Mia Wasikowska had begun to believe she would never play Alice Kingsleigh, the heroine of Alice in Wonderland, again.

Her breakthrough role was Tim Burton's 2010 interpretation of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel, which lead on to Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary and Crimson Peak, among others. Now comes Alice Through the Looking Glass and a very changed Alice.

The Canberra-born actress, the daughter of photographers Marzena Wasikowska and John Reid, had considered Alice's fantastical journeys continuing in a sequel but no idea where the story would turn.

"I had written it off," she says. "I didn't think it was going to happen because I thought, if it did, it would be maybe a year or two after the first one.

"But it's been about seven years. So it was a surprise to read it and see her journey.

"What I love about her, as in the books, is that she's really headstrong and defiant and nothing seems to faze her. There is not this expectation that she should be scared of these things. And, in this one, I like how they satirise the times, things like female hysteria. That was all very serious 100 years ago."

Alice Through the Looking Glass, this time directed by James Bobin, known for co-creating TV comedy series Flight of the Conchords and directing two Muppet movies, also features the return of Johnny Depp, as Tarrant Hightopp, the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway, as Mirana of Marmoreal, the White Queen, Helena Bonham Carter, as Iracebeth of Crims, the Red Queen, and Matt Lucas as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Also back are the voices of Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall and the late Alan Rickman in his last role. Sacha Baron Cohen joins the cast as Time, a half-human creature with clockwork innards.

"At the beginning of this film Alice has been travelling, being the captain of a ship and where she wants to be and then she comes back to reality and is shocked that the expectations of her are really low," Wasikowska says.

"I feel like she always ends up going to Underland when she faces a crisis and then, through solving whatever is happening there, is able to come back to herself and not take on the expectations of other people. She is much more independent."

Gone are the overly curled locks and pretty blue dresses. Now an experienced traveller to exotic Asia, Alice takes on the world, real and through the looking glass, in a heavily embellished jacket and skirt that gives her the appearance of a fantastical Asian warrior woman.

She returns to the world of Underland to find a crisis. Her friend, the Mad Hatter, is growing darker, and saner, so to speak, wasting away and rejecting all his friends. She turns to Time, a half-human, half-clockwork creature, to travel back and fix the Mad Hatter's past.

Along the way she encounters other familiar characters, this time in their youth, discovering what made them the people and creatures she knows today. She also learns to understand her mother's seemingly restrictive views and reassert herself in defining her future.

Portraying such a heroine, one that captains tall ships through mammoth storms and rides a Chromosphere, a time machine, over turbulent oceans of the past, Wasikowska spent a fair amount of time acting against a green screen.

"We had a few mores sets on this one which is great," she says. "But I think, especially on the first film, you realise just how much being in a room or being outside gives you in the sense that it's a bit sunny so you squint a little, or it's windy so you've got to raise your voice a bit.

"Then, when you're in this locked-down studio, it's just a bit more abstract. So you have to use a lot more energy and remember that things are going to be heightened and there's going to be noise.

"We used one half-ship which would thrash around on an outdoor studio. They would throw these massive buckets, massive buckets, of water at us. People off-camera throwing it in our faces. That was very strange."

Wasikowska, who is interested in directing one day, moved to back to Australia three years ago after years of moving between the US and Canberra.

She says having parents who were photographers gave her an, initially unconscious, insight into being before a lens and understanding framing the world and people.

"Mum and dad were really great about showing me, and seeing, the world in a very beautiful way," she says. "Mum, particularly, really made us look at things. At patterns in the leaves or the colours everywhere, she really loves colours.

"We had cameras around always. It was just very comfortable. She didn't get us to do anything, it was all very as we were and she captured that."