Geoffrey Rush Quotes

Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I'd be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me.

Broadway was without doubt the hardest I ever worked in my life and the highest highs I've ever had as an actor. The unadulterated fear was on a level that was hard to explain.

I guess my break in America came a little too early. It would've been nice to have a few more years to find out what I'm like as an actor without a camera on my face.

A lot of the time I hate the theater. You think, 'I have to climb Mount Everest, again, tonight.' Oh, the theater is a scary place to be.

As much as I don't want to admit it, my fans are the only ones that can hurt my feelings when they're not pleased with what I'm presenting. I want it to be perfect for them. I want them to have a different sense of pride in my music.

The most scared I'd ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again... just singing one song, the national anthem.

As an actor, I've always said, half the audience is going to love you, half is going to hate you so just live with it. It's easier that way.

Unfortunately with the media, the red tops, and all the celebrity weekly magazines, the ones who were once loyal - well, when I say loyal, this is a game; this is a game that we're in. If it's your time to get picked on, then you get picked on, and, you know, I'm used to that.

A voice is very intimate. It's something of your own. So there's always this fear, because you feel naked. There's a fear of not reaching up to expectations. As you become more famous, people come and expect to hear something extraordinary, so you don't want to disappoint them. I feel this sense of responsibility.

Playing characters who are wonderful and beautiful is hard because you don't feel like that most of the time... well, I don't. It's like this whole heart-throb nonsense. It's flattering, but that's not how I feel in the morning. It's something that goes with the job.

You know, the hard thing about audiences not liking what a character does is that they sometimes take it out on the actor personally. That's something that you know when you become an actor or actress, but it's always hard to deal with when it actually happens.

Actors are exposed in a way that nobody else can understand. They are subject to the likes and dislikes of people their entire life, no matter how successful they are. At the same time, in order to be liked, you have to not be yourself. So it's a very complicated human exercise - an alchemy that I have never understood.

At early previews, the theater gossips are there, wishing you ill every night. They don't grant you any slack. Agents are in from Hollywood. Your friends are there. People who are going to spread the word-of-mouth. If something doesn't work, everyone will know.

I'm lucky I don't make my living in front of the camera.

Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!

When you're playing someone who is angry and sad all the time, you get a little down.

The judgment, criticism, and rejection you face as an actor can be overwhelming.

There's something scary about acting always, because basically you do all this work in a vacuum, and then suddenly there's a lot of money spent making a film, and there's suddenly a camera here, going, 'Right? What are you gonna do?'

Now that I'm acting, I've realized that I don't have a lot of barriers. Certain actors have a hard time with anger or with joy or with whatever, and, I don't know, I don't seem to have those barriers.

Did people care about how a singer sounded live back in the day? I don't really feel like they did. Not everything was being filmed. Today, one huge mess-up, and millions are seeing it. There's a lot more on the line nowadays. We're so cautious and scared of messing up. It adds a lot of stress to a career.

You want to bring it every day. But if you have a bad day in the theatre, a couple of hundred people see it. That sucked; we'll get back to it. You have a bad day on film, it's just on DVD for the rest of your life.

There's so many things that can go wrong, and if I'm merely playing and not hosting a festival, none of those things reflect on me.

While it feels good to be compared to someone like Sridevi, it's also a lot of pressure.

There's a lot of pressure being an actor and taking on challenges that people don't expect of you.

I'm going to get criticized my whole career.