Purists were horrified that Luhrmann would desecrate an American classic by shifting its Long Island, New York, location to the other side of the world. And he was filming Fitzgerald's adored tale of riotous frivolity and misguided love in 3D, no less. The leaves were starting to turn in 2011 as Luhrmann and his team, including his designer wife Catherine Martin, began work on the 42 individual sets they were to create in and around Sydney, from the Buchanans' Georgian redbrick manor built on a soundstage at Fox Studios to the Gothic Revival building of the former St Patrick's Seminary in Manly, standing in for Gatsby's estate, to the grim "Valley of the Ashes" wasteland recreated on the site of the abandoned White Bay power station. Early shots from the set showed costumes and production design that were very era-appropriate, old sport, but Luhrmann is, after all, the man who brought trip-hop and glam rock to Moulin Rouge and equipped Romeo and Juliet with handguns. It soon became apparent this would be The Great Gatsby 2.0. The director planned to marry period style with a contemporary sensibility, amped by a heaped helping of computer-generated imagery and underpinned by a zeitgeisty soundtrack featuring Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine, will.i.am and Gotye. The flamboyant visuals and frenetic stylings of Luhrmann's dizzyingly sumptuous film were never going to be to everyone's taste. But even as the anti-Baz brigade sharpened their blades and rumours swirled of budget blow-outs and a shoot running over schedule, the mood on set was buoyant. Debicki, described by Gerstle as having "the ability to take big risks" and "make choices outside the box," certainly thrived on the high-wire vibe. "Baz has an amazing creative energy, a never-ending energy - I've never come across it in another human," she says. It's sort of like, 'How does he not stop?' Being around that is very inspiring - you sort of get lost in it, you feel like everyone gets lost in that creative energy and before you know it you've been on the set for four hours and it feels like two seconds. Born in Paris in 1990, Debicki moved to Australia at the age of five and, early on, trained to follow in the steps of her parents, both dancers. "I thought I might be a ballet dancer and then I sort of grew too tall," she says. In high school I liked arguing, so when I was younger I thought I'd be a lawyer. I see everything and think, 'I'd like to do that'. I grew up watching lots of old Hollywood movies, my mum was a big Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers fan, and I always thought that was so glamorous. I suppose I always thought I would be an actor without really considering it too much. A Patrick White play in high school "blew my mind, and then it was straight to the Victorian College of the Arts and now I'm here," she says. Debicki daydreams about living in Paris again one day - "The culture, the bread, the cheese, the clothes!" - but her reality is firmly rooted in Australia. "I feel very patriotic about the theatre and film industry here," she says. Of course, that doesn't mean I would say no to an American film, just as I wouldn't say no to London or some crazy German film in Poland. Actors have to be people of the world - I would never rule something out because I don't want to do a Hollywood movie. But I will always commit to the Australian industry first and foremost because that's where I'm from. There's a strong grassroots thing happening in this generation of filmmakers that's really interesting, and you can see it in so many theatres as well, from the little co-ops on up. When I graduated, I felt like I was coming out as part of a strong thing happening at the moment and I feel very connected to that. Gatsby is a huge thing. Some may consider it a Hollywood film, which it is, but it's equally an Australian film. It's a good example of those things meeting - they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like Blanchett, who combines film and stage work, Debicki also hopes to hopscotch between the two. "I find them both equally interesting in different ways," she says. They're both a workout in their own way. VCA gives you a solid root in theatre training and I don't think that ever leaves you. It creates a passion and a real commitment to theatre. But I would never [presume] to know the path that will now occur. I'm happy to see what happens. You wouldn't find Jordan Baker in the kitchen making pancakes. Fixing an extremely stiff martini, perhaps, but not pancakes. Debicki, bobbed and brunette (complete with kiss curl) for Gatsby, was intrigued by the character from the get-go. "She is completely fascinating, definitely not black and white," says the actress, who studied Fitzgerald's novel in high school and has since re-read it a number of times. Gatsby is, in part, about the curdling of the American dream due to the recklessness of Old Money society and Fitzgerald uses the "incurably dishonest" Jordan Baker as a prime example. Nick Carraway is immediately bewitched by the famous golfer's unconventional femininity and the self-possessed way in which she carries herself, "her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall." It's really interesting, playing a character from a book. I'd never done it before," says Debicki. You have your screenplay, and then the novel is like a blueprint, this thing you can constantly refer back to. Because of the way Fitzgerald writes, the characters are so fully evolved. He talks about them physically; he's always talking about their skin, their eyes, the way the characters move. It's so revealing as an actor. When I read it now, I feel myself moving like Jordan moves. It's just so evocative the way he describes the physicality of the characters. Debicki's height served her well in the role of the imposing Ms Baker, but industry veteran Elliott suggests it may impact future roles. "Her height is going to be an interesting factor going forward in her career," he says. She'll be the opposite of Tom Cruise - they're going to have to cast giants around her. So her head is nearer to the clouds than most. But a close, supportive family in Melbourne, good friends she says are "stoked" by her success, and a modest, well-adjusted temperament should help keep her properly earthed. "It's just a tag, 'the next big thing'," Debicki says matter-of-factly. Of course it's nice to hear, and any link between me and someone like Cate Blanchett is completely flattering. It's also like, I've just started. It's all just in motion right now, so I don't pay very much attention to it, to be honest. I don't think you should. Geraldine Cook, Debicki's voice teacher at VCA, recently ran into her former student in Melbourne's Chapel Street on a break from Sydney rehearsals for The Maids, and was pleasantly surprised by how unaffected she was. "She was buying coffee, and she came up and greeted me so warmly," she says. I have to say it was just like she was back at drama school. She was open and very friendly, but in sort of a daze. She'd been going back and forth to LA, doing all the publicity for the film and in between going to rehearsals. She said it was all a bit of a whirlwind, and that it was so nice to be back in the theatre. It was interesting that she made that reference, that being on the stage in rehearsal every day grounded her. Making pancakes, or treading the boards with the likes of Blanchett and Huppert in an eerie French psychodrama. Whatever it takes. The Great Gatsby opens nationally on May 30.