Geoffrey Rush Still Shines
In 1997, Australian actor Geoffrey Rush shot to fame after winning an Oscar for his portrayal of the emotionally unstable Australian pianist, David Helfgott, in the movie Shine. Now a Hollywood star, Rush has embarked on a stream of high-profile, yet hardly mainstream, feature films.
"Suddenly, I was commercial," Rush tells CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Mark McEwen of his Oscar win. "I'd never done commercial theater. I was never in Cats or whatever.
"I think the big challenge," he continues, "is not letting yourself get turned into a commodity. That's what happens. That's business practice. That's a business principle."
Earlier this year, Rush, 47, played Javert, the detective who pursues Jean Valjean, in the dramatic film version of Les Miserables, and he is currently co-starring in two films. The first is Elizabeth, which chronicles the rise of the first Queen Elizabeth of England. Rush plays Sir Francis Walsingham, a quiet, mysterious man who serves as Queen Elizabeth's master of spies. As Elizabeth slowly loses confidence in her advisers, Walsingham becomes her right-hand man, a position he keeps until the end of her long reign.
Rush also may be seen in Shakespeare in Love, a romantic comedy set in England in 1593. Rush plays Philip Henslowe, a financially struggling theater owner, who wishes to stage a comedy by the young playwright, William Shakespeare. In the film, Henslowe must successfully stage this play or possibly surrender his life as payment for his debts.
While Henslowe tries to act like a streetsmart businessman, he comes off more like a bumbling idiot. His appearance in general is horrible, with matted hair and rotting teeth. He's neither good nor bad, but instead comically affable.
Rush says Henslowe was a minor historical figure who is, says the actor, "beloved by the scholars in the academics because he kept comprehensive diaries, laundry lists, of how he ran his theater. As written, this guy's pretty much a scabby theater entrepreneur who's got a nose for a fast buck and doesn't realize he's got this hot, brilliant young genius playwright [Shakespeare]."
In the film, Henslowe pressures young Shakespeare to write a comedy for him quickly because that is what England's royalty wants. But Henslowe has no control over Shakespeare. In the end, Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes, who is Ralph's younger brother) writes a play that mimics his own life: the romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet.
Most of Rush's training and acting experience is in theater. In Australia, he has enjoyed fame for years as a stage actor.
One of Rush's biggest thrills thus far was meeting legendary animtor Chuck Jones at a screening of a new Road Runner short.
"I've been idolizing him since I was crawling," Rush recalls. "And he came up to me at the end of the performance with tears streaming down his face and hugged me and said, 'You understand timing.' That's all he said. That was like Yoda [the Jedi teacher in Star Wars] had spoken to me."