Once Geoffrey Rush hit his mid-60s, he was offered more and more roles where his age was the focal point. Yet when he read the script for “The Rule of Jenny Pen,” the nursing home-set horror film offered a different angle.
Rush plays Stefan Mortensen, a tough-talking judge who suffers a stroke and must live in an assisted living facility. Unfortunately, one of the other wards is Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), who terrorizes the residents in increasingly sinister ways — along with the help of his hand puppet, Jenny Pen. As Dave gets more emboldened to do terrible things in the nursing home, Stefan loses more and more of his faculties, having to take down his nemesis as his motor skills fade.
“I’ve had quite a few scripts sent my way in the last eight years that felt like treading water,” the 73-year-old actor says. “But in this, his brain deteriorates — actually, he doesn’t say anything for the last 40 pages. I said, ‘This is a bit like “The French Connection,” but in a wheelchair.’”
Rush, an Oscar winner for his work in 1996’s “Shine” and nominee for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love,” 2000’s “Quills” and 2010’s “The King’s Speech,” was quickly intrigued by this wild indie movie, co-written and directed by New Zealander James Ashcroft.
“I’d had a period where I took some time out and was reflecting on ‘I don’t want to repeat myself,’” he says. “It was comparable to ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ whereby, on page five, I was phoning my agent, saying, ‘I will kill to be in this film.’ It just went wallop with the first scene, and then I spent the rest of it totally immobilized.”
Rush was also tickled by the opportunity to work again with his old friend Lithgow. The two had previously collaborated on the 2003 biopic, “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” and had always been fond of talking shop together.
“John is what everyone imagines actors are supposed to be like,” Rush says. “He’s effusive, he’s present and he has great stories. We had a good time.”
To get into the headspace of an older person suddenly made vulnerable, Rush conjured emotions from both his lengthy stage career and his own experiences watching family members age.
“I’d been down the path of playing much older characters than I was at the time,” he says. “In my 50s and 60s, I’d be playing people in their 70s and 80s. Also, my mother was in a home. She died in 2022, so she spent four years in a home, and I watched a decline in that period from age 90 to 94. You do carry a lot of emotional stuff because you’re thinking, ‘This is what you were doing for me when I was a baby and a toddler.’”
But even as he gets older, Rush has no plans to slow down.
“I got quite good with makeup, and you suddenly see ‘The Irishman,’ and you go, ‘They can make people now look 30 years younger,’” he says. “That’s getting more and more sophisticated. I like the existential reality of the adage in the theater that you can play 10 years older or 10 years younger wherever you are.”
Rush would even be open to reviving the role that made him famous to a younger generation: Captain Hector Barbossa in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. While there have been whispers of a reboot or new chapter of the series, he has a twinkle in his eye while considering how Barbossa could return.
“From fan mail, people would say they cried so much because they were touched that Barbossa sacrificed himself for his daughter,” he says. “But, you know, in ‘Hamlet’ his father comes back as a ghost. I always like the idea of going, ‘Just give me a couple of really nice scenes’ and come back to annoy Jack Sparrow, or mentor any of the new replacements. I’ll teach them how to do it, and there could be some great comedy in that.”
“The Rule of Jenny Pen” is set to open in theaters on March 7 via IFC Films and Shudder. Watch a bonkers exclusive clip below.
