Rush Believed ‘The King’s Speech’ Would Be A Flop!

Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush almost turned down a role in acclaimed new movie ‘The Kings Speech‘, because he believed the film would be a major failure!

The movie, starring Colin Firth as stuttering British monarch King George VI, has opened to rave reviews and a series of high profile honours, and it is expected to sweep the upcoming Golden Globe Awards this weekend (Sunday 16th January, 2011).

Rush has won a number of nominations for his role as the king’s speech therapist in the movie, but admits he had doubts whether anyone would actually go to the cinema to see it.

He says:

“The curious thing is that people start to say ‘Oh this is obviously an Oscar-bait thing, you do this because you’ve got (a character with) a disability, you’ve got a prestige English name, you’ve got a Royal King…’

“(But) when we sat and read the initial script which actually came onto my front doorstep in Melbourne… the first thing I read was ‘Well no one will want to go and see this,’ let alone ‘Oh this is an Oscar-worthy film.'”

The casting of Rush in this movie was a perfect one, because only he could pull off those speech-tuning exercises without looking completely barmy!

Obviously Firth and Helena Bonham Carter were great too, but my favourite actor in the movie was Rush!

If you haven’t seen it, do so this weekend!