Australians in Hollywood : Biographical Notes

Geoffrey Rush
Geoffrey Rush (b. 1951) took an Arts degree at the University of Queensland and studied mime in Paris for two years before embarking on a distinguished career in Australian theatre. Well before Shine (1996), Rush had made a specialty of playing what he liked to call “marginalised eccentrics”: his 1989 turn in Neil Armfield's production of Diary of a Madman earning him numerous awards. Busy building his substantial stage career, Rush appeared in only a handful of films – including Hoodwink, Twelfth Night (1986), Dad and Dave (1995) and Children of the Revolution (1996), before making Shine (1996). His performance as David Helfgott in Shine earnt the 45-year-old actor AFI, Golden Globe and Oscar awards for best actor. In the years since, he has played an assortment of rogues and madmen: the drunken Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which he received a supporting actor nomination; the monumentally evil Casanova Frankenstein in Mystery Men (1999); the Marquis de Sade in Quills (2000), which earned him another Oscar nomination, this time for best actor; Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003); and a cuckolded Australian in the Coens' Intolerable Cruelty (2003). Rush has also retained a commitment to Australian film, appearing in Oscar and Lucinda (1997), Lantana (2001) and Ned Kelly (2003).

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