Will Tizard ContributorSpeaking at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where he’s being feted with lifetime achievement honors, Australian actor Geoffrey Rush says that the prospect of playing Groucho Marx in Oren Moverman’s “Raised Eyebrows” is “scary,” but that he’s always enjoyed the challenge of complex characters.It is not a biopic, he says of the film – still in development – adapted from the book “Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House” by Steve Stoliar, which focuses on the last days of the legendary comic. “I describe it as a tragi-comedy about mortality,” he says. “He’s 83 to 86, at the end of his life.

There’s dementia but you never know because with Groucho he would never let you know that he’s forgetting things.” Mastering the way Groucho Marx spoke is a challenge, Rush admits. “His dialogue is so hard to learn because it’s non sequiturs – you know how he would free-form.

There’s that speech in ‘Animal Crackers’ where he rabbits on for ages, nonsense. Then he says, ‘I’ve told you what I know – now you tell me what you know.’ We’re no closer to anything.”But diving into seemingly unknowable roles is something Rush clearly relishes, he says. “When I first came to Prague to do ‘Les Misérables’ I’d never ever played a policeman.

After ‘Shine’ I thought I don’t want to do another piano film. Except I had to ride horses – never again.’But the challenge of inhabiting a character who seems unknowable is something Rush says he savors, whether it’s Albert Einstein in the TV show “Genius,” Leon Trotsky in “Frida,” the Marquis de Sade in “Quills” or the notorious Captain Barbossa in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.Discovering who Lionel Logue was – the speech therapist who coached King George VI – for.

Geoffrey Rush Discusses Playing Groucho Marx, Captain Barbossa

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