‘This can’t be happening’: Geoffrey Rush on article

GEOFFREY Rush says an article over which he is suing a newspaper and journalist for defamation made him sick to his stomach.

GEOFFREY Rush has told a court he felt sick to the stomach and as though his head was filled with lead when he saw a Sydney newspaper’s front page about an allegation he’d behaved inappropriately towards a co-star.

The article, published by The Daily Telegraph on its front page in 2017, showed an old promotional image of Rush from a theatre production alongside the headline “King Leer”.

The Oscar-winner on Monday said it was devastating when he saw the article on a November morning while his wife and adult son were home.

“I could see how distressed they were which created a great deal of hurt for me,” Rush told Sydney’s Federal Court on Monday.

“I felt as though someone had poured lead into my head. I went into a kind of ‘This can’t be happening’.”

Rush is suing the Telegraph’s publisher Nationwide News and journalist Jonathon Moran for defamation over articles about an allegation he behaved inappropriately toward a co-star — later revealed to be Eryn Jean Norvill — during the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of King Lear in 2015 and 2016.

The actor said that when the paper ran its second article he felt “distraught by the way the story was running off the rails and didn’t seem to reflect anything I experienced”.

Asked how he felt now, almost a year later, Rush said the articles were the starting point of the worst 11 months of his life.

Actor Geoffrey Rush leaves the Federal Court in Sydney after giving evidence in his defamation case against The Daily Telegraph. Picture: Toby Zerna

His lawyer, Bruce McClintock SC, said the actor was a “national living treasure” who gave pleasure to millions and had no scandal to his name before the articles destroyed his reputation.

Nationwide News and Moran are pleading a defence of truth in the trial and Norvill — who didn’t co-operate before the articles were published — has agreed to give evidence.

According to a defence document, Rush allegedly made lewd gestures in her direction, simulated fondling and groping her breasts and regularly made comments or jokes about her involving sexual innuendo.

He is accused of touching Norvill’s lower back under her shirt when they were backstage and tracing his hand down her torso and across the side of her breast during a scene in which he was carrying her.

Rush knew he was doing it without her consent and that she couldn’t do anything when in front of an audience to prevent it, the document claims.

Mr McClintock on Monday said Rush denied the accusations against him and would testify he did not do any of the alleged acts.

He said director Neil Armfield and actors Robyn Nevin and Helen Buday were also expected to give evidence they didn’t witness the alleged behaviour. The judge-alone trial continues.