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 did "Quills " and I thought I was doing a really daring thing by being in "The Banger Sisters". Then I thought, "No, I'm playing a writer again." At least I'm celibate in this one!
I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britain's greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation.
Like any classic you hope to get rid of all the varnish that's built up over the centuries where people expect it to be in a certain way. It's a mighty play. It's about a very old king who also happens to be a very old father, so you've got the state and the domestic levels in there together. It's a story in extremis. Everyone knows the end, there's only two people left alive.
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.
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.
There's often rarely any dialogue in a sex scene. With your fellow actor, it's good to talk about what the unspoken dialogue is, that's happening in the scene. You've got to play something rather than feel self-conscious or exposed.
I had a total of 38 wigs, for a start. There were prosthetics, too - silicone pieces which go on the skin, which absorb the light. They looked like seven pieces of uncooked veal to start with.
Well, ya best start believing in ghost stories Miss Turner, you're in one!
I took a big slab of time off this year -- about five months -- just to take stock of the giddiness of the last few years.
My eye muscles hurt now when I read our MasterCard bill.
It's their story, and I got to be the guy in the back while they were in the foreground.
When people come to me and tell me I was terrific in this or that, I do not want to fall flat on my face the next time. But, tough, I have fallen flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.
I asked, 'What is this guy?' They said, he's part-fish, part-bird, maybe a bit of lizard, and you don't have to go through five hours of makeup to play him. That was good enough for me.
We were all pretty certain then that Mel was destined for big things because he had made the first 'Mad Max' (1979) at that point and he had done a couple of other films. It kind of seemed inevitable.