The Crowe Has Landed
The Summit
By Marianne Gray

It was neither the length of his tunic not the size of his pecs that won Russell Crowe the Oscar for Gladiator last March. It was his pure full-on talent crossed with a rough diamond machismo, which got him that golden statuette. Let’s not forget his staggeringly great performance (and Oscar nomination) in The Insider last year and, before that L.A.Confidential. With his pert little Clara Bow lips, the man is that rarity, a brilliant actor as well as box–office magic.

One might say that this crow has flow and successfully landed on Hollywood’s A-list amidst a swirling maelstrom of public fascination, stories of bar-room brawling and big word on the block as a lady–killer.

Crowe is a nice bloke but he doesn’t mince his words and doesn’t mess about. The first time I interviewed him was in Sydney in 1992. He’d stormed out of the room when somebody asked him a touchy question, and I had to do an interview with him over the phone. It had been one of those ‘yes/no’ type deals -- a journalist’s worst nightmare.

The next time, for The Insider, I had to sign a form to say I wouldn’t sell the story to any Rupert Murdoch newspaper, which was rather refreshing in an industry too used to kow towing to the big brass. This time, for Proof of Life, he is older, larger, still a bit scratchy but much smarter. He’s trying hard to please, the ‘sensitive brute’ role nicely under control.

"Did they tell you it was only one question -- and I get to tell you what it is?" he jokes, whisking a frothy cappuccino, his broad shoulders braced. "The stuff you guys make up is interesting," he adds with a smile. ‘I don’t read much about myself any more. Never believe what you read in magazines, it’s so much bullshit. I just let it slide. The important thing for me is not to driven by praise and slowed by criticism." He was momentarily forced to pause when accepting the EMPRIE magazine Best Actor award but recovered quickly enough to say "it sticks in my throat to have to thank a magazine, but…"

Russell Crowe is a rugged 37 but looks younger, more boyish and not terribly big. His complexion is tanned, but slightly podgy. Some have described him as looking a like a bit of boiled potato, but on screen he’s a sexy guy. Off screen he gives laconic a new outing. When I asked him if he feels likes the same person since this rush of fame he replied in his flat Aussie accent with a challenging look "No, I haven’t changed. I’m still the same asshole, I still smoke 20 cigarettes a day, still enjoy a drink with the boys and still enjoy my job."

"And I’m still doing it the same way I was doing it before. I’ve never altered the process. I grind my acting techniques in meticulous preparation with as sort of tunnel vision, simply cutting myself off and going from my cave to the job and back again to the cave. I have a thing that goes through my head, that if I do the best I possibly can on the day, any given day, on whatever job it is, then that’s all I can actually do."

The "Job" stared in Australia where Crowe became a household name after playing a deranged racist skinhead in the 1992 Melbourne film Romper Stomper. Then Sharon Stone spotted him, and flew him out to be her love interest in the western The Quick & the Dead. Then came L.A. Confidential with Kim Bassinger, and he was in.

One sixteenth Maori and proud of it (his cousin is the Kiwi legend Martin Crowe) Auckland born Crowe has done, he says , 22 leading roles in films already. Raised in New Zealand and Australia, he has knocked about on film sets since he was a kid.

‘My parents were location caterers and my grandfather was a cinematographer so I’m third generation involved in the industry, and the first one stupid enough to sand in front of the camera."

He got his first acting role at six as an extra in Spyforce. At 12 he had an agent, at 17 he dropped out of school to be a DJ and cut a disc. In 1986 he moved to Sydney, to wait tables, do theatre work, tour as a song and dance man with the Rocky Horror Picture Show and do a stint in Neighbours (as Kenny Larkin). He even played Dominic in Brides of Christ.

"My parents thought it was really important to teach me how to dance and one of he first things I want to do with actress when we work together is manufacture a situation where we dance together. I can sense so many things when I’m dancing, like does she trust me, does she understand me, will she go round these scenes, this script with and open mind?"

After various films many of us may not have heard of like The Sum of Us in which he played a gay plumber, in 1991 he won an Australian version of the best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in the drama Proof. Then came Romper Stomper and more awards. Now he has joined the handful of Australians like Rachel Griffiths, Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger and Geoffrey Rush, who regularly get on the plane to go to work in Los Angeles. His fee is reportedly $15m – 20m. He says he would like to mature into directing but the first has several films to do starting with A Beautiful Mind as a paranoid schizophrenic mathematician.

‘I think there’s a natural progression where sooner or later you will have to start telling the WHOLE story. It’s a big step and I think I’m in denial about it because it’s scary with lots of responsibility. The first film might not be any good. The first three might be shithouse, but sooner or later I will find the material that matches my abilities whatever they are.’

Crowe’s abilities to create and perform so far have proved daunting. He brings a boiling intensity to every role. For his last film Proof Of Life , co starring Meg Ryan, he studied with the SAS and lived in a caravan in the jungle to tap into his role as a K & R (Kidnap & Ransom) hostage negotiator in a Latin American country.

‘I was actually covered by K & R insurance while we were shooting’ he says "I’d never heard of K & R before I was sent the script. It’s an industry that’s grown up since the second world war as US business expanded into South America and Asia and the threat of kidnapping American personnel increased. We were aware it could happen to us at any time’

For the cigarette industry expose The Insider playing a 52 year old man when he was 33 he has to put on 48 lbs.

"I went on a medically controlled diet of bourbon and cheeseburgers – and I had a ball! Heavenly ! But it was hell trying to lose it again. I also made some other physical changes like making my lips disappear, as my character Dr Jeffrey Wigand, has no lips, and I basically changed shape altogether. The weight I put on I had to loose for my next film Gladiator, Can’t have chubby gladiators in an arena of ancient Rome!’

As Maximus, he plays a former general stripped of his rank and reduced to the status of a gladiator who fights everything from tigers to Emperor of Rome.

‘Maxiumus was just a big-ass fucking bloke with big, long fat muscles from wielding swords and driving a horse with 70lbs of armour on, you try doing that day after day. It beat the piss out of StairMaster.’

Should Crowe have a StairMaster, it would be at his ranch in Australia, somewhere seven hours north of Sydney in a remote corner of New South Wales’ North Coast where his mother Jocelyn, father Alex and older brother Terry live full time. However last year he only got to sleep 21 nights there , so frantic was his work schedule. Casa Crowe is 560 acres of space, trees, cows and horses, three dogs, a few chickens, and he likes to walk around with a little backpack containing a tiny bush stove, powdered milk, coffee, sugar, a metal cup and a Billy.

"I’m not really cut out to be a farmer but I get a lot of pleasure from walking with my dogs, a five hour hike around the property and dealing with the animals. It’s like a holiday. Where my home is there is a family of platypus, turtles in the creeks, kookaburras and kangaroos." (Rumour has it that part of the reason for his break- up with Meg Ryan was his ‘bovine commitment’, which she didn’t altogether appreciate).

He writes stories that he hopes one day will progress to scripts and sings in his own rock band, formed during high school and called Roman Antix, now re-titled 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. He used to work under the name Russ le Roc (and had a single out in New Zealand called "I want to be like Marlon Brando") and reckons songwriting comes very high on his pleasure list.

‘Some things happen in life and there’s no better way to put them in focus than to put them into a three and half minute song. I’m pretty high on unrequited love songs!"

(Thanks to the chedge)