NEWS

Geoffrey Rush proud of pirate growl

18th May 2011

(Cover) - EN Movies - Geoffrey Rush is proud he managed to slip a "postmodern" pirate growl into the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

The actor is Barbossa in the film franchise, and is currently promoting the fourth instalment On Stranger Tides.

Geoffrey fondly recalls shooting the first picture, The Curse of the Black Pearl, which came out in 2003. He revealed movie bosses were adamant it wouldn't contain any clichs of seafaring folk, although Geoffrey was determined it should include some nods to old tales of pirates.

"In the very first film there'd almost been a memo that came down from the writers that said, We're not going to have any eye patches in these films, no one's allowed to say ARGH!' But I slipped in one as a postmodern quote," he laughed to Cover Media.

In the new release, Barbossa has a wooden leg. Geoffrey wanted it to look as real as possible so spent a great deal of time researching how people handle such disabilities. He even considered strapping his leg up while shooting, but eventually realised that wouldn't be possible.

"I did go and work with an amputee prosthetist who works with genuine amputees, he's more like a doctor than a make-up artist, because I was going to strap my leg up at the back and walk on the leg," he explained. "He says it takes 18 months to two years to train your muscles to find the proper balance and so forth. So I went up to Rob [Marshall, director] and said, You know what? I think I can act the leg.' I'm thankful the CGI guys." (C) Cover Media

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