Name: Odeya Rush
Age: 26
Born and raised: Born in Israel, she and her family moved to Alabama when she was a kid.
Big break: Her first film role was in “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” before she was cast as the lead in the 2015 movie “Goosebumps.”
Currently: Rush can be seen in the thriller movie “Dangerous Waters,” alongside Ray Liotta and Eric Dane.
A fan of Dane’s work in “Euphoria,” she was interested in the project as soon as she learned he was involved.
“I had just seen that really incredible episode with Eric in ‘Euphoria’ the night before and my friends and I were watching it like, ‘damn, he really ate this up,’” Rush says over the phone from Studio City. “All my friends were talking about that episode.”
“Dangerous Waters” stars Rush as a young woman who is hesitant about joining her mom on a sailing trip with her new boyfriend, a former cop, but agrees to set sail — when disaster strikes while at sea. Rush’s character Rose then must fight for her life in a manner that had Rush doing stunts for the first time ever, which she was both “excited and scared” about.
“I’ve never had to do fight training or tactical training, so it scared me because I just didn’t know if I would be good at it. I really surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it and how natural it felt to me and how fun it was,” she says.
The project shot for two-and-a-half months in the Dominican Republic; Liotta died in the country in the midst of filming.
Hearing the news that he had passed was “the most devastating news you can hear,” Rush says. “It was really heartbreaking and devastating.
“He was just the most generous actor I’ve ever worked with. The thing I remember him most for was the fact that he gave me more on my coverage than he gave himself,” she adds. “I remember I ended up really only getting to do one scene with him, but that scene we shot for a whole day because Ray was coming into town and it was really important that we get it right. It was toward the end of filming and at the second half of the day when the camera turned around to me, Ray was giving me more and I was just like, ‘wow, he’s such a generous guy.’ You would think that this legendary actor wouldn’t really care about someone else’s coverage, but I was just really inspired by that.”
Up next: While the SAG-AFTRA strike was in place, Rush spent her time working on writing a feature film, which she describes as a coming-of-age story about a friendship breakup.
“It came out of nowhere, honestly. I was watching Israeli ‘Big Brother’ and there was a guy with anger issues that everyone wanted out of the house, so he honestly inspired it,” she says. “I thought it was going to be a really dark story about a young kid who’s battling anger issues. Then it just turned into something else completely…it became a much lighter comedic story and I added a female character and now they’re best friends and now it’s turned into something else completely.”
