The films the American studios made in that era did have a big impact on me in Australia. When I was first leaving high school and going to university, it was during those three or four years of extraordinary change in pop culture that are covered in the book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls." In my last years of high school, it seemed that everyone was trying to remake "The Sound of Music": They did "Star"; they did "Dr. Dolittle"; they did "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." And they almost brought the studios to their knees. But then suddenly, in 1969, I was smack in the middle of that generation that would go to see Alan Bates' penis in "Women in Love" and Olivia Hussey's breasts in "Romeo and Juliet." And I discovered that people like Antonioni and Fellini, great Italian auteurs, were still releasing major work. All that was obviously an influence on me.

I was torn between this great passion for the psychology of American films -- through John Garfield and Brando and Shelley Winters, up to Robert De Niro -- and the classics I was doing onstage. I started working professionally in 1971. Throughout my whole first decade as an actor, when I was studying in Paris and stuff, I'd follow an actor like Dustin Hoffman -- who I knew was from the New York theater scene -- do "The Graduate" and then maybe a year later "Midnight Cowboy" and then "John and Mary" and then "Little Big Man." And DeNiro, a bit later, in "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver" and "The Deer Hunter" and "Raging Bull." And they were phenomenal, luminous, highly sculpted, anti-heroic but large figures -- which is so unlike what I was doing on stage.

Well, you're an amazing student of film acting -- you list "John and Mary" as one of Dustin Hoffman's credits, and that's probably his least remembered movie.

But I did get the order right, didn't I? That's how his films came out.

My point exactly!

People used to say to me, "Oh, you'd never be very good in films; you're too big." I felt like I came from a generation of Australian actors that was still influenced by an English tradition of theater, perhaps because of a certain heritage of language. But then we started to redefine ourselves in Australia over the course of a couple of decades, finding our own particular voice and expression within the classical repertoire.

Most recently in the theater -- say in the last 10 years or so -- I've done things like Gogol's "The Government Inspector," and "Diary of a Madman," based on the Gogol short story. I've been Astrov in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." I've played a scabrous cockroach con artist in Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist." I've played lots of Shakespearean clowns, idiots, outsiders, sleazebags. I sense a huge dimension in that repertoire, but those roles are my strong suit.

It seems to me that I'm more a figure in a landscape in wide shots than I am a mind to watch at work in long, lingering close-ups. Do you know what I mean?

Yes, but I don't agree. In your films, and especially in "Quills," you often are a mind to watch at work in close-up.

Yeah? I don't know --

Or maybe in movies you show a willingness to externalize the internal stuff so that it's immediate and unselfconscious -- you kineticize the characters.

Yes. Well, that's from my training with the French mime, Jacques Lecoq. That was about approaching performance through a study of movement and your own distinctive clowning, your own distinctive buffoonery.

The list of your stage roles suggests a strong sense of the absurd. Re-setting Shakespeare and the classics in a modern, absurd universe revitalized many companies in the '60s and '70s.

Yes. The other thing to mention is that I started out as a repertory actor and for three years had to earn my stripes playing tiny parts, like eccentric, drunken innkeepers. And then, having done that, I played Snoopy. That was my first big break in a company, playing a lead.

Snoopy -- that's ideal. In many of your roles you convey a childlike playfulness -- including, in a thoroughly debauched way, your Marquis de Sade.

Yeah, performance-as-play is what I'm interested in. It's funny. Fifteen years ago I had created and directed this play called "The Small Poppies" about three 5-year-olds starting out at school. And I performed in it again right after "Quills." It was good for me to do something that was absolutely simple and pure.

One thing I like about my career is its dichotomies. For example, after I did "Shine" and [the Australian political spoof] "Children of the Revolution," I felt, "God, all I've been doing are vulnerable characters." So that became a big part of running with the idea of doing Javert in "Les Miserables" [the Bille August film, starring Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean]. I wanted to test the dimensions of my possibilities, and not feel as though I were limiting myself by playing only vulnerable men. In my youth I was always referred to in every review I ever got as "gangly," no matter what I did. "Gangly Geoffrey Rush." I'm 5-foot-11-and-a-half, and have always been pretty thin. So I had that desire to find whatever greatness I had in my verticality. Where is the steel rod? You know what I mean? What strength do you have?

When the stage director Neil Armfield, who directed me in "Diary of a Madman" and many other productions, said, "I want you to play Astrov in 'Uncle Vanya,'" I responded, "You know, it's not very funny." I had pretty well defined myself in the comedy repertoire. And he said, "Well, I think there's a melancholy drunken misfit quality in you that could be looked at." And it was great.

And I bet you found that "Vanya" actually is a funny play.

Absolutely, absolutely. But it's kind of deep, rich, poignant and disturbing comedy. And sometimes just loopy, you know. Chekhov's characters go through bouts of letting off steam.

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