by Adrianna Paidas
Photography by Stephen Busken
Fashion Editor: Christian Classen @ www.christianclassen.com
Fashion Associate: Dagmarette Yen @ CCStudios
“I’m always okay… even if something feels really hard, I always get through it a much brighter and stronger person.”
Amidst the fast-paced, grandiose lives of Los Angeles’ rich and famous, Teresa Palmer sits in her tiny oasis snugged away in the Hollywood Hills. The Australian actress prefers to lie low in her home, equipped with a Zen garden, rock pool and a day bed nook overflowing with dozens of pillows and blankets. Incense burns regularly next to a pint-sized Buddha statue near her bed.
Palmer, the 26-year-old star of February’s zombie-romance box office hit, Warm Bodies, moved to Los Angeles five years ago to conquer her acting dreams. She has since emerged as a talent to be reckoned with, even starting her own production company. But the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty has remained grounded in her success. With a strong spiritual outlook that resonates in every aspect of her life, it’s difficult to be anything but gracious.
“I just always feel so connected to the idea that there is something greater than me, and I just feel incredibly blessed in my life,” said Palmer. “My mom thinks I’m a real hippie.”
To describe her as akin to a “flower child of the ‘60s” would not be far off, but with more mature thoughts and greater resolution in her beliefs. She is regarded as “mama bear” among her friends; the girl everyone turns to when they doubt themselves. She is the one who gives them solace.
“I love more than anything to talk to my friends about this sort of stuff – there is such growth and light in what they’re going through and perhaps they might not realize it now, but they will gain that perspective and it will be such a beautiful thing,” she commented on the troubled times everyone goes through at some point in their lives. “I always say there’s growth in darkness, so I’m never afraid of it, and that’s really led me well in life so far.”
When Palmer moved to Los Angeles from Australia in 2007 she veered more on the side of the glass-half-empty philosophy than the glass-half-full ideology she champions today.