Geoffrey Roy Rush AC (born July 6, 1951) is an Australian actor and narrator. He is among 24 people who have won the Triple Crown of Acting: an Academy Award for film, a Primetime Emmy Award for television, and a Tony Award for theatre (including Helen Hayes, Thomas Mitchell, Ingrid Bergman, Shirley Booth, Melvyn Douglas, Paul Scofield, Jack Albertson, Rita Moreno, Maureen Stapleton, Jason Robards, Jessica Tandy, Jeremy Irons, Anne Bancroft, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Al Pacino, Ellen Burstyn, Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, Frances McDormand, Jessica Lange, Viola Davis, and Glenda Jackson).
Rush Made his film debut in a minor role in Hoodwink (1981), with John Hargreaves and Judy Davis. Other early roles include Gillian Armstrong’s Starstruck (1982), with Jo Kennedy, Ross O’Donovan, and Margo Lee; Twelfth Night (1986), with Gillian Jones, Ivar Kants, and Peter Cummins; and Dad and Dave: On Our Selection (1995), with Leo McKern and Joan Sutherland.
Rush won the Academy Award for Best Actor in Shine (1996), with Lynn Redgrave, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Noah Taylor, John Gielgud, Googie Withers, Justin Braine, Sonia Todd, Nicholas Bell, Chris Haywood, and Alex Rafalowicz. He received a second Best Actor nomination for Philip Kaufman’s Quills (2000), with Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, and Michael Caine; along with two nominations for Best Supporting Actor for John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love (1998), with Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Judi Dench, Simon Callow, Jim Carter, Martin Clunes, Antony Sher, Imelda Staunton, Tom Wilkinson, and Mark Williams; and Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech (2010), with Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle, and Michael Gambon.
Other films of the 1990s include Children of the Revolution (1996), with Davis, Sam Neill, Richard Roxburgh, Rachel Griffiths, and F. Murray Abraham; narrating in Oscar and Lucinda (1997), with Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett, Ciarán Hinds, Wilkinson, Roxburgh, Clive Russell, and Bille Brown; A Little Bit of Soul (1998), with Frances O’Connor, David Wenham, and Heather Mitchell; Elizabeth (1998), with Blanchett, Christopher Eccleston, Fiennes, Gielgud, and Richard Attenborough; Billie August’s Les Misérables (1998), with Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, Claire Danes, Hans Matheson, Reine Brynolfsson, and Peter Vaughan; Mystery Men (1999), with Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Greg Kinnear, Janeane Garofalo, Paul Reubens, Kel Mitchell, Wes Studi, Lena Olin, Eddie Izzard, Claire Forlani, and Tom Waits; and House on Haunted Hill (1999), with Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan.
Rush is particularly known for his role as Captain Héctor Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (2003-2017), collectively with Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Kevin McNally, Jonathan Pryce, Lee Arenberg, Mackenzie Crook, Stellan Skarsgård, Bill Nighy, Jack Davenport, Naomie Harris, Chow Yun-fat, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, and Kaya Scodelario.
Other films in the 2000s include John Boorman’s The Tailor of Panama (2001), with Pierce Brosnan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine McCormack, Leonor Varela, Harold Pinter, Daniel Radcliffe, and Jon Polito; Lantana (2001), with Anthony LaPaglia, Barbara Hershey, Kerry Armstrong, Rachael Blake, Vince Colosimo, Russell Dykstra, Daniela Farinacci, Peter Phelps, Leah Purcell, and Glenn Robbins; Julie Taymor’s Frida (2002), with Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Valeria Golino, Mía Maestro, Roger Rees, Antonio Banderas, and Edward Norton; The Banger Sisters (2002), with Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, Erika Christensen, Eva Amurri, and Robin Thomas; Russell Mulcahy’s Swimming Upstream (2003), with Davis and Jesse Spencer; Ned Kelly (2003), with Heath Ledger, Bloom, Naomi Watts, and Joel Edgerton; and Joel & Ethan Coen’s Intolerable Cruelty (2003), with George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cedric the Entertainer, Edward Herrmann, Paul Adelstein, Richard Jenkins and Billy Bob Thornton.
Films in the mid to late 2000s and early 2010s include Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005), with Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Hanns Zischler; Candy (2006), with Ledger and Abbie Cornish; Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), with Blanchett, Clive Owen, Rhys Ifans, Jordi Mollà, Cornish, and Samantha Morton; Bran Nue Dae (2010), with Rocky McKenzie, Jessica Mauboy, Ernie Dingo, and Missy Higgins; The Warrior’s Way (2010), with Jang Dong-gun, Kate Bosworth, Danny Huston, Tony Cox, and Ti Lung; a voice role in Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern (2011), with Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Taika Waititi, Angela Bassett, Tim Robbins, the voices of Michael Clarke Duncan and Clancy Brown; Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm (2011), with Charlotte Rampling and Davis; Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Best Offer (2013), with Jim Sturgess, Sylvia Hoeks, and Donald Sutherland; and the Book Thief (2013), with Emily Watson and Sophie Nélisse.
Films in the mid to late 2010s include Holding the Man (2015), with Ryan Corr, Craig Stott, Pearce, LaPaglia, Sarah Snook, and Kerry Fox; Alex Proyas’s Gods of Egypt (2016), with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites, Chadwick Boseman, Élodie Yung, Courtney Eaton, Rufus Sewell, and Gerard Butler; Simon Stone’s The Daughter (2016), with Ewen Leslie, Paul Schneider, Miranda Otto, Anna Torv, Odessa Young, and Neill; Stanley Tucci’s Final Portrait (2018), with Armie Hammer, Clémence Poésy, Tony Shalhoub, James Faulkner and Sylvie Testud; and Storm Boy (2019), with Jai Courtney, Finn Little, Trevor Jamieson, Morgan Davies, and Erik Thomson.
Rush has also done voice work in the animated films The Magic Pudding (2001), with Neill, Hugo Weaving, Jack Thompson, Toni Collette, and John Cleese; Finding Nemo (2003), with Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garrett, Allison Janney, Stephen Root, Austin Pendleton, Vicki Lewis, Barry Humphries, Bana, Bruce Spence, and Bill Hunter; $9.99 (2008), with Samuel Johnson, LaPaglia, and Claudia Karvan; Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010), with Mirren, Jim Sturgess, Weaving, Emily Barclay, Cornish, Ryan Kwanten, LaPaglia, Miriam Margolyes, Neill, Roxburgh, and David Wenham; and narrating Minions (2015), with Pierre Coffin (who also co-directed Kyle Balda), Sandra Bullock, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Janney, Steve Coogan, and Jennifer Saunders.
He is also known for his work in television playing Peter Sellers in the HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), with Charlize Theron, Watson, John Lithgow, Miriam Margolyes, Vaughan, Sonia Aquino, Stanley Tucci, and Stephen Fry — for which he won a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe; and Albert Einstein in National Geographic’s Genius (2017), with Johnny Flynn, Samantha Colley, Richard Topol, Michael McElhatton, Emily Watson, and Ralph Brown — for which he was nominated for another Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe. Over his career he has also won three British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He is the founding president of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts and was named the 2012 Australian of the Year.
Each review will be linked to the title below.
(*seen originally in theaters)
(**seen rereleased in theaters)
- Hoodwink (1981) – directed by Claude Whatham
- The Added Dimension (1981) – directed by Ian Bone – short
- Starstruck (1982) – directed by Gillian Armstrong
- Twelfth Night (1986) – directed by Neil Armfield
- Frontier (1987) – directed by Bruce Belsham & Victoria Pitt – miniseries
- A State of Mind (1990) – directed by James Lingwood – short
- Midday Crisis (1994) – directed by Garry Richards – short
- Dad and Dave: On Our Selection (1995) – directed by George Whaley
- Shine (1996) – directed by Scott Hicks
- Children of the Revolution (1996) – directed by Peter Duncan
- Call Me Sal (1996) – directed by Arianna Bosi – short
- Oscar and Lucinda (1997) – directed by Gillian Armstrong
- A Little Bit of Soul (1998) – directed by Peter Duncan
- Les Misérables (1998) – directed by Bille August
- Elizabeth (1998) – directed by Shekhar Kapur
- Shakespeare in Love (1998) – directed by John Madden
- Mystery Men (1999)* – directed by Kinka Usher
- House on Haunted Hill (1999) – directed by William Malone
- Quills (2000) – directed by Philip Kaufman
- The Magic Pudding (2000) – directed by Karl Zwicky
- The Tailor of Panama (2001) – directed by John Boorman
- Lantana (2001) – directed by Ray Lawrence
- Frida (2002) – directed by Julie Taymor
- The Banger Sisters (2002)* – directed by Bob Dolman
- Swimming Upstream (2003) – directed by Russell Mulcahy
- Ned Kelly (2003) – directed by Gregor Jordan
- Finding Nemo (2003)* – directed by Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkrich
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)* – directed by Gore Verbinski
- Harvie Krumpet (2003) – directed by Adam Elliot – short
- Intolerable Cruelty (2003)* – directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
- The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004) – directed by Stephen Hopkins – TV movie
- Munich (2005) – directed by Steven Spielberg
- Candy (2006) – directed by Neil Armfield
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)* – directed by Gore Verbinski
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)* – directed by Gore Verbinski
- Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) – directed by Shekhar Kapur
- $9.99 (2008) – directed by Tatia Rosenthal
- Bran Nue Dae (2010) – directed by Rachel Perkins
- Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (2010) – directed by Zack Snyder
- The Warrior’s Way (2010)* – directed by Sngmoo Lee
- The King’s Speech (2010) – directed by Tom Hooper
- Brand New Day (2010) – directed by Mark Raso – short
- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)* – directed by Rob Marshall
- Green Lantern (2011)* – directed by Martin Campbell
- The Eye of the Storm (2011) – directed by Fred Schepisi
- The Man Who Could Not Dream (2012) – directed by James Armstrong & Kasimir Burgess – short
- The Best Offer (2013) – directed by Giuseppe Tornatore
- The Book Thief (2013) – directed by Brian Percival
- The Nightingale and the Rose (2015) – directed by Del Kathryn Barton & Brendan Fletcher – short
- Unity (2015) – directed by Shaun Monson – narrator – documentary
- Minions (2015)* – directed by Pierre Coffin & Kyle Balda
- Holding the Man (2015) – directed by Neil Armfield
- The Daughter (2016) – directed by Simon Stone
- Gods of Egypt (2016) – directed by Alex Proyas
- Final Portrait (2017) – directed by Stanley Tucci
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) – directed by Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg
- Storm Boy (2019) – directed by Shawn Seet
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