Award-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush was born on July 6, 1951 in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. He first attended Everton Park State High School before he began his acting career. He started to act at the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane, and studied mime and pantomime at the Jacques Le Coc School of Mime in Paris. He returned to Australia to pursue stage acting, and graduated from the University of Queensland with an Arts Degree. He has appeared on stage for Company B and the Queensland Theatre Company, where he also worked as a theatre director.
In 1987, Geoffrey Rush performed in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and was also in Troilus and Cressida in 1989. He also played the title role in the Beaumarchais production of The Marriage of Figaro in September 1998. Another stage role he had was as King Berenger in a production of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre.
Geoffrey Rush’s film debut began when he starred in an Australian film, 1981’s Hoodwink. He was also cast in the TV series Menotti, before landing a role in 1982’s Starstruck. After suffering from a temporary nervous breakdown, Rush returned to film Children of the Revolution. He was also given the role of David Helfgott in Shine in 1996, which won him an Academy Award for Best Actor. He became the first Australian actor to win an Oscar since Peter Finch in 1976. In 1998, Rush played Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabeth and Philip Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love. He decided to take the lead role in the horror House on the Haunted Hill, and was praised for his dead-on portrayal of the late Vincent Price. He then played Marquis de Sade in Quills, which earned him his third Academy Award nomination. He also starred in The Banger Sisters, as well as voicing a character in the animated family movie Finding Nemo. In 2003, he starred as the notorious Captain Barbossa in the blockbuster hit Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. He also appeared in its sequels, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. His next project, playing the title role in the television movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, won him an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Mini-Series or Movie. He also starred in 2005’s Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg.