One of Australia's most awarded actors Geoffrey Rush is currently reprising his lead role in Diary of a Madman at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre, almost twenty years on.
The Academy Award winner says he wasn't immediately struck by the idea of performing the work again, when outgoing artistic director Neil Armfield suggested it last year.
SBS presenter Janice Petersen spoke with Mr Rush about his latest work, the future of cinematic and theatre productions in Australia and his personal struggles."
The ongoing strong base of repertoire actors that exist in Australia over the last 35 or so years, every decade there are more notable artists and people with great skill, imagination and craft that are constantly emerging,” he said.
Playing a speech therapist in his latest movie, The King's Speech (winner of five prizes at the British Independent Film Awards), Mr Rush says he adopted the script like an orphan.
“I was the first person to read the script because it came to me as a play script as a theatre piece from an English fringe company. Someone had left it on my doorstep in Melbourne in a brown paper package and I took it in and I read it,” he said.
Mr Rush says he then pushed for it to be developed into a screenplay. He told SBS about the parallels between his life and his character- Lionel Logue.
“You go through periods of doubt and panic and stage fright and depression but it is a wayward barometer, because then you get moments that are high in the other extreme, so I try to find a balance,” he said.
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