Geoffrey Rush’s wife heard allegations on the ‘grapevine’
AUSTRALIAN actor Geoffrey Rush went into an emotional spiral in what have been the “worst 11 months of my life” after allegations of inappropriate behaviour against him were published making him feel “sick to my stomach”.
NSW
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ACTOR Geoffrey Rush went into an emotional spiral in what have been the “worst 11 months of my life” after allegations of inappropriate behaviour against him were published.
That is the claim of the 67-year-old who is suing The Daily Telegraph after it reported that an actor who starred opposite Rush in the play King Lear had lodged a complaint with the Sydney Theatre Company over his “inappropriate behaviour”.
That actor was later identified as Eryn Jean Norvill. Rush, who was supported by wife Jane Menelaus as his defamation lawsuit began in Sydney yesterday, said that when he first read the stories published last year he felt “sick to my stomach”.
“It was devastating,” he told the Federal Court.
Rush said seeing how distressed his family was “created a great deal of hurt for me”. “I felt as though someone had poured lead in my head … I felt numb,” he said.
Rush said the paper’s front page ‘‘King Leer’’ headline and picture polluted and dirtied the original intention of the play’s promotional shot and turned it into “a police line-up”.
“It made a madman from the theatre look criminal in reality,” he said.
In a pre-trial hearing, the court was told that Ms Norvill would give evidence that she was the target of sexual harassment during the King Lear season, including an incident during a preview performance in November 2015 when Rush ran his hand “down her torso and traced across her right breast” while she was playing his daughter Cordelia.
The Oscar winner denies any wrongdoing and claims the stories painted him as a “pervert” and “sexual predator”.
His barrister Bruce McClintock SC said the actor would deny all allegations. The newspaper argues the articles published on November 30 and December 1 last year draw on allegations made by Ms Norvill and are true.
Rush said the newspaper’s report of the allegations last November had come as “quite a shock” because “my memory of the play was that Ms Norvill and I had, as far as I was concerned, enjoyed a very sparky, congenial rapport.”
Yesterday, he said his wife told him she had heard rumours “on the grapevine” that allegations had been made against him at the Sydney Theatre Company “early in 2017”, months before they were reported in The Daily Telegraph.
Rush said he contacted the STC when another newspaper approached him about the allegations but he was told by the executive director Patrick McIntyre that he was no longer employed by the STC and would not be given the detail of the allegations. Rush said he had been left in a “diabolical, vulnerable position” by the STC because he “had been denied access to what those allegations actually were.”
Mr McClintock argued his client had become “damaged goods” in the entertainment industry, saying that in the five months before the article was published Rush raked in $1.5 million but has since earned only $44,000 in 11 months.
Rush said he was forced to drop out of Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Twelfth Night because he worried his presence could “overwhelm the purity of the play”.