Rush was born on 6 July 1951 in Toowoomba, Queensland, the son of Merle (Bischof), a department store sales assistant, and Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force.[9][10] His father was of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry, and his mother was of German descent.[11] He has an older sister.[12] His parents divorced when he was five, and his mother subsequently took him to live with her parents in suburban Brisbane.[13] Before he began his acting career, Rush attended Everton Park State High School, and graduated from the University of Queensland with a bachelor's degree in Arts.[14] While at university, he was talent-spotted by Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) in Brisbane. Rush began his career with QTC in 1971, appearing in 17 productions.
In the 1990s Rush appeared in small roles on television dramas, including a role as a dentist in a 1993 episode of the British television series Lovejoy. Rush also continued his work in theatre. In 1994, Rush played Horatio in a production of Hamlet alongside Richard Roxburgh, Jacqueline McKenzie and David Wenham in the Company B production at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney.
1996–2002: Breakthrough and acclaim
Rush made his film breakthrough with his performance in 1996 with Shine, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Rush had once learned the piano up until aged fourteen but took up piano lessons again thirty years later for the role in order not to require a hand double.[15] That same year, James L. Brooks flew him to Los Angeles to audition for the part of Simon Bishop in As Good as It Gets and offered him the role, but Rush declined it (it went to Greg Kinnear).[16] In September 1998, Rush played the title role in the Beaumarchais play The Marriage of Figaro for the QTC. This was the opening production of the Optus Playhouse at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre at South Bank in Brisbane. A pun on Rush's name (and the circumstances) was used in the opening prologue of the play with the comment that the "Optus Playhouse was opening with a Rush".
In 2000, Rush starred in Philip Kaufman's Quills where he played the Marquis de Sade alongside Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix and Michael Caine. The film was written by Tony Award winning playwright Doug Wright who adapted the film's screenplay from his play. Rush received widespread critical acclaim for his performance with Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers' describing his performance as "volcanic", and "scandalously good".[17] For his performance in the film he received his third Oscar nomination this time for Best Actor. Rush's career continued at a fast pace, with nine films released from 2001 to 2003. In 2002, Rush played Leon Trotsky to Salma Hayek's Frida Kahlo in Julie Taymor's Frida. In the reaction to the #MeToo Movement, Hayek wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times detailing the harassment Harvey Weinstein perpetrated against her. In the article she wrote about her determination to make the movie and praised Rush as a collaborator and for agreeing to act in the film.[18]
Rush returned as Captain Hector Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, starring Johnny Depp, in 2011. Rush is also preparing for a film version of The Drowsy Chaperone, an award-winning stage musical.[27] In addition, he voiced the alien Tomar-Re in the film adaptation of the Green Lantern comic book series.[28] In 2011 Rush portrayed Sir Basil Hunter in the Fred Schepisi directed adaptation of Australian Nobel laureate Patrick White's novel, The Eye of the Storm. In 2011, Rush played the lead in a theatrical adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's short story The Diary of a Madman at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He won for this role the Helpmann Award and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award.[29] From November 2011, Rush played the role of Lady Bracknell in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of The Importance of Being Earnest.[30] Other actors from the 1988 production include Jane Menelaus, this time as Miss Prism, and Bob Hornery, who had played Canon Chasuble, as the two butlers.[31] In 2011, Rush made a cameo in a commercial, The Potato Peeler, for the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), playing a Polish farmer. He spoke his lines in Polish for the part.[32] In August 2011, Rush was appointed the foundation president of the newly formed Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.[33] He resigned from the post in December 2017 after Sydney Theatre Company announced they had received an accusation of inappropriate behaviour against him.[34]
Since 1988, Rush has been married to actress Jane Menelaus, with whom he has a daughter and a son. Rush lives in Melbourne, and spent several years in Castlemaine, Victoria.[53]
Legal issues
On 30 November 2017, the Sydney tabloid newspaper The Daily Telegraph published a front-page article alleging that Rush engaged in "inappropriate behaviour" onstage with a co-star during the Sydney Theatre Company's 2015 production of King Lear. The story contained no corroboration for the allegations, though the STC divulged to the Telegraph that they had received a complaint about alleged sexual harassment by Rush. Eryn Jean Norvill, who had starred as Cordelia alongside Rush, alleged that the actor had touched her inappropriately without her consent.[54]
The Telegraph's story was picked up by various newspapers in Australia but not by the MelbourneHerald Sun because of concerns that the Telegraph was "running with a yarn which is highly libellous".[55] Rush denied the allegations and, on 8 December 2017, announced that he had filed a defamation suit with the Federal Court of Australia, charging that the Telegraph "made false, pejorative and demeaning claims, splattering them with unrelenting bombast on its front pages".[56] In an affidavit, Rush stated that as a result of the allegations, he had been suffering from anxiety, insomnia and loss of appetite, and felt that "his worth to the theatre and film industry is now irreparably damaged".[57]
The trial was concluded on 9 November 2018. On 11 April 2019, the judge ruled in favour of Rush, awarding him $850,000. In his written statement defending his ruling, Justice Michael Wigney said that none of Norvill's claims were proven, due to her evidence being "not credible or reliable and contradicted by other members of the cast", and that Rush's evidence was overwhelming. He also criticised the Telegraph for "recklessly irresponsible pieces of sensationalist journalism of the very worst kind".[58] A month later, the Telegraph was ordered to pay Rush an extended judgement of $2.87 million. The Telegraph motioned to appeal but the judgement was upheld.[59]
Further allegations
On 16 December 2018, The New York Times published an interview with Australian actress Yael Stone, who accused Rush of sexual misconduct during the production of a theatre adaptation of Diary of a Madman in 2010 and 2011.[60] Among the allegations Stone made in interviews to the Times and ABC were incidents where Rush angled a hand mirror over a shower cubicle to observe her naked, sent her flirty text messages and danced naked in front of her in her dressing room.[61]
Rush responded in a statement to the Times through his attorneys, saying that Stone's allegations were "incorrect and in some instances have been taken completely out of context. However, clearly Yael has been upset on occasion by the spirited enthusiasm I generally bring to my work. I sincerely and deeply regret if I have caused her any distress. This, most certainly, has never been my intention."[62]