Geoffrey Rush on "The Book Thief," young co-star Sophie Nelisse

(CBS News) Geoffrey Rush is one of the few actors - and the only Australian - to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony. His new movie, "The Book Thief," comes from the best-selling novel, and he plays a German who takes in a foster daughter during World War II. He teaches her, among other things, how to read.

Being based around the Holocaust and World War II, the subject matter of the film is heavy, and Rush told the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts that the movie seems to impact everyone differently.

"My agent saw an early screening; he said, 'I'm going to give this movie five handkerchiefs,'" said Rush. "I've had the pleasure of sitting in with a number of audiences in the last couple of weeks with film screenings, and we had a screening at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, the Museum of Tolerance in L.A. - quite diverse, different audiences, and it just impacts on people at different points. That's what I love about it."

The actress that plays Rush's foster-daughter, Sophie Nelisse, was only 12 or 13 years old when they filmed.

He told the co-hosts that she is "98 percent of the film" and the movie is "absolutely on her young shoulders."

"Working with her, it just shifted the goal posts of what I thought being an actor meant," he said.

Rush said that Nelisse has no training and she just has a "prodigious, natural gift" for acting.

"She was training to be a gymnast 35 hours a week since she was 4 to go to the 2016 Olympics," said Rush. "This was her mad dream, but she ended up in this film because she read the script, and she cried and thought, maybe I should do this. She just has a natural report with a lens and with people."

Rush said that the movie focuses on a small community, which is a "fresh angle." He said that typical films about World War II are from the British or the American point of view, and this one is different.

"The Germans always smoked cigarettes upside down ... and there were stereotypes," said Rush of older films. "In this, you get to see ordinary people in ordinary towns, which could be outback Queensland, it could be the Midwest. You know it's Germany, but you just see how this ideology (Naziism) corrupts and corrodes a community."

For the full interview with Geoffrey Rush, watch the video in the player above.