Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Roy Rush AC is an Australian actor and film producer. Rush is the youngest amongst the few people who have won the "Triple Crown of Acting": the Academy Award, the Primetime Emmy Award, and the Tony Award. He has won one Academy Award for acting, three British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. Rush is the founding President of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts and was named the 2012...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth6 July 1951
CityQueensland, Australia
CountryAustralia
I was never a leading man. I've always been in the outer concentric circles in the company, being a character actor, which is a good place to be. It gives you that diversity.
When you are playing an egomaniac running a fantastical ship, you don't want him to be too suburban. Naturalism doesn't work on the high seas.
What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.
There's four biggies. There was Elizabeth I, George III, Victoria, and the current queen, who really dominated four eras.
I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it.
Freedom is the kind of essence of being a pirate: You're away from land-locked Europe. You're not part of the society. You're part of the brotherhood of the sea, Your ship is your sense of identity. So when you approach the wheel, that's what you own.
I like roles that are on the extreme ends of the spectrum, and there's special appeal in exploring these slightly forgotten plays that people might think of as subjects for academic term papers instead of live theater.
I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine. I do not know why. I was pretty restless, I had been through a bad period of stress induced anxiety - panic attacks - and I was not sure of what I wanted to do.
Someone told me that there's a connection to Superman, that in an early edition of the Green Lantern comics, Tomar Re was the envoy to Krypton. That was fascinating to me.
If in the sex scene you happen to be naked in front of a lot of other people you've just got to put that aside, in the same way that you have to put that aside in a fully-clothed intense dialogue scene because you're entering into that particular imaginative state of play.
I wouldn't mind meeting some of the people I've attempted to portray from the olden, olden days. They probably would all have really terrible skin and horrible bad breath, and I'd have to give them an Altoid.
I think that Ionesco's greatest weapon is that he's able to make us laugh at the darkest corners of our souls.
You had to be into sport and, sad to say, I'm a traitor to my country because I don't have a sporting bone in my body.
I've discovered I prefer to prepare a few notes or actually write the speech so I can really hone it down to hopefully be entertaining, try and get a laugh at least by the second line, and then say what you need to say.