PRAGUE: Oscar-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush will receive the Crystal Globe award for his “outstanding contribution to world cinema” at the Karlovy Vary film festival next month, organizers said on Tuesday.
The 70-year-old Rush won the Academy Award for Best Actor for “Shine” in 1996.
Known as Captain Barbossa from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, Rush was also nominated for an Oscar for “Shakespeare in Love”, “Quills” and “The King’s Speech”.
Benicio del Toro, who won an Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in “Traffic”, will receive the Festival President’s Award.
The 56th edition of the festival will be held in the western Czech spa city of Karlovy Vary on July 1-9.
Geoffrey Roy Rush was born on July 6, 1951, in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. His early interest in the theatre led to his 1971 stage debut at age 20 in “Wrong Side of the Moon” with the Queensland Theatre Company.
Known for his classical repertory work over the years, but the role that really made him distinguished was a dysfunctional piano prodigy David Helfgott in Shine (1996). Rush’s astonishing tour-de-force performance won him every conceivable award imaginable, including the Oscar, Golden Globe, British Film Award and Australian Film Institute Award.
“Shine” not only put Rush on the international film map, but atypically on the Hollywood “A” list as well. His rather homely mug was made fascinating by a completely charming, confident and captivating demeanor; better yet, it allowed him to more easily dissolve into a number of transfixing historical portrayals, notably his Walsingham in Elizabeth (1998) and Leon Trotsky in Frida (2002).
He’s also allowed himself to have a bit of hammy fun in such box office escapism as Mystery Men (1999), House on Haunted Hill (1999), The Banger Sisters (2002), Finding Nemo (2003) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).
More than validating his early film success, two more Oscar nominations came his way in the same year for Quills (2000) (best actor) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) (support actor) in 2000.
Geoffrey’s amazing versatility continued into the millennium with his portrayal of the manic, volatile comedy genius Peter Sellers in the biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004).
He also merited attention as Lionel Logue in The King’s Speech (2010), Basil Hunter in The Eye of the Storm (2011), Hans Hubermann in The Book Thief (2013), artist/sculptor Alberto Giocometti in Final Portrait (2017) and Michael Kingley Storm Boy (2019).
