Film: Shakespeare in Love
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History, Romance
Year: 1998
Taking one of history's most celebrated playwrights and building a love story up around the creation of one of his most popular plays was the premise for the plot of Shakespeare in Love - and it's a formula that works beautifully. Filled with wit, warmth and attention-grabbing drama, the film deservedly received multiple awards following its 1998 release, including the highly-coveted "Best Picture" award at the Oscars.
Though Geoffrey Rush has but a supporting role in a film that rests upon the shoulders of Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Viola), he nevertheless received an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the trodden-upon theatre owner, Philip Henslowe. In contrast to the dangerous and intelligent Walsingham that he played in the more serious Elizabethan film, Elizabeth, Henslowe is an anxious and pitiful figure whose livelihood relies on Shakespeare producing a new play for his money-troubled playhouse. Henslowe has a real inability to recognise the quality of the ever-evolving play of "Romeo and Juliet" that Will writes, adament that a comedy with pirates, clowns and a dog is what the people really want. Yet he has faith in the man's writing, and in the end reaps the reward for such foresight. Thoroughly likable and at times hilarious in his mannerisms and witticisms, Geoffrey's Henslowe is a class act amongst many class acts in a film that's choc-full of thesbian goodness!
Screen Caps:
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