Movie heart-throb Ryan Phillippe has been caught red-handed with stunning Abbie Cornish. Despite a year of denying they were dating, the couple are clearly head over heels in love.

There was continued speculation that Abbie was to blame for breaking up Ryan's seven-year marriage to Reese Witherspoon, but the Aussie star insisted she and Ryan were just friends and co-stars.

But her dubious claims of innocence were shattered this month when she was spotted with Ryan as they slipped out of his rented home in a posh LA neighbourhood.

'They looked very lovey-dovey together,' an onlooker says. 'They were whispering in each other's ears and were very touchy-feely.'

Ryan, 33, and Abbie, who's eight years his junior, are so comfortable with each other that Ryan even let Abbie take his daughter Ava, eight, out shopping.

'Ryan doesn't seem to care who knows about his girlfriend,' a source says. 'And now he thinks it's time for Deacon to meet her.'

But Reese, 31, is furious over these public displays of togetherness. She always suspected Ryan was having an affair with Abbie, after they met on the set of Stop Loss.

'Reese has known about Abbie virtually from the start, and she's told Ryan that she doesn't want "that home-wrecker" acting as a stepmother to her children,' a source says.

Adding to Reese's anger is the fact that Ryan claimed last month that after their split he was so devastated he kept throwing up and was even suicidal - clearly all lies.

'Those words seem so hollow now - it seems he just said them to make the public feel sorry for him,' the source says.

But the bitterness goes both ways.

The reason behind Ryan's timing for going public with Abbie could have been because his divorce was finalised in October. But the more likely scenario is that he was looking for revenge after Reese went public with her romance with her Rendition co-star Jake Gyllenhaal, who turns 27 this month.

'Ryan's upset that Reese is flaunting her "little rebound fling" with Jake, but he's even more angry Jake is acting like his children's dad already,' a source says.

As Ryan and Abbie let their guard down, the farm girl from the NSW Hunter Valley is now an easy target for critics. But she can count on locals from her home town, which she still visits often, to stick up for her.

In Lochinvar, the rural village about two hours north of Sydney where her dad is still based, locals are fiercely proud of the fledgling Hollywood star who spent her first 16 years in their midst. When asked about Abbie and Ryan, one local was blunt in his response.

'I guess this sort of thing brings a bit of Hollywood to a place like this, but she should be able to do whatever she wants,' the local says. 'She's an actress isn't she, that's what she should be judged on I reckon.'

In Newcastle, where Abbie's mother now lives and where the actress has been a fixture on the hip-hop scene since her teenage years, the sentiments are echoed.

'She tries not to draw attention to herself,' one local says. 'She wears a hoodie or something like that. But she's not shy when she gets up as a guest MC. She's not a bad rapper. Everyone knows who she is but doesn't really care.'

Whether Abbie's dating a Hollywood star or not, she'll always be feted in her home town as the local girl made good.

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