鈥楪eoffrey Rush touched my breast,鈥 actress, 34, tells Australian court
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The actress at the center of Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush鈥檚 defamation trial told a court in Sydney yesterday that he deliberately touched the side of her breast in a Shakespearean stage scene in which her character lay dead on the ground.
Rush is suing the publisher of Sydney鈥檚 The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the Federal Court for defamation over articles published last November that accused the 67-year-old Australian actor of behaving inappropriately toward actress Eryn Jean Norvill during the Sydney Theatre Company鈥檚 production of 鈥淜ing Lear鈥 in 2015 and 2016.
Rush denies the claims against him and argues the articles portrayed him as a pervert and a sexual predator.
Norvill never spoke to the newspaper before the articles were published and made her first public allegations against Rush during her testimony in court yesterday.
The 34-year-old actress testified that she was playing King Lear鈥檚 dead daughter Cordelia when Rush, playing the distraught father, stroked his hand across the side of her right breast and on to her hip during a preview performance.
She said it hadn鈥檛 happened before, with Rush usually touching her face and sometimes her head, shoulder and arm during the scene.
鈥淚t couldn鈥檛 have been an accident because it was slow and pressured,鈥 she told the court.
During his testimony last week, Rush denied deliberately touching Norvill鈥檚 breast, touching her lower back under her shirt when they were backstage or making lewd gestures and comments toward her.
He became emotional when he said that in the scene where Norvill鈥檚 character died, he imagined she was his 鈥渙wn real-life daughter and she鈥檇 been hit by a bus on the street where we live.鈥
While rehearsing the scene with her eyes closed, Norvill told the court she felt shocked, belittled and embarrassed on realizing that Rush was making 鈥済roping鈥 gestures over her body to the tittering laughter of a 鈥渃omplicit鈥 rehearsal room.
Rush was bulging his eyes, licking his lips and smiling as he made the gestures, Norvill told the court.
Norvill, who said she had longed to work with Rush before the production, said his allegedly lewd gestures and sexual innuendo became normalized in rehearsals, but she didn鈥檛 complain because 鈥渉is power was intimidating.鈥
鈥淓veryone else didn鈥檛 seem to have a problem about it ... so I was looking at a room that was complicit; my director didn鈥檛 seem to have a problem with it, so I felt quashed in terms of my ability to find allies,鈥 she said.
Several times while waiting to walk on stage, Rush brushed his fingers against hers and traced them on the palm of her hand, she said.
Norvill said once when he stroked her lower back, her 鈥減anic levels shot up鈥 and she felt 鈥渦nsafe and probably sad ... because I think Geoffrey鈥檚 idea of friendship was different to mine.鈥
Under cross-examination by Rush鈥檚 lawyer, Bruce McClintock, Norvill denied fabricating parts of her testimony.
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