Decision due in Rush defamation battle

To perform the pivotal final scene in the Sydney Theatre Company production of King Lear, Geoffrey Rush says he imagined the death of his own daughter.

Footage of the scene played in the Federal Court shows Rush's Lear howling in grief as he carries the dead Cordelia on stage, before lowering her to the ground and cradling her body.

It's during this same scene that the actor who played Cordelia, Eryn Jean Norvill, alleges Rush stroked the side of her right breast during a preview performance of the 2015-16 production.

On Thursday, Justice Michael Wigney will reveal his decision in Rush's defamation case against a newspaper publisher and journalist over articles and a poster relating to Norvill's allegations.

Rush launched legal action in 2017, saying Nationwide News and Jonathon Moran falsely made him out to be a pervert and sexual predator in the stories published in Sydney's Daily Telegraph that same year.

The defence denies conveying those imputations but if found to have done so, is arguing they're substantially true after Norvill - who didn't participate in Moran's articles - agreed to give evidence.

She detailed her allegations against Rush at trial late last year and denied suggestions from his legal team that she was lying.

Norvill said Rush touched her lower back backstage, made groping gestures and sexual innuendo toward her during rehearsals and stroked the side of her breast during a performance of the final scene.

"It couldn't have been an accident because it was slow and pressured," Norvill said.

She said his power was intimidating and the rehearsal room was complicit in his behaviour.

But Rush denied his former co-star's allegations in the witness box, saying he thought they'd enjoyed a "very sparky, congenial rapport" and there was "not a hint" that she had a problem during rehearsals.

He became emotional when he said that to perform Cordelia's death scene, he would imagine "it was my own real-life daughter and that she'd been hit by a bus on the street near where we live ... and I knew she was gone".

The Oscar winner is claiming millions of dollars of damages in the defamation case, with his lawyer Bruce McClintock SC telling the court he may never work again.