Samson And Delilah star Marissa Gibson on life after Cannes Aboriginal Actor Marissa Naparrula Gibson pictured with her son Frederick in Alice Springs. Sam Ruttyn Source: The Sunday Telegraph SHE has rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous on the red carpet at Cannes, competed with Australia's top talent at the AFI awards, and the movie in which she starred scored an Oscar nod. But for Marissa Gibson, the Aboriginal female lead of the film Samson And Delilah, it all feels like a dream. "I will look at the photos (of Cannes) in the magazines and wish I was there," said 19-year-old Gibson as she proudly showed off her nine-month-old son, Freddy, in Alice Springs. Cannes is totally different from here. Plucked from obscurity in outback Central Australia by director Warwick Thornton, Gibson had a dazzling - albeit brief - celebrity when Samson And Delilah won the prestigious Camera D'Or prize at Cannes in 2009. Gibson hasn't acted since, only auditioning for The Sapphires, for which Thornton was cinematographer. It just feels normal, like it never happened. It's just life goes on," she said. I'm glad I did it. I got to go overseas ... I just got to go places and see different people. It was a bit different because I'm not really a centre of attention sort of person. The painfully shy Gibson, who grew up in Alice Springs with cousins as her parents were out bush, said she would like to try acting again some day. She hasn't seen Thornton "for a while," although she does get messages from producer Kath Shelper. Director Warwick Thornton with Marissa Gibson and Rowan McNamara on location during shooting. After Samson And Delilah, Gibson tried to finish school. She made it to Year 11. "I wish I had finished year 12," she said. I was a bit bummed about it but I will try to finish it one day. I guess I just ran amok. I wanted a bit of freedom, I guess. Freedom entailed living about 600km from Alice Springs in a community called Nyirripi. She speaks the Warlpiri language fluently and will make sure her son learns too. Gibson and partner Cajeton Dunn, 22, met after she finished the film and live together. But Mr Dunn, who works with disadvantaged indigenous children, has never seen Samson And Delilah. "I didn't want him to see me like that," Gibson said. Co-star Rowan McNamara, 19, is currently serving an eight-week jail sentence for kicking and punching his defacto partner and smashing the window of a parked ute. "It's sad, but it happens to a lot of people around here," Gibson said of the Alice, with its large itinerant community of indigenous people torn between two worlds. You wish they could go back and be with their families instead of in the streets begging for money. It makes me angry because they have a choice to do what they do. Before falling pregnant, Gibson worked as a tutor in Nyirripi - but she still doesn't feel grown up. "I just feel like a mother," she said, smiling. As for a career, Gibson just knows she'd like to "work with kids." Actors Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson in a scene from the 2009 film 'Samson and Delilah'. Picture: Mark Rogers Source: Supplied