Do we like Geoffrey Rush?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Clean on the harm test and a long, respected career, but one contested workplace saga keeps him off the top shelf.
Nothing new on Rush lately. The latest we could find is a run of 2024 and 2025 press for his horror film The Rule of Jenny Pen, where he plays a judge in an aged care home opposite John Lithgow. He has been out of the headlines for the fights, which tells you something.
The big story is 2017. The Daily Telegraph reported that the Sydney Theatre Company had received a complaint about his behaviour in its 2015 production of King Lear. Rush denied it, stood down as president of the screen academy AACTA until it was resolved, and sued the paper for defamation.
In April 2019 Justice Michael Wigney found the Telegraph and its journalist had defamed him, calling the pieces sensationalist journalism of the worst kind. The judge said he wasn't persuaded the co-star's evidence was credible or reliable, and he accepted Rush's. Rush awarded $850,000 at that stage, and the final payout later hit $2.9 million.
The appeal went the same way. In July 2020 a three-judge bench upheld the win and kept out later evidence from another actress, Yael Stone, because it was introduced too late. Stone had separately made her own allegations in 2018, which Rush denied, saying they were taken out of context, though he apologised for upsetting her. That one never got tested in court, so it stays a she-said, he-said.
On the harm test, there is nothing here. We found no remarks about LGBTQ+ or trans people, women's rights, climate or migrants, and no run of projects with the culture-war crowd. His recent work is arthouse and genre stuff with Lithgow and director James Ashcroft. Honestly, the record is quiet, so this is a pass on absence rather than a ringing endorsement.
He has been gracious about the fight since. He said outside court there were no winners and it had been extremely distressing for everyone. Later he called the case a bloated tabloid event and said he doesn't like talking about it. He has also said he turned down roles after it and wasn't framing his return as a comeback.