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 took a big slab of time off this year -- about five months -- just to take stock of the giddiness of the last few years.
I suddenly became aware over the last couple of years that I'm in my sixties. I never thought about it. I thought I'd better start acting my age or find roles that are going to be interesting to me in the sexagenarian repertoire, because it's not what you do in your forties or fifties.
I went to England in the '70s, and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that, because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts.
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 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!
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.
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.
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.
You're off the edge of the map Jack, here there be monsters!
Within our culture, every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy, basically.