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
Yeah, well, the F-bomb - it's become as ubiquitous as the word 'like.' People just throw the word 'like' around as punctuation. And I think in a lot of everyday speech, the F-bomb has become a kind of dash or a comma.
They were saying, 'Keep this under your hat, but Jack Sparrow's going to die in the second movie.' I went, 'You're kidding me. The fans are going to go berserk.
I didn't know the Green Lantern comics at all. I was a Superman reader.
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 guess I've been fortunate in having an ongoing film career while being based in Melbourne. I'm happy to commute. A day on a plane. Come on. It's easy.
But as my voice coach keeps saying, if we actually spoke the way they imagine the Elizabethan voice might have been, we wouldn't be able to understand it.
I always felt thrilled and amazed that I could put actor on my tax form.
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.
When people come and tell me I was terrific in this or that, I do not want to fall flat on my face next time. But, tough, I have fallen flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.
My kids started school, so having a strong base in Melbourne has been a key priority. I'm not daunted by the travel. People say, 'It's so far to Australia,' and I say, 'You get on the plane, you eat well, you sleep, you wake up - and you're there.'
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 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.