Birthday's to share this week : 2nd July - 8th July 2017.

Do you celebrate your Birthday this week?

Geoffrey Rush does on 6th July - check out my tribute to this Birthday Boy turning 66, at the end of this feature.

Do you also share your birthday with a well known, highly regarded & famous Actor or Actress; share your special day with a Director, Producer, Writer, Cinematographer, Singer/Songwriter or Composer of repute; or share an interest in whoever might notch up another year in the coming seven days? Then, look no further! Whilst there will be too many to mention in this small but not insignificant and beautifully written and presented Blog, here are the more notable and noteworthy icons of the big screen, and the small screen, that you will recognise, and that you might just share your birthday with in the week ahead. If so, Happy Birthday to you from Odeon Online!

Sunday 2nd July

• Lindsay Lohan - Born 1986, turns 31 - Actress | Producer Singer | Songwriter
• Margot Robbie - Born 1990, turns 27 - Actress | Producer
• Larry David - Born 1947, turns 70 - Writer | Producer | Actor | Singer

Monday 3rd July 

• Tom Stoppard - Born 1937, turns 80 - Writer | Producer | Director
• Tom Cruise - Born 1962, turns 55 - Actor | Producer | Singer 
• Patrick Wilson - Born 1973, turns 44 - Actor | Producer | Singer
• Connie Nielsen - Born 1965, turns 52 - Actress 

Tuesday 4th July

• Eva Marie Saint - Born 1924, turns 93 - Actress 
• Neil Morrissey - Born 1962, turns 55 - Actor | Singer  

Wednesday 5th July

• Edie Falco - Born 1963, turns 54 - Actress   

Thursday 6th July

• Geraldine James - Born 1950, turns 67 - Actress
• Jennifer Saunders - Born 1958, turns 59 - Actress | Writer | Singer | Producer
• Eva Green - Born 1980, turns 37 - Actress
• Burt Ward - Born 1945, turns 72 - Actor
• Sylvester Stallone - Born 1946, turns 71 - Actor | Writer | Producer | Director
• Geoffrey Rush - Born 1951, turns 66 - Actor | Producer  
• Kevin Hart - Born 1979, turns 38 - Actor | Writer | Producer | Singer 
• 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson) - Born 1975, turns 42 - Singer | Songwriter | Actor | Producer | Writer | Composer

Friday 7th July

• Ringo Starr - Born 1940, turns 77 - Singer | Songwriter | Composer | Actor | Producer | Director
• Akiva Goldsman - Born 1962, turns 55 - Producer | Writer | Director | Actor  
• Shelley Duvall - Born 1949, turns 68 - Actress | Writer | Producer 

Saturday 8th July

• Anjelica Huston - Born 1951, turns 66 - Actress | Director | Producer
• Jeffrey Tambor - Born 1944, turns 73 - Actor 
• Kevin Bacon - Born 1958, turns 59 - Actor | Producer | Director | Singer | Songwriter
• Robert Knepper - Born 1959, turns 58 - Actor
• Wally Pfister - Born 1961, turns 56 - Cinematographer | Cameraman | Director 
• Billy Crudup - Born 1968, turns 49 - Actor | Singer
• Jaden Smith - Born 1998, turns 19 - Actor | Singer | Songwriter

Geoffrey Roy Rush was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia (125kms west of the State's capital city, Brisbane) to mother Merle Bischof, a department store sales assistant and father Roy Baden Rush, an accountant for the Royal Australian Air Force. When young Geoffrey was just five, his parents divorced, and his mother relocated to Brisbane with the young lad. There, Geoffrey attended Everton Park State High School, and went on to graduate from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor's Degree in Arts. While at University he was spotted by a talent scout from the Queensland Theatre Company, which kick started his stage acting career appearing in seventeen subsequent productions. In 1975, Rush moved to Paris where he studied mime, movement and theatre at L'Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq.

Over the years, his stage acting career took in multiple Shakespeare plays, and notable others including 'The Importance of Being Earnest', 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Exit the King' in Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. He took 'Exit the King' to Broadway in 2009 which was to be his debut there alongside Susan Sarandon, and for which he won numerous awards including the 2009 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play.

Rush made his small screen
debut in the 13 episode television series 'Menotti' about a progressive priest involved with issues within his inner-city Sydney community. His big screen debut came in 1981 with crime drama 'Hoodwink' with Judy Davis, Michael Caton, Colin Friels and John Hargreaves. This was followed up a year later with Gilliam Armstrong's musical comedy 'Starstruck'. His next screen appearance came five years later with a Shakespeare adaptation of 'Twelfth Night' and then 1995's comedy 'Dad and Dave : On Our Selection' with Leo McKern, Joan Sutherland, Barry Otto and Noah Taylor. It was, however, Rush's convincing portrayal of pianist David Helfgott in Scott Hicks bio-pic 'Shine' in 1996 that really catapulted Rush into the international spotlight, from which he has never looked back. For his performance Rush won the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the SAG Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor. All up the film garnered 46 wins and another 49 nominations. 

Aussie Stalinist comedy drama 'Children of the Revolution' with Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Richard Roxburgh, Rachel Griffiths and F. Murray Abraham was released in 1996, followed by a turn as Narrator on Gilliam Armstrong's 'Oscar and Lucinda' with Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett in 1997, 'Little Bit of Soul' in 1998. 'Les Miserables' that same year with Liam Neeson, Claire Danes, and Uma Thurman, then came the highly acclaimed and multi-award winning 'Elizabeth' also in 1998 with Cate Blanchett in the title role as Queen Elizabeth I and an all star cast, and 'Shakespeare in Love' again in 1998 which once more was highly acclaimed and multi-award winning with Joseph Fiennes in the lead role as Will Shakespeare  and also featuring an ensemble cast. The lesser known superhero 'Mystery Men' film with Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Greg Kinnear and Hank Azaria came next in 1999, and then horror mystery thriller 'House on Haunted Hill' saw out the decade.

'Quills' opened up the new decade and multi-award nominations for Rush in his portrayal of The Marquis de Sade in this Philip Kaufman Directed film also starring Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine, and Billie Whitelaw. This was followed up by the likes of 'The Tailor of Panama' with Pierce Brosnan, 'Lantana' with Anthony LaPaglia, 'Frida' with Salma Hayek, 'The Banger Sisters' with Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon, 'Swimming Upstream' with Judy Davis again and Gregor Jordan's action adventure bio-pic 'Ned Kelly' with Heath Ledger in the title role. 

2003 saw the first instalment in the epic Disney theme park ride big screen adaptation of 'Pirates of the Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl' in which Rush plays Captain Hector Barbossa alongside Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. Over the following fourteen years Rush would reprise his role in the multi-award winning and huge Box Office draw card franchise in four successive films taking in 2006's 'Dead Man's Chest', 2007's 'At World's End', 2011's 'On Stranger Tides' and this years 'Dead Men Tell No Tales'. The five films in the franchise have so far taken close to US$4.4B at the worldwide Box Office off a combined budget outlay of US$1.3B, with the last film still on general release around the world.

In between time there has been Joel and Ethan Coen's 'Intolerable Cruelty' with George Clooney, 'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers' with Rush playing Sellers for which he won the Golden Globe, the Primetime Emmy and the SAG Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor, and then Steven Spielberg's 'Munich' with Eric Bana, 'Candy' with Heath Ledger again, and then a reprisal of his role as Sir Frances Walsingham in 'Elizabeth : The Golden Age' with Cate Blanchett playing an older Queen Elizabeth I. Aussie musical comedy drama 'Bran Nue Dae' with Ernie Dingo and Jessica Mauboy saw out 2009.

2010 launched with Director Tom Hooper's highly acclaimed bio-pic 'The King's Speech' with Colin Firth playing King George VI and Rush playing his speech therapist Lionel Logue. The film won four Academy Awards including Best Actor for Firth and Best Director for Hooper, and for Rush an Oscar, Golden Globe and SAG nod and the BAFTA win for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. The film garnered a total awards haul of 107 wins and a further 194 nominations.



'The Warrior's Way' came next also in 2010,  and then 'The Eye of the Storm' for Director Fred Schepisi and also starring Charlotte Rampling and Judy Davis once again. 'The Best Offer' with Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland followed in 2013, then 'The Book Thief' with Emily Watson, 'The Daughter' in 2015 with Sam Neill, 'Holding the Man' that same year, and the Alex Proyas Directed 'Gods of Egypt' which was critically panned and clawed back US$150M from its US$140M production budget.

Next up for Rush is 'Final Portrait' for Actor, Screenwriter and Director Stanley Tucci, due for release in Australia in October this year, but released for its Australian Premier and special screenings at the recently closed Sydney Film Festival, and as already Reviewed by the owner of this Blog. Here Rush plays world renowned painter, sculptor and artist Alberto Giacometti. Currently in pre-production is 'Storm Boy' due for a 2018 release with Jai Courtney, and airing this year for National Geographic is anthology period drama 'Genius' following the life of Albert Einstein, in which Rush plays the older Einstein in five episodes of the season of eight.

In the meantime, Rush has lent his voice talents to numerous films including 'The Magic Pudding' with Sam Neill, John Cleese and Hugo Weaving; 'Finding Nemo' with Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres and Willem Dafoe; '$9.99' with Anthony LaPaglia, Joel Edgerton, and Ben Mendelssohn; 'Legend of the Guardians : The Owls of Ga'Hoole' with Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving and David Wenham; on 'Green Lantern' as the voice of Tomar-Re, as the Narrator on sixteen episodes of comedy series centering around a hapless journalist in 'Lowdown', and as the Narrator also on 'Minions' with Sandra Bullock, Steve Carell and Jon Hamm.

All up Rush has sixty-four Acting credits to his name on screen, plus numerous others on stage, and two as Producer on 'The King's Speech' and 'Storm Boy'. He is the recipient of an Academy Award for his performance in 'Shine' and has been nominated three other times; he has won two Golden Globes and been nominated three other times; has won three BAFTA's and been nominated twice more; has won three Australian Film Institute Awards and been nominated three times also; and has won four SAG Awards and been nominated four times too. All up Rush has an Awards haul of 45 wins and 75 further nominations. Rush is also the youngest Actor to have won 'The Triple Crown of Acting' - these being an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Tony Award, and he is also the first Actor to win the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, SAG Award and the Critics Choice Movie Award for a single performance in film for his role in 'Shine', for which as an accomplished pianist he needed no hand-double and played most of the musical pieces himself.

Rush has been married to Australian Actress Jane Menelaus since 1988 with whom he has two children, Angelica born in 1992 and James born in 1995 and they now reside in Melbourne, Victoria.

Geoffrey Rush - the founding President of AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts); was awarded by HRH Queen Elizabeth II The Australian Centenary Medal in the 2001 Queen's New Years Honours List; was awarded the 2012 Australian of the Year; appointed a 'Companion of the Order of Australia' in 2014 (Australia's highest civilian honour); has played real life characters convincingly, with conviction and often to critical acclaim - David Helfgott, Sir Francis Walsingham, Philip Henslowe, the Marquis de Sade, Leon Trotsky, Peter Sellers, Lionel Logue, Alberto Giacometti and Albert Einstein most recently. Your body of work continues to surprise and delight us and sending us out to the movies whether its playing a real life character, or a personality of fiction and across almost all genres. Keep up the great work Geoffrey, and a very Happy Birthday to you, from Odeon Online.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-