Co-star claims Geoffrey Rush humiliated her with sexual innuendo during theatre production
- Oscar-winning actor is suing Australia’s biggest newspaper group for defamation over allegations of inappropriate behaviour during a 2015 production of “King Lear”
Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush touched his co-star on the breast and humiliated her with sexual innuendo during a production of “King Lear”, the co-star told an Australian court on Tuesday, as News Corp defended publishing some details of her claims.
In Australia’s first defamation case of the #MeToo era, Rush is suing News Corp’s Australian arm over a series of articles saying he was the subject of a complaint to the Sydney Theatre Company regarding the 2015 Lear production.
Under the headline “KING LEER,” and in later articles, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper said last year that the actor, in the title role, had been accused by a co-star of unspecified inappropriate conduct.
The articles did not name the accuser nor detail the conduct, but the female actor, Eryn Jean Norvill, who played Lear’s daughter Cordelia, was called to give evidence by News Corp which stands by the stories.
Rush, 67, and a star of Australian theatre, who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1997 for “Shine” and has since appeared in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, has denied any improper conduct.
But Norvill, her voice at times breaking with emotion, said Rush constantly behaved inappropriately toward her and other women in the play, as she gave evidence at the Federal Court in Sydney.
“He would look at me and smile and cup his two hands, and lick his lips, raise his eyebrows, bulge out his eyes, sometimes he’d, like, growl,” Norvill said.
