Actress accuses Geoffrey Rush of touching her breast
SYDNEY, Australia — The actress at the centre of Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush’s defamation trial told a Sydney court on Tuesday 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’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the Federal Court for defamation over articles published in November that accused the 67-year-old Australian actor of behaving inappropriately toward actress Eryn Jean Norvill during the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of “King Lear” 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 on Tuesday.