Geoffrey Rush: Gold Rush

"Should I read anything into the fact that in your acclaimed performance in Shine, and as the Marquis, you've immersed yourself in the lives of obsessive, eccentric, marginalized men?"

"Shakespeare wrote for an acting company that probably had 12 to 15 people. Among those there would be a certain number who gravitated toward the fools or drunks or con artists. It was rare for one actor to cross over into another group. I've always fit into the category of outsiders. So in Lear, I played the Fool, in Twelfth Night, I was Sir Andrew Aguecheek, in Troilus and Cressida, I was Thersites. I've never really landed on a central protagonist. The Marquis is probably the closest I'll ever get to a romantic lead."

From the dank dungeons of France at the turn of the 19th century, Rush time-traveled to the lambent shores of Latin America to play the shifty tailor in John Boorman's The Tailor of Panama. Adapted from John le Carre's 1996 novel, it's a black comedy-thriller that costars Pierce Brosnan and Jamie Lee Curtis. Rush, who says he admired Deliverance but was blown away by Point Blank, calls the director "a tribal elder who carries the wisdom of the years. He's a guy whom you'd go into battle for." The film, says Rush, could be subtitled Dirty Rotten Scoundrels of Panama. "I never thought I'd share the screen with Pierce Brosnan," he adds bemusedly. "I mean, he's Bond and Thomas Crown. And now he's playing a loser, someone on the espionage scrap heap. It was a great character to play, and as Boorman guided him you could see some of Pierces old stage instincts bubbling up."

"What's the worst thing you can say about Brosnan?"

"That he was constantly amusing. He's a giggly raconteur. In the hotel bar, he was one of the lads."

One might suspect that between these two arduous shoots for these two eminent directors, a break was in order. But no. Rush rushed home and played a five-year-old in a play called The Small Poppies. How's that for range? When Rush was an actual five-year-old, living in his hometown of Toowoomba (west of Brisbane), he did not yet have a television. That momentous hookup wouldn't occur until 1959. Until then, Rush's imagination was triggered by radio and vaudeville. A class clown, Rush began acting at the University of Queensland, where everyone was taking off their clothes while performing the Greek classics. After college he joined a local acting troupe, and later, while doing Beckett on stage, he made a new friend.

"When I played Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Mel Gibson played Estragon, and we roomed together. We also had a crush on the same actress. I ended up with the actress--for a while--and Mel ended up a worldwide sex symbol."

"Have you stayed in touch with Mel?"

"Oh, yes. We have dinner. And he happened to be the person in the wings when I walked off with my Oscar. There was something weird and extraordinary about that."

In his mid-20s, Rush spent several years in Paris studying movement. "That was my George Orwell period. I'd be in class all day, and then I'd work as a plongeur [dishwasher] until 3:00 a.m. Luckily, they fed me twice on that shift." Returning to Australia, Rush (who calls himself "a cuddly James Woods") became one of the country's most well-traveled actors. He met his wife, Jane Menelaus, in Adelaide when they performed in Michael Frayn's Benefactors. They married in 1988, and their honeymoon found them costarring in The Importance of Being Earnest (that's her, too, in Quills playing the Marquis's tortured wife). Even after his breakthrough in Shine, Rush would continue to work various $600-a-week theater jobs in Sydney.

"In what film role have you felt the sexiest?"

"Certainly not in Shakespeare in Love. Poor dental hygiene is always a turn off. I don't really think of the sexiness of the characters. It's not part of the door that I go into as an actor, but I must admit that a wide and alluring group of women have told me that they found me attractive as Walsingham in Elizabeth. And yet that was the last thing I had in mind in creating that role. Maybe there's a strong, unspoken female fantasy to have an inspirational and unswerving mentor when you're going through a period of doubt and confusion."

Now the eager young publicist walks into the room. "What stage of the day are we in?" Rush asks her.

"It's lunch time," she says.

"Oh, do I have lunch off?"

"No, you're doing an interview over lunch."

"It's Dickensian, this junket."

I ask Rush what recent screen performances he's admired.

"Bjork in Dancer in the Dark. It's an amazing piece of work. Way out of the comfort zone. And John Cusack in High Fidelity''

"Any plans to move to Hollywood?"

"No," says Rush, who lives in a Melbourne suburb in a house he bought after winning the Oscar. "It's important to strive for a degree of normality in your private life. After 25 years of flying within Australia to do stage work, I consider Hollywood just another commute, even if it is a much longer commute."

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Jeffrey Lantos interviewed Aaron Eckhart for the October issue of Movieline.

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