LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Geoffrey Rush lives the actor's life much the way his buccaneer character Barbossa lives the pirate's life.
Both Rush and Barbossa, who's back on board for "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," strike a balance in their jobs between gravitas and goofiness, menace and madness, versatility and buffoonery.
Rush, 55, who won the best-actor Academy Award for his breakout role as dysfunctional piano master David Helfgott in 1996's "Shine," was seemingly out of the picture after Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow killed him at the end of the first flick, "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl." (Watch the pirates of "Pirates" discuss the film )
Yet Barbossa, Jack's mutinous first mate, popped up at the end of last summer's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," brought back from the dead to join a mission to rescue his old nemesis from Davy Jones' locker.
In "At World's End," Barbossa becomes an uneasy ally to Jack, a juicy role that allows Rush to strut the decks with a blend of the comic abandon the actor honed in his early stage career in Australia and the weightiness he has shown in such films as "Elizabeth," "Les Miserables" and "Lantana." (Read the review)
Rush sat down with The Associated Press to discuss his late-blooming cinema career, the lure of the high seas in the "Pirates" movies and his thoughts on whether the Black Pearl might sail again in future films.
Q: What did you think when you heard Disney was making a movie based on its "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride?
RUSH: On the first film, there was always lots of talk from the more cynical corners of the press. "Oh, we've reached that point of moviemaking where Hollywood is now basing movies on theme-park rides." And I would always go, the pirates of the Caribbean is a very specific point in colonial history that maybe lasted from the mid-1600s to the early 1700s. Two generations. This is when all the powers of Europe were starting to ransack the New World and colonize it. Piracy kind of emerged around that, because there were so many bountiful ships at sea. ...
When I looked at the creative team and I thought of the scale, that this film was going to require all the skills of (producer) Jerry Bruckheimer, with his track record, and the fact that he was throwing in Johnny Depp, the actor's actor, pretty much in his first full-blown, commercially driven role, I found that very exciting. It wasn't rounding up the usual A-list box-office stars. Jerry wanted fresh, he wanted new, he didn't want predictable. (Watch the stars arrive for the "Pirates" premiere )
Q: At what point did you suspect there would be "Pirates" sequels?
RUSH: We got an inkling of it as we were completing the last two weeks of shooting on the first one. The call sheets would start not just having "Pirates of the Caribbean," but "Pirates of the Caribbean" -- colon -- "The Curse of the Black Pearl." Once we saw that colon, we started smelling sequel.
Q: How surprising was it that you were brought back, given that Barbossa dies in the first movie?
RUSH: I more or less said to them, "Well, that's good, I hope you guys have a great time." They said, "No, no, we are going to create a new villain. We're going to move the story at one point to Asia. We're going to involve sea monsters and all that, but Barbossa is going to return."
They were saying, "Keep this under your hat, but Jack Sparrow's going to die in the second movie." I went, "You're kidding me. The fans are going to go berserk."
They said, "Yeah, but there's this great teaser moment at the end, just when the film reaches a kind of melancholy wake, suddenly Barbossa emerges, and he's the guy that's got the goods and the map to go to the other side to bring Jack back." My mind was boggling with the potential of that, the story lines that could come out of that.
Q: The third movie seems to set up a potential new rivalry between Jack and Barbossa. What are the chances for more films?
RUSH: The writers always wanted to have this huge, rolling conflict between Jack and Barbossa. Even in the pre-story of the first film, where we heard a lot about how Barbossa was Jack's first mate, then he mutinied and took over. There's never going to be a resolution to that conflict.
So, sure, there are potential story lines, not uninteresting ones. I joked and said, "Why don't we do a prequel? If they find the fountain of youth, wouldn't that be fantastic?" They could CGI us up, so I could be 25 and Jack could be 10. There's a lot of fun in it.
Q: More sequels make good business sense, but what would it take to get you and the other creative people back on board?
RUSH: I think the same rules would apply. No one would want to do more of the same. I'm sure the studio heads would go, "Come on, we could bang one more out." But I just know that's not how Jerry would think, and Johnny. There'd be creative input. People would say, "Wow, you come up with a good script and a good set of conflicts and swerve it in a new direction, then it would be legitimate." But Disney's not going to say, "That was aesthetically pleasing. Let's put it to bed now." I can't see that sentence coming out in the board room.
Q: Your early career was mostly stage work, but in the last decade, you've played Peter Sellers, Trotsky, the Marquis de Sade, a couple of great Elizabethan characters, a larger-than-life pirate on film. If someone told you pre-"Shine" that you would have all those film roles, would you have believed them?
RUSH: Not at all. I think it has reflected very pleasurably the sort of diversity, the kinds of roles I used to play in the theater. I've managed to find some kind of cinematic equivalent to that. I was never a leading man. I've always been in the outer concentric circles in the company, being a character actor, which is a good place to be. It gives you that diversity.
Q: What do you think about the pirate iconography that's become so omnipresent largely because of the movie franchise?
RUSH: [When] I was staying at the Chateau, West Hollywood was rancid with pirates last Halloween. I was very tempted, if it didn't involve a 2 1/2-hour makeup job, I was so tempted to go out and just walk down Sunset Boulevard and knock everyone in a bandanna with a sword in their belt out of the water by parading along as Barbossa. It would be kind of fun.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Both Rush and Barbossa, who's back on board for "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," strike a balance in their jobs between gravitas and goofiness, menace and madness, versatility and buffoonery.
Rush, 55, who won the best-actor Academy Award for his breakout role as dysfunctional piano master David Helfgott in 1996's "Shine," was seemingly out of the picture after Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow killed him at the end of the first flick, "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl." (Watch the pirates of "Pirates" discuss the film )
Yet Barbossa, Jack's mutinous first mate, popped up at the end of last summer's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," brought back from the dead to join a mission to rescue his old nemesis from Davy Jones' locker.
In "At World's End," Barbossa becomes an uneasy ally to Jack, a juicy role that allows Rush to strut the decks with a blend of the comic abandon the actor honed in his early stage career in Australia and the weightiness he has shown in such films as "Elizabeth," "Les Miserables" and "Lantana." (Read the review)
Rush sat down with The Associated Press to discuss his late-blooming cinema career, the lure of the high seas in the "Pirates" movies and his thoughts on whether the Black Pearl might sail again in future films.
Q: What did you think when you heard Disney was making a movie based on its "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride?
RUSH: On the first film, there was always lots of talk from the more cynical corners of the press. "Oh, we've reached that point of moviemaking where Hollywood is now basing movies on theme-park rides." And I would always go, the pirates of the Caribbean is a very specific point in colonial history that maybe lasted from the mid-1600s to the early 1700s. Two generations. This is when all the powers of Europe were starting to ransack the New World and colonize it. Piracy kind of emerged around that, because there were so many bountiful ships at sea. ...
When I looked at the creative team and I thought of the scale, that this film was going to require all the skills of (producer) Jerry Bruckheimer, with his track record, and the fact that he was throwing in Johnny Depp, the actor's actor, pretty much in his first full-blown, commercially driven role, I found that very exciting. It wasn't rounding up the usual A-list box-office stars. Jerry wanted fresh, he wanted new, he didn't want predictable. (Watch the stars arrive for the "Pirates" premiere )
Q: At what point did you suspect there would be "Pirates" sequels?
RUSH: We got an inkling of it as we were completing the last two weeks of shooting on the first one. The call sheets would start not just having "Pirates of the Caribbean," but "Pirates of the Caribbean" -- colon -- "The Curse of the Black Pearl." Once we saw that colon, we started smelling sequel.
Q: How surprising was it that you were brought back, given that Barbossa dies in the first movie?
RUSH: I more or less said to them, "Well, that's good, I hope you guys have a great time." They said, "No, no, we are going to create a new villain. We're going to move the story at one point to Asia. We're going to involve sea monsters and all that, but Barbossa is going to return."
They were saying, "Keep this under your hat, but Jack Sparrow's going to die in the second movie." I went, "You're kidding me. The fans are going to go berserk."
They said, "Yeah, but there's this great teaser moment at the end, just when the film reaches a kind of melancholy wake, suddenly Barbossa emerges, and he's the guy that's got the goods and the map to go to the other side to bring Jack back." My mind was boggling with the potential of that, the story lines that could come out of that.
Q: The third movie seems to set up a potential new rivalry between Jack and Barbossa. What are the chances for more films?
RUSH: The writers always wanted to have this huge, rolling conflict between Jack and Barbossa. Even in the pre-story of the first film, where we heard a lot about how Barbossa was Jack's first mate, then he mutinied and took over. There's never going to be a resolution to that conflict.
So, sure, there are potential story lines, not uninteresting ones. I joked and said, "Why don't we do a prequel? If they find the fountain of youth, wouldn't that be fantastic?" They could CGI us up, so I could be 25 and Jack could be 10. There's a lot of fun in it.
Q: More sequels make good business sense, but what would it take to get you and the other creative people back on board?
RUSH: I think the same rules would apply. No one would want to do more of the same. I'm sure the studio heads would go, "Come on, we could bang one more out." But I just know that's not how Jerry would think, and Johnny. There'd be creative input. People would say, "Wow, you come up with a good script and a good set of conflicts and swerve it in a new direction, then it would be legitimate." But Disney's not going to say, "That was aesthetically pleasing. Let's put it to bed now." I can't see that sentence coming out in the board room.
Q: Your early career was mostly stage work, but in the last decade, you've played Peter Sellers, Trotsky, the Marquis de Sade, a couple of great Elizabethan characters, a larger-than-life pirate on film. If someone told you pre-"Shine" that you would have all those film roles, would you have believed them?
RUSH: Not at all. I think it has reflected very pleasurably the sort of diversity, the kinds of roles I used to play in the theater. I've managed to find some kind of cinematic equivalent to that. I was never a leading man. I've always been in the outer concentric circles in the company, being a character actor, which is a good place to be. It gives you that diversity.
Q: What do you think about the pirate iconography that's become so omnipresent largely because of the movie franchise?
RUSH: [When] I was staying at the Chateau, West Hollywood was rancid with pirates last Halloween. I was very tempted, if it didn't involve a 2 1/2-hour makeup job, I was so tempted to go out and just walk down Sunset Boulevard and knock everyone in a bandanna with a sword in their belt out of the water by parading along as Barbossa. It would be kind of fun.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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