Geoffrey Rush as Peter Sellers


Geoffrey Rush playing Peter Sellers himself, and Peter Sellers playing his movie characters, has here one of the best acting performance I have ever seen, if not the best one. Rush captures Peter Sellers perfectly, and Sellers' characters he plays are absolutely believable and delightful to watch. I can fully understand why at first Rush thought he had not had "mental capacity" (or whatever words he used to justify initial turn down of this role) - it is not a small feat. I am close to considering it at least equal achievement to Peter Sellers' playing characters in Dr Strangelove.
Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a great movie, though a sad one. It is one of movies that I can watch over and over if only because Geoffrey Rush is in it.

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I liked Geoffrey Rush's performance quite a bit, but I think it would have been a better film if he had started playing Sellers from 1970 on, sort of like Judy Davis in her Judy Garland biopic. Rush's face just has a little too much of that world-weary quality. This made it very tough to buy him as the younger Sellers, particularly during the period when Sellers was trying to make himself a leading man.

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