Much To Crowe About
TV Week (Australia) Jan 1-7 2000
He's generating Oscar buzz thanks to a hot new movie role but, despite being on a career high, the boisterous actor is not doing anything to steer clear of his down and dirty image....
Russell Crowe rolls his eyes as he hears he's been described as the next Marlon Brando.
"What does it mean?" he reflects on a recent US magazine cover story making the Brando claim. "Look, I think Brando is one of the greatest actors of the century, but I think it's a bit much when you apply it to me - I'm just trying to do my job."
And what a job Russell is doing, judging from his ever-increasing profile as a Hollywood movie star. When the Australian film Romper Stomper first brought him to the attention of US casting agents seven years ago, he quickly landed a succession of major roles in films such as The Quick and The Dead, with Sharon Stone, Virtuosity, with Denzel Washington and the Oscar- nominated L.A.Confidential.
Now the 35-year-old actor is appearing in three upcoming films - Mystery, Alaska (written by Ally McBeal andThe Practice creater David E. Kelley), The Insider and the big-budget Ridley Scott epic Gladiator, in which he plays a Roman general in AD185.
Then there's the Oscar buzz that's building for his performance in The Insider, based on the true story about tobacco industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand and his collaboration with a documentary producer, who fought for his story to be finally aired.
"Sometimes in corporate and media-driven America, it's very hard for the truth to be heard and I think that's what this story is about," Russell says.
Part of the critical acclaim centred around Russell in The Insider stems from the dramatic change in his appearance, starting the film at 82kg and finishing at 104kg.
"Michael (Mann, the director) told me I could be whatever size I wanted because I wasn't impersonating Jeffrey, but once I began researching the character I realised it was necessary - just as you can't suddenly play (former US president) Abraham Lincoln with a moustache," he explains.
In a no-holds-barred interview, a chain-smoking Russell (who is the first to admit the irony considering The Insider is all about bringing down the tobacco industry) also acknowledges he had some physical changes when doing Mystery, Alaska, where he had to learn who to ice-skate.
In our quirky film, a publicity stunt turns into the ultimate lopsided competition when the world-famous New York Rangers face off against the team from Mystery, Alaska, a hockey-loving town of only 633 people with a team made up of eccentric locals including the town's sheriff John Biebe (Crowe) and coached by the town's Judge Walter Burns (Burt Reynolds).
Russell admits his passion for work can often get in the way of his love-life. "Some people just can't deal with the dramatic changes all the time, including the way I look," he shrugs.
Talking about his Australian home, a farm he bought seven hours north of Sydney, Russell's eyes light up.
"There's some wildlife up there," he adds. "The other day I went for a walk with a lady and this bull started charging after us in a paddock. I had to quickly get her over the fence and explain that it hardly ever happens. Then a mile up the road she sees the very poisonous red-bellied black snake, and I pulled it out of her way. I doubt she'll be coming for a walk with me again."
Clearly happier on the farm than playing the Hollywood publicity game, Russell was understandably peeved earlier this year when his afternoon at a Sydney rugby match with Tom Cruise became a top news story on television.
"I mean, what's the big deal - a couple of blokes going to the football," he says with disgust.
Its probably a reputation for bluntness and a volatile temper (he recently got some negative press after a drunken brawl outside a Coffs Harbour, NSW, hotel during which he allegedly bit a fellow patron on the neck) that has earned Russell the "difficult" tag.
"I don't care what people say," he responds. "If we're doing the job right, then I'm easy as pie. Some people say cinema's not a serious job, but I used to be the bloke lining up for the ticket and I want to make sure that person is getting their money's worth. Some people I work with appreciate that but others who don't say I'm difficult." (no author given) (Thanks to Katrina!)
Crowe Joins the Heavyweights
By Lawrie Zion
Sydney Morning Herald, 30 Dec 1999
The buzz is that Russell Crowe will be an Oscar contender. Here, he gives his first interview since his Golden Globe nomination for his role in The Insider.
A film-biz acquaintance at one of those noisy end-of-year restaurant dinners asked me, "How do you think Australians will react when they discover that Russell Crowe is going to get nominated for an Academy Award?"
Like many others within the movie industry, she had become aware of the growing buzz around Crowe's performance in The Insider. A few weeks on, with two critics awards and a Golden Globe nomination under his belt, the idea that Crowe might be delivering an Oscar speech in March has begun to take hold of the public imagination.
In the performance that has become the focus of all this speculation, 35-year-old Crowe plays a real-life former tobacco executive called Jeffrey Wigand who blows the whistle on his company's findings about the addictive powers of nicotine. Directed by Michael Mann, the film details how Wigand was persuaded to spill the beans by 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (played by Al Pacino). It also shows how the segment containing his revelations was pulled by a nervous CBS Network just before going to air.
Wigand pays a heavy price for speaking out. Over the course of the film, he loses his home, his family and his trust in others. And it's Crowe's nuanced portrayal of the older, larger and balder Wigand's deteriorating circumstances that make his performance so fascinating, and provide the film with its moral and visual core.
I have no idea how Australians will react if Crowe is nominated for an Oscar, though I suspect that the tabloids will start pushing the "Our Russell" line. But I'm curious to find out how he feels about being a frontrunner.
"I've never read a sufficient answer to that question in a magazine article," says Crowe. "And every year there are 10 or 12 different actors who continually get asked it. So, putting all cynicism, self-protection, all that sort of stuff aside, I've watched the Academy Awards since I was a kid. I work in the business. I've worked in the business since I was six years old. It's a peer-voted system. It is the pinnacle of public achievement. And that doesn't mean that everybody who wins one is on the same level. But - I'm just talking about in terms of public perception of what you do - there's nothing bigger than that for my job.
"So, to have any kind of cool attitude towards it where you say [with fake American accent], 'It's not important and I don't believe in competition between performers', and all that is odd. I mean, I don't believe in competition, but it's not that sort of competition. It's not a football match. It's a recognition thing. And it's not four or five people lined up to do a 100-metre sprint. It's four or five people who have already been acknowledged by their peers.
"But actors are very superstitious people. And the fact that we've had this conversation rules out any possibility of me ever winning it, anyway...
"Even the fact you're mentioned in dispatches is very nice. And obviously you enjoy it if people enjoy your gig. But I try not to focus anything I need on other people's opinions, be they negative or positive. I mean, it's all complimentary and all that, but it's not going to change the way I put on my pants."
It's a Saturday night in inner-suburban Sydney, where Crowe is working in a nondescript editing suite on a project he's not quite ready to talk about.
He is happy, though, to talk about Michael Mann, best known for directing Heat and The Last of the Mohicans. "I read the script [of The Insider] and I couldn't quite believe it. It was magnificent - one of the top three or four experiences of a read I've had - goosebumps and the whole bit. But I couldn't work out which character he wanted me to play."
Crowe was stunned to discover he was being considered for the role of the 50-something Wigand. Not only was he considerably slimmer and not balding, he's also more than 15 years younger than the character he would eventually play. He was intrigued.
"The more I thought about it, the stranger I thought the idea was. By the time Michael Mann organised to fly me down to see him and talk about it, I had this big speech about how he shouldn't be hiring me - that there are all these great 50-year-old actors who would do a really good job. And that was the opening of the conversation.
"But as I was rabbiting on, he put his hand on my chest and said, 'I'm not talking to you because of your age. I'm talking to you because of what you have in here.' And it might sound like I'm a sucker or an easy mark. But that's exactly the kind of director I want to work with - someone whose thought processes are so advanced that he's gone well beyond all the obvious things like age, weight, hair colour."
While Mann felt Crowe didn't need to physically resemble his character's real-life inspiration, the actor did. Crowe gave up exercising, had his hair bleached and thinned and eventually took to a wig. He also set about gaining weight.
"I needed the weight because I'd get out of a car differently. I needed the weight so that when I fell over in front of my house, it would be far more pathetic. And eventually we just melded; all the things that he wanted and that I needed became the same things, and we found the right way to do it all."
For Crowe, the right way involved illustrating the very nature of Wigand's troubles. In response to my observation that his character, faced with the collapse of his known world, seemed paralysed by an imploding fury, Crowe offers a slightly different take.
"He's impotent, though, isn't he? He's being got at, pursued, and there's nothing he can do about it. He doesn't have the money, doesn't have the influence.
He has absolutely no power; his whole life is under threat - his family's under threat. And he finally comes to the idea that if he goes on public record, by telling the truth, he can then defend his family. But he has no idea that anything he has ever done in his life could possibly bring about this much ire and anger towards him."
Over the course of our discussion, Crowe repeatedly makes references to Mann's professional prowess. It is clearly the musing of someone who has experienced a productive working relationship.
"[Mann] is a workaholic and a megalomaniac and, when I say that, I say it with great affection," Crowe says.
The other key relationship he had to negotiate while making The Insider was the one with the man he was playing on the screen. But while the real Jeffrey Wigand has given a big thumbs-up to Crowe's performance, Crowe was initially reluctant to meet him.
"It's funny. Michael said, 'Do you want to meet him?' and I said, 'No, I'm fine.' And he said, 'What are you talking about?' And I said, 'I don't feel I want to meet him.' And he said, 'But why wouldn't you want to meet him?' And I said I didn't want him to tell me his opinion of how he wants to be portrayed. I want to keep this objective gap here, and just do it as I see it." But Mann finally wore Crowe down.
"So I met Jeffrey and then we hit a few golf balls together and then we sat down and we talked. And I asked him a lot of questions ... And what got me was that, with all this intellectualising and studying I'd been doing, maybe the thing I hadn't quite set within myself was the basic emotional journey of a real man in a series of true events. For Wigand, it wasn't a narrative or a script. It was his f--ing life. And I got out of that conversation, and I never said it out loud to him or anything, but what I was saying in my heart was that I must honour this man. So it was really important that I'd met him."
For his next project, Crowe will star alongside Meg Ryan in Proof of Life, playing a hostage negotiator who falls in love with the wife of the man he is trying to save. Although Crowe's character was written as an Englishman, he went into negotiations for the role with the request that he could play an Australian.
"I didn't see that he needed to be an Englishman. It was a fictional story. And I approached it with [director] Taylor Hackford and he actually had thought - because the next nine choices were all American - that he was going to make the character American anyway. So we discussed that possibility.
"But I kind of made it a more serious thing and said that I was interested in playing it if I could do it as an Australian. Didn't see that it required being an Englishman or American, and, frankly, I'm looking for a role where I can simply use my own speaking voice. And he got it. We did a couple of scenes and he said it's not going to affect it at all."
Crowe says that the role is being adjusted accordingly, but that "there is no need for it to have Australianness in a generalised way you would think of as Australian in a movie".
But isn't there an irony here that Crowe has to go to the United States to play an Australian? Would he consider returning home to work on a film? These are interesting questions in the wake of Crowe's recent exchange with fellow actor Bryan Brown at the AFI awards, where Crowe - in response to Brown's disparaging remarks about the Fox Studios complex - talked about the reality of Australian talent needing to work globally.
"Well, it's got to be the right film. I don't give a f-- where I work. I want to be a positive part of the Australian film industry. But to me, at the moment, I haven't read anything that I really want to do."
In previous discussions, Crowe has hinted that he wants to be part of this talent push - not only as an actor, but also as a director. Now he confirms that he's getting serious about the role change.
"I've already set the dates for the first feature film that I'll direct. It's a particular project based on a particular book and the script is in its fourth-draft phase," he says.
"But the hardest thing for me with that is that I can't get a budget to direct a movie without being in it. And I'm really not sure that I can do both things. There are plenty of examples of others who can and who do it brilliantly, like Mel [Gibson], Jodie Foster. But I'm different, and I'm not sure if I can do both."
As to who might star in a Russell Crowe-directed project, a few clues are offered. "I've been seeing a lot of Australian theatre in the past 12 to 16 months, and I've studied Australian actors since I first did it, so I really know who's around. And Jeremy Sims is the greatest Australian actor at this point in time. I can't quite understand how he has not been able to translate the power to the screen. But I've been thinking about it a lot and I think I may be able to help him."
Crowe's decade:
2000 Gladiator
1999 The Insider, Mystery Alaska
1997 Breaking Up, Heaven's Burning, LA Confidential, Rough Magic
1995 Virtuosity, The Quick and the Dead
1994 For the Moment, The Sum of Us
1993 Love in Limbo, The Silver Brumby
1992 Romper Stomper
1991 Proof, Hammers Over the Anvil, Spotswood
1990 The Crossing
© Copyright Sydney Morning Herald
Crowe in Cruisy Mood
By Peter Hyde
Sun Herald, 19 Dec 1999
HOLLYWOOD stars Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe took a day off, hopped in a Gulfstream private jet and flew to Coffs Harbour for the day to ride motorbikes.
Following Crowe's recent headline-grabbing brawl outside a Coffs Harbour nightclub, he must have taken some good behaviour tips from his friend Cruise on the Thursday jaunt.
Bypassing vehicles parked close to the plane to whisk them away, the stars, both wearing sunglasses, casually walked to the airport terminal to meet fans.
They shook hands and talked with people through the fence. Some people got past the gate and had their photos taken with the stars. Crowe and Cruise helped out by taking some snaps.
Then they hopped in a Nissan four-wheel drive and went to collect their bikes for a spin from Coffs Harbour up the mountain range to Dorrigo.
Later they called in at the Coffs Harbour Hotel for a round of drinks.
Bar manager Leigh Crimmins said the group arrived on five Ducati and two Harley-Davidson bikes and stayed for half an hour. ``They were happy and talked about motorbikes," said Mr Crimmins.``Tom Cruise was very friendly, just one of the boys."
The Coffs Harbour Hotel is only 100 metres from the Saloon Bar where Crowe had been drinking before the infamous brawl.
Cruise flew back to Sydney on Thursday night.
Crowe, 35, stayed at the farm he shares with his family.
Asked about his visit, he smiled and said ``Merry Christmas".
© Copyright Sun Herald
Street Fighter
By Craig Henderson
Who Weekly, November 6, 1999
Russell Crowe’s latest screen appearance - a security video that shows him brawling outside a NSW nightclub - is unlikely to arrest his exploding career.
November 17 was ladies’ night at the Saloon Bar in the serene NSW holiday town of Coff’s Harbour. A huge barnyard of a joint on the town’s main drag, it's the place to go, and on this night the crowd of about 150 were mostly rock n’ rollers who had drifted in from a Mark Lizotte concert at the nearby Sawtell RSL Club. Among them, sharing a drink with his older brother, Terry, and a minder, was New-Zealand-born, Australian-raised actor Russell Crowe. While he is not a regular at the Saloon, he’s no blow-in either. Crowe bought a 226ha farm nearby in the mid-90’s and has taken a drink at the bar more than once. And it wasn’t just his celebrity that got him noticed on those occasions. "We’ve had to have a couple of words with him in the past" says a staffer. "He has been a bit boisterous, but there’s been no physical abuse."
Until now, that is. About 3am on Thursday, Nov.18, approximately two hours after he’d arrived, security cameras outside the bar in Grafton St. captured Crowe in a rage that could have been a scene from his tough-guy hit LA Confidential or, worse, Romper Stomper. In quick succession Crowe appeared to start three fights, argue heatedly with a woman, throw a punch at his brother and, finally, be pinned to the ground by a security guard. Local police arrived a short time later but Crowe had left in a waiting limousine. When the dust had settled on the extraordinary events, police and locals assessed the damage: Crowe’s friend and local publican Marty Phillips had a broken thumb, and, apparently, a chunk of flesh out of his neck; Crowe reportedly had a scratch under his eye. And while a police source said no complaints have yet been made, "I can’t tell you what might happen in the future". What is clear, though, is the damage to Crowe’s local reputation. Says Saloon Bar co-owner Mark Potts: "Unfortunately all it takes is one ant to ruin the picnic. And he (Crowe) was the ant."
Which is unfamiliar stature for Hollywood’s Next Big Thing. And while the incident is unlikely to alter the trajectory of 35-year-old Crowe’s suddenly stellar career -- "They don’t care, says director and Crowe mate Geoffrey Wright of Hollywood’s likely reaction to the violent incident -- it has some left wondering where all that anger springs from. After all, with talk of an Oscar nod for his work on The Insider and good box office for his other US screen release, Mystery, Alaska, Crowe would seem to have very little to be angry about.
The Insider’s director, Michael Mann, has even been moved to compare Crowe to "a young Marlon Brando."
But amid all the recent accolades there has been at least one gentle warning. "There’s a fire in him that burns all night long, all day long, all the time", Mystery Alaska castmate Burt Reynolds told GQ magazine recently. "And that may hurt him because people don’t understand that sort of flame." Adds Dean Cochran -- a member of the actor’s part-time rock band, Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts, and a childhood friend: "Russell knows how powerful negative energy is...It’s almost as if he’s engineering a negative situation to prepare for a positive one."
Radio host Andrew Denton thinks he knows why people see his mate as difficult. "It’s because he’s a lot smarter and a lot more willing to take a risk than all his contemporaries, which is what makes him so much more entertaining." Denton says he’d "go the extra six yards" for Crowe "because he is always going to give me value for money. I don’t find him difficult in the slightest, quite the opposite: I wish there were more of him."
Denton’s not alone. Making the ice-hockey themed Mystery Alaska outside snow-slathered Clagary, "Russell stopped shooting and had the crew sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me," says actress Megyn Price. "Then his assistant brought in this huge platter of strawberries, which is my favourite food." Actress Salma Hayek was touched, too, when Crowe showered her with gifts every day while filming Breaking Up in 1996. "I adore Russell", she said. "It was so flattering."
Crowe insists that any good guy-bad guy dichotomy is neither his fault nor his problem. "Somebody tags you as a bad boy, man, and that stays," he told Who Weekly in 1995. "The reality is that it’s other people’s fantasies and other people’s agendas and that’s what gets put in the newspapers. (But) I’m just a little bit malleable, soft-tissued thing." In truth, no one else could get away with calling Crowe soft.
Indeed Crowe takes umbrage at any outsider who makes an assessment of him. "The misunderstanding about a higher public profile happens when the press construes it as being some sort of wonderful, easy-street life -- that’s bullsh--t, man," Crowe said in ‘95. "This is not whining about what I do, but the by-product of a higher profile for me has been that now I have to put up with people telling me what my opinions are."
Another unfortunate by-product of his Hollywood fame had been the travel -- too much of it. "I come back between jobs, even if it’s only a week, to get a bit of sanity," he said, noting that long months apart caused him to split with girlfriend and The Crossing co-star Danielle Spencer. "I can work over there and I have friends over there...there’s some great people in America, but the bottom line is it’s not my country, it’s not where I come from."
Where he does come from is Auckland. One-sixteenth Maori, he grew up the second of hotel manager Alex and Jocelyn’s two sons. In an interview with Woman’s Day last month, Crowe revealed he was "an embarrassment to my parents" in those early NZ days. "Mum used to say, 'Don’t worry about Russell. He’s a bit mental.'" He said of his tough-as-nails childhood. "If a fight starts in an Australian hotel... everyone will work on stopping it," he once said. "In a New Zealand hotel, someone’s going to get seriously hurt."
In 1968, the Crowes moved to Sydney, where Alex and Jocelyn catered on the set of Spyforce, staring Jack Thompson (Crowe would later star as a gay plumber alongside Thompson in The Sum of Us). Young Russell became a regular on the film and TV sets and soon decided the life of an actor was for him. "Even at 6," he joked to Pacificwave magazine last year, "I would look at the 28-year-old guy playing a war veteran in a film and tell my parents, 'I don’t know why the director doesn’t see me in that role.'" Crowe did pick up acting work and at 12 landed two episodes on The Young Doctors.
Two years later the Crowes were back in NZ, where keen guitarist Russell dropped out in the final year of high school. Under the name Russ Le Roc, he tried his hand at music. "I released a few records that went rocketing straight to the bottom of the charts," he told Pacificwave (one release was prophetically titled "I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando"). Returning to Australia in the mid '80s, he picked up work as a car washer and as a waiter at the famous Sydney restaurant Doyles on the Beach. "He was thought of as arrogant and a bit of a dickhead, frankly," says one former Doyles Colleague. "He told everyone he was going to be an actor but no one believed him."
Crowe never doubted it and this determination and his musical prowess led him to the stage. Director George Ogilvie was so impressed after catching Crowe in the musical Blood Brothers in ‘89 he offered him his first movie role, 1990’s The Crossing. Two years later, Crowe mesmerized and horrified in Geoffrey Wright’s Romper Stomper. Russell "took it to the max," says Wright. During the climax in which Crowe strangles co-star Jacqueline McKenzie, "he’s actually attacking her", notes Wright. "It’s hard to restrain Russell. If it’s in the script and he hits someone, he kinda hits them. He doesn’t bluff."
The approach worked, earning Crowe the 1993 AFI award for best actor. His off-screen performances drew less acclaim. After accepting the gong in ‘93, Crowe pulled a stupid face behind PM Paul Keating’s back. "We shook hands and he didn’t look me in the eye", Crowe explained at the time, "and that really annoyed me."
Sharon Stone had no problem locking eyes with Crowe. Assembling a cast for her 1995 western The Quick and the Dead, Stone fought hard to sign him up. "It took her a lot of pressure and conversation and effort to convince people to hire this basically unknown actor," Crowe told Who that year. For Stone, the attraction was simple: "(Crowe is) the sexiest guy working in movies."
Although well-received in that film, Crowe remained something of an oddity. "I don’t think the Americans really understood him at first," says Wright. "They put him in a lot of stupid films. I think he bullied a lot of American directors. I think they were frightened of him."
And yet, many remained intrigued. The Quick and the Dead was followed by Virtuosity (‘95), Rough Magic (‘95), Heaven’s Burning (‘97), and Breaking Up (‘97).
But it was his portrayal of Sgt. Bud White in ‘97's L.A. Confidential that put Crowe’s name in the Rolodex of Hollywood’s top directors -- many of who seem prepared to wear his temperament. "Russell was relentless in his pursuit of the essence of the character," said Confidential director Curtis Hanson. "If that made him a pain in the ass sometimes, you live with it. What I don’t like is living with someone who’s a pain in the ass whether out of star stuff or just self-involvement. With Russell it was about the work."
While work has kept Crowe in the US for up to seven months a year, his heart remains in his adoptive Australia. Originally a ramshackle affair, the farm is now an oasis for Crowe and his family, all of whom live with him. "He’s spent big bucks on it," says a local. "The new place has a massive in-ground swimming pool set into the side of a hill with landscaping all the way around it and a spa." There is also a full gym in an old horse stable. "I have 48 cows, a horse, three dogs, and five chickens," Crowe explained last year. "I’m just a big softie when it comes to the farm. These animals are my friends."
A passionate sports fan (his cousin Martin Crowe was a New Zealand cricket captain), Crowe spent many weekends traveling to Sydney to support the now defunct South Sydney rugby team. His beloved Souths were recently "rationalized" by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd. Crowe even dragged pal Tom Cruise to a game or two to help the cause. During a Nov. 20 fund-raiser, Crowe paid more than $40,000 for a brass handbell used during the first league game in Australia, in 1908. "His support for Souths is very generous and very real," says fellow supporter Denton. "He’s been there, he’s taken Souths league players out on the town -- it ain’t all just a showbiz thing."
The showbiz thing will engulf Russell Crowe once again when he returns to the US after Christmas to work on Proof of Life with Meg Ryan. Back in Coffs Harbour some will be glad to see him go. "He is not welcome back here again," says Mark Potts. "I don’t care whether he’s Russell Crowe or John Smith -- he will not get preferential treatment just because he’s a Hollywood star."
Except of course in Hollywood.
*Michelle Coffey, Penelope Green and Helen Martin in Sydney and Shelli-Anne Couch in Los Angeles. (Thanks to Katrina!)
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