Geoffrey Rush Interview: Oscar Winner On Returning To The Festival Fray, Playing Groucho Marx & Winning His Defamation Suit: “It Was Bruising For Everyone Involved”

deadline.com:

Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush is at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) this week to receive its Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the closing ceremony on Saturday (July 10).The trip marks the Australian actor’s first high-profile outing in four years, when he began a defamation lawsuit against Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

Rush brought the case following a report he had acted inappropriately towards an actress. Also in 2018, the actor denied a separate allegation of misconduct during a 2010 theater production.So far, Rush’s stay in Karlovy Vary has gone well with the veteran thespian getting a rousing welcome on Wednesday at a packed screening of 2011 hit The King’s Speech, which is playing alongside Shine (for which he won an Oscar)and Quills as part of the tribute.Talking to Deadline in Karlovy Vary, Rush takes a question on the events of these last five years with good grace but makes it clear it is not a subject he wants to broach in-depth.“It was bruising for everyone involved, I think, on both sides.

It was an overblown and kind of bloated tabloid event [the defamation case] and the court found the result in my favor and I don’t like talking about it,” he says.Rush’s lawyers said in 2018 that the defamation case had led to him “eating little food, having difficulty sleeping and feeling anxious in public”.

It also “irreparably damaged” his career, they stated.“It warmed me up for isolation because, in Melbourne, we were in isolation for a very long-time,” Rush told us this week, alluding to the Covid-19 lockdowns that hit soon after Rush won a record $2.9M pay-out from the newspaper and its publisher Nationwide News in November 2019.