Geoffrey Rush
Categories: Australian actor stubs | 1951 births | Australian actors | Best Actor Oscar | Best Supporting Actor Oscar Nominee | Film actors | Emmy Award winners | Stage actors | Voice actors | People of Queensland
Geoffrey Rush (born 6 July 1951) is an Australian actor. Born in Toowoomba, Queensland, he began his acting career with the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane. He also has an Arts Degree from the University of Queensland. While at university, he roomed with Mel Gibson.
Rush's film debut was in the Australian film Hoodwink in 1981. His next film was in Gillian Armstrong's Starstruck, the following year. In 1996, he starred in Shine, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. From that point on, his career skyrocketed.
In 1998 he appeared in three major films:Les Misérables, in which he played Inspector Javert; Elizabeth, in which he played the suspicious Sir Francis Walsingham; and Shakespeare in Love in which he played the acting company manager who remained calm in the midst of chaos (and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor).
In 1999, Geoffrey Rush played the title role in the Beaumarchais play "The Marriage of Figaro" for the Queensland Theatre Company. This was the premiere production of the Optus Playhouse, at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre at South Bank in Brisbane. A pun on Geoffrey Rush's name (and the circumstances), was used in the opening prologue of the play with the comment that the "Optus Playhouse was opening with a Rush".
In 2000, he received his third Academy Award nomination, for Quills, in which he played the Marquis de Sade.
Rush's career continues at an amazingly fast pace, with nine films released from 2001 through 2003. He starred in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, as Captain Barbossa. He played actor Peter Sellers in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. For this performance, he received an Emmy win for Best Actor in a Mini-series or Movie. He will next appear in Steven Spielberg's film Munich.
Geoffrey currently lives in Camberwell, a suburb of Melbourne. He has become involved in the preservation of heritage and architecture, becoming a figurehead for a campaign for the preservation of Camberwell Railway Station from demolition by developers and championing a National Trust of Australia (Victoria) poll for the Victorian Heritage Icons Awards.
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