Geoffrey Rush

Australian actor (born 1951)

Geoffrey Rush is a highly acclaimed Australian actor who has won numerous awards, including an Oscar, a Primetime Emmy, and a Tony, making him the only Australian to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. He is known for his eccentric roles in stage and film productions, and has starred in popular franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean.

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About the Geoffrey Rush

Geoffrey Roy Rush is an Australian actor. Known for often playing eccentric roles on both stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Tony Award, making him the only Australian to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, in addition to three BAFTA Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. Rush is the founding president of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts and was named the 2012 Australian of the Year.

Rush began his professional acting career with the Queensland Theatre Company in 1971. He studied for two years at the L’Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq starting in 1975. Rush starred in international productions of Waiting for Godot, The Winter’s Tale and The Importance of Being Earnest. He made his Broadway debut in the absurdist comedy Exit the King in 2009, where he received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance. He received a nomination for Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play for Diary of a Madman in 2011.

He gained prominence for his role in Shineand The Book Thief (2013).

Rush is also known for his performances in television receiving Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie nominations for his portrayals of comedian Peter Sellers in the HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), and scientist Albert Einstein in National Geographic anthology series Genius (2017), winning for the former.

Frequently Asked Questions

Geoffrey Rush is the only Australian actor to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, winning an Oscar, a Primetime Emmy, and a Tony Award.

Geoffrey Rush is known for often playing eccentric roles on both stage and screen.

Geoffrey Rush has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Tony Award, three BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.

Geoffrey Rush was born on July 6, 1951 in Australia.

Geoffrey Rush has starred in popular franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as films like Elizabeth, Les Misérables, Frida, and The Book Thief.

Geoffrey Rush was named the 2012 Australian of the Year and is the founding president of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.

Geoffrey Rush began his professional acting career with the Queensland Theatre Company in 1971 and studied at the L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris starting in 1975.

22 Quotes by Geoffrey Rush

  1. 1.

    Most films I’ve worked on have had large casts, but they’ve been wonderful people. I think the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean is the most temperamental costar I’ve had. It would throw tantrums like you wouldn’t believe.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  2. 2.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  3. 3.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  4. 4.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  5. 5.

    Nobody ever said that growing old would be easy. Just having to hold the newspaper out in your forties and then hair growing out of unusual parts of your body in your fifties. It’s tough on the ego.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  6. 6.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  7. 7.

    My eye muscles hurt now when I read our MasterCard bill.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  8. 8.

    This is what happens when you are on the wrong side of 40. Young adults, who could be your children, are now working with you. I was playing their parents or mentor. I started to think: Oh, I am not part of that group any more.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  9. 9.

    I die in almost every film I’ve been in.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  10. 10.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  11. 11.

    I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  12. 12.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  13. 13.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  14. 14.

    What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were – and still are – condescended to by the English.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  15. 15.

    People tend to think of Brisbane as a sleepy, sub-topical place. I don’t know. It’s like Baltimore or something. I don’t know. You would hear the family dramas going on behind closed doors.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  16. 16.

    People are intrigued and fascinated, almost obsessed with the private lives of great public personalities.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  17. 17.

    Yes, anally retentive men are my forte!

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  18. 18.

    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.’

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  19. 19.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  20. 20.

    There’s four biggies. There was Elizabeth I, George III, Victoria, and the current queen, who really dominated four eras.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  21. 21.

    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.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)

  22. 22.

    It’s their story, and I got to be the guy in the back while they were in the foreground.

    Geoffrey Rush

    Australian actor (born 1951)