Geoffrey Rush Makes the Case for 'Bucketload' of 'Pirates' Movies

The wonderful Geoffrey Rush is back as mendacious Captain Barbossa in the latest installment of the 'Pirates' franchise, 'On Stranger Tides.' The 59-year-old Aussie actor has had a breathtakingly diverse career, winning an Oscar for 'Shine,' and stealing scenes in movies like 'Shakespeare in Love' and 'Elizabeth.' And of course there was his nominated performance in 'The King's Speech.' Rush spoke to PopEater after a whirlwind two-week publicity tour about his eclectic film career, how he just knew he'd lose the Oscar this year to Christian Bale and -- to the horror of critics the world over -- he makes the case for a "bucketload" more 'Pirates' movies.

Are we going to see Pirates movies for the next 40 years?
I don't think we're going to outrun Bond. They're up to 23 so they've really set the bar. Relatively we're young kids on the block.

But how many more are you signed for?
Well nothing's official but there is a fifth chapter being developed and as the hardcore fans will know if they hang around till after the credits roll, there's a little teaser, cliffhanger which I think opens up the potential for a pretty damn fine movie. It's a very big theme, piracy. They were around in that tradition for about 80-odd years and as you see in this film a lot of the nastier, cleverer ones got themselves into working for the different crown heads of Europe as privateers which is what happens to Barbossa, so between the mythology and the legends and the history and geographical places in the world, there's still a bucketload of stories to tell. Did Penelope Cruz teach you to curse in Spanish?
Sadly I didn't really get to work with Penelope, our story lines didn't really converge but I did say to her when we were shooting the big finale, 'Throw me a couple of really meaningful looks and maybe the writers will notice that and conjure up something fabulous for us to do in the next one.

Maybe more what you do to her.
Possibly, either way, I don't care if it's a one way street.

You have an amazing career. There's big pop culture hits like 'Pirates' and art house hits like, 'The King's Speech.'
It's sort of worked out that way. I don't essentially classify them in that way, the process for approaching any film is fundamentally the same. You start looking at what's hidden inside the dialogue, the essence of the character. The big difference between them all is I suppose is the scale of the production.

And you don't have bobble heads for 'The King's Speech.'
Bubble heads?

No bobble heads, I mean all the merchandising that goes along with Pirates.
No, you're right there is no Lionel Logue soft doll.

Although that would be fantastic, pull the string and it teaches you to enunciate.
It would be quite funny. Actually somebody said to me the other day, 'Oh you thought when you did 'The King's Speech' that you were doing a small art house film and look you broke your own rule because it went onto become a relatively high grossing film.' But there is no rule book, we tend to pigeonhole those things into genres and level of market acceptability and so forth and it's always exciting on any level to capture the public's imagination. That's the prime thing to me as an actor, you're there to generate as much creative juice as you can and by doing that hopefully excite an audience. That can sometimes happen on a very large scale or on a very intimate scale.

You were just in Cannes. It is weird to go from all the craziness of Cannes and then be back in Melbourne going to the milk bar (local deli) to buy the papers and milk?
It's how the job works. When I leave the office at the end of the day I'd like to think I go home to as normal a life as most people lead.

Is it hard not to feel entitled when your every whim is catered to on a big set?
It's not quite that palatial really. Like if you have an assistant who runs to get you breakfast there's a practicality to that because you might arrive on location 30 miles out to sea, five in the morning and you've got to go into makeup for an hour and half and I like to do a half hour voice warmup and then you have to get dressed and be camera ready, so having someone get your breakfast probably saves 15 or 30 minutes of time which on Disney/Bruckheimer dollars adds up to quite a bit.

Johnny Depp said he wasn't happy with the storyline on the last one. Were you?
I heard him say something in one of the press conferences in reference to working on two and three which was an unusual situation, not only to be shooting them simultaneously and then shooting on locations. Sometimes you'd be leaping from something that happened in the first hour of part two and then maybe later that day you might be shooting a scene that's happening in the second hour of the third film so it's kind of hard to tell if it all hangs together.

I personally think that two and three, judging by fan response, the target audience, I think they appreciate that we didn't treat it like a sausage machine and do more of the same in a rather cynical way. To just put stuff out there as a product. It's like a Dickens novel, a long string of episodes with fantastic red herrings and dead ends. That's the kind of stuff that I don't think the older, middle-aged critical world kind of appreciate.

And neither does Johnny Depp I guess.
Well the scale of doing two and three was a massive head-hurting jigsaw puzzle to put together.

Were you very disappointed you didn't win the Oscar this year?
No, look no. It's a cliche to say it but it's an honor to be nominated.

C'mon not even a teeny bit?
Um, you can tell from the momentum like when the print awards come out and then the other awards, you can pretty much sense, look this is Christian Bale's year, this is the performance generating the most acclaim.

So you sensed you weren't going to win.
You sort of know and it was great to be nominated in a pretty diverse group of performers. It was a pretty inspirational company to be given the gong out of.

More Q&As From Nicki Gostin: Keira Knightley, Ty Burrell, Jerry Seinfeld and Will Ferrell

Source: http://www.popeater.com/2011/05/25/geoffrey-rush-pirates-kings-speech/

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