Radha Mitchell

The "Finding Neverland" actress is Hollywood's latest hot Aussie.

By Suzanne Ely

Radha Mitchell begins breathlessly. The Australian actress is running late for our lunch at one of her favorite neighborhood hangs near her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She just heard about this hip, ultra-exclusive restaurant with the facade of a pet store, she whispers. If she can get the unlisted phone number or land an invitation, the only requirement is to bring a good bottle of wine. As she leans in, the determined starlet purrs: "I want to go. Do you know anything about it?"

Alas, I do not. But between the two of us, my money is on Mitchell (whose first name is pronounced as if spelled "Rodda") to receive an invite. Granted, this is before her biggest movie yet, "Finding Neverland," has opened. Still, the 31-year-old lithe blonde with pale blue eyes has become quite adept at opening Hollywood's doors. Since landing in Los Angeles eight years ago, Mitchell has played opposite an impressive A-list of leading men (Colin Farrell, Denzel Washington and now Johnny Depp) and has two more movies in the can, including a Woody Allen film with Will Ferrell called "Melinda and Melinda," due in March.

In the middle of it all, Mitchell says, she's preparing for a month-long solo trip to India to study at an intense yoga school. "I like to be engaged," she explains. "I don't want to sit around, because time is finite."

Such New Age-y musings, which tend to pepper Mitchell's conversation, come courtesy of her hippie-ish upbringing in Melbourne. Growing up, she was the only child of divorced parents who, Mitchell explains, "had some progressive ideas for that time. My mother was into performance art and things like that." She adds with a giggle, "Before it was cool."

Describing her younger self as "an arty girl who was in the scene but on the fringes," Mitchell's decision to pursue acting was, she says, "a strangely pragmatic one. I wanted to travel around the world, but I needed money to do that."

Mitchell did make her way around the globe before settling in Los Angeles while promoting a small, critically acclaimed independent film she starred in, 1996's "Love and Other Catastrophes." She asserts that not much about her life has changed since then ("except now I have my own place"), although hobnobbing with fellow Australian imports like Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts, as she does, is hardly what many of us would consider a day at the office. Mitchell brushes off her famous acquaintances by saying that "most Australians know each other in L.A."

The single actress' swirling social and work life make the prospect of settling down seem a distant mirage. She deflects questions about her love life, because "painting a picture of an ideal relationship is the only way to describe it in the press. It's not that, so why even go there?"

Mitchell checks her watch, asks whether our time is up and dashes to the door. On her way out, she turns back and waves: "See you around -- maybe at that secret restaurant."

Suzanne Ely is a freelance writer in L.A.