Geoffrey Rush Interview

He gives digital aliens personality, holds his own against Johnny Depp and fought to get a small film about stuttering made. Just three reasons why the star of ‘The King’s Speech‘ still shines

If you walked in on my conversation with Geoffrey Rush without hearing the start of it, you would be forgiven for thinking he was talking about his role as the therapist in The King’s Speech, the film that won all those Oscars this year.

“You see, the director had included a charming cover note with the script saying how much he admired the work of Sir Alec Guinness, that style of acting where what you see on the outside is in total contradiction to what you suspect is going on in the inside. He said that he thought my acting had that same quality and that he’d like me to read this script with that in mind.” Actually, he’s talking about his role in Pirates of the Caribbean, the one in which he plays a pirate with brown teeth, a false beard and a monkey on his shoulder.

But you see his point. Not since Guinness has there been an actor who can carry off serious drama and blockbuster frivolity with such deftness. Guinness could convince as the stiff colonel in Bridge on the River Kwai in one film and Obi-Wan Kenobi in another. Rush can take on the subtlety of a character such as Lionel Logue in The King’s Speech and yet also be plausible as the cutlass-wielding Captain Barbossa in Pirates 4, as the latest instalment in the multi-billion dollar franchise has become known in advance of its release this month.

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