Maximum Russell Crowe
Scrapbook: 2002

Parkinson: Now let me put this list to you. You played a neo-Nazi, a brutal cop, a Roman general -- "On my signal unleash hell." Is that a good reading?

Russell: (laughing) No.

P: . . . A sheriff who plays ice hockey, a scientist who is a whistleblower, a gay plumber, and in this part a genius mathematician who is also a paranoid schizophrenic. Would you say you're being typecast?

RC: It's starting to build that way, isn't it?

P: What's the common denominative in all these? What is it you're looking for all the time?

RC: Every single one of those movies is a really good story, it's a good narrative you know, that's all I'm interested in doing, I don't covet roles. I don't go around thinking now I need to play a man who wears a skirt and speaks in a slightly Royal Shakespeare Company accent.

I don't think in those terms. I just read the scripts, I'll have a sort of physical reaction and that'll end up being the one that I do, you know? I begin to read the script and I'll get involved on a real subconscious level and I start to make notes and I'll start to work on it and it just happens on a natural progression. And then there is something I call the goose bump factor. Where I'm completely and emotionally involved and I actually get goose bumps, as simple as that.

P: So that's a sort of a Litmus test for the part?

RC: Well for me, we are just storytellers you know, a modern version of a very ancient art. I don't care how good, or bad I'm suppose to look. I have as you may noticed(giggles) not many worries about personal grooming (audience laughs).

You know for me it's about the journey an audience goes through. And I have done some movies that weren't that successful at all. Take a movie like Mystery, Alaska, where I play the ice hockey-playing sheriff. That was basically a womens film about relationships, cast in terms of a movie about ice hockey. No wonder Disney was having a heart attack trying to sell that film. And it wasn't very successful at the box-office, but consequently it became very successful in terms of people seeing it on video and DVD and talking about what a great story it was and what a great group of characters.

P: But I would imagine that of all the parts you played this latest part you play, that of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind would seem to be, at least to me, the most difficult proposition of all. Here you have to depict madness, but more than that, you have to depict what's going on in a madman's mind. Tell us a bit about John Nash. Fill us in, because he was an extraordinary man, he was a mathematical genius, he was a paranoid schizophrenic, just take it from here.

RC: Well, John did his major work in Princeton, from the late '40s to the early '50s. He was not necessarily everybody's idea of a popular fellow, you know. He was very intent on coming up with what he termed an original idea. "Governing dynamics" is actually the term we used in the film. But he was overtaken by schizophrenia. And the middle of his life has 30 - 35 years of hospitalization and medication and wandering the world in search of answers for himself. And through this he has the support of a wonderful woman, Alicia, who he married and later divorced and recently married again.

The big points in John's life are genius, madness and the Nobel Prize. But the great thing we tell in this movie is about the wonderful love story that lasted for five decades.

P: What about playing a part like this, especially when the man is alive. Now, you'd never met him, did you?

RC: You know you are working with a director and you have to work to the director's priorities. You only have a limited amount of time in pre-production. So, it's just one of those things that slip down the list. However, when I was doing my research in Australia and I would have questions, I asked Ron to go and see Nash and videotape John giving me the answers. So I had sort of a dialogue but, without the adrenaline of actually having the man who is about to portray you sitting in front of him. I was hoping to get cleaner answers. You know, the questions I asked John were not necessarily difficult. I had about 17 black and white photographs of him as a younger man and would ask "did you wear a beard?" And he'd say "no." But I had a photograph of him wearing a beard in Switzerland, and he did that for a number of years. So what I realized was that Nash himself, because of the hospitalization, medication and the disease, was not going to be a great witness to his own life. So I had to find other ways of finding out.

(Show film clip)

P: Do you watch your movies?

RC: Yeah, the first time I do it, I try to do it alone because I relive the emotional journey, Probably a very scary sight. But for this movie, unfortunately the first time I'd seen it was in a special screening for the governor of Texas, in Austin, Texas, with some 500 to 600 people in the room. And I did ask them to leave free seats on either side of me. Because I was going (moves around in chair) drooling and stuff, and if I cry in the movie then I cry in my chair you know. But that happens only once. Then sometimes I see the movie again and sometimes I don't.

P: Are you always satisfied with what you see?

RC: Occasionally there will be a small passage, like a few bars here, a phrase there, but I think being satisfied is a very dangerous place for an actor to go to, you know? I mean I'm happy with my life. I really enjoy my work. I love characterization. It's still a massive challenge. Cinema is an elusive medium and I think that's a very healthy state of mind for an actor.

P: You spend a lot of time working but you seem to be spending an equal amount of time avoiding Hollywood. You have your base in Northern New South Wales and you have this wonderful spread out there.

RC: Yeah, 750 acres, we've got -- including all the recent babies (smiles) 412 cattle out there. We're running out of space. That's something I have to work out. Yeah, the farm is a place I have constructed, I mean, I spent my life with my dad being a pub manager living from hotel to hotel, living in those places. We didn't have a individual free-standing dwelling house until I was about 14. So the gypsy-life is kinda natural to me. Growing up with
numbers on your bedroom door, you're pretty used to it. But the house, the farm is about constructing that solid base I never had as a kid growing up. My parents live there, my brother lives there. And you know I can have about 60 people stay there without them bumping into each other. It's all little buildings out here
and there. Some have more facilities then others but, it's Australia mate. You'll just have to get used to it!

(Everyone laughs)

P: Yeah, it's Australia mate -- this sounds like Disney, but on those 700 acres living out there, what bites you kills you. You live in the most toxic country in the world.

RC: Yes. We have redbelly-back snakes. King brown snakes, redback spiders -- and there's Australian women.

P: They bite too?

RC: Absolutely! Well -- you've got two coming on -- I better get out of here. (Laughing).

P: So that's the base, that's Russell Crowe's home.

RC: Really healthy. People are always asking me why I don't live in L.A., why I don't live in Hollywood. But to me that would be like rolling out a swag in the office and to me that's just not healthy. What objectivity that I bring to -- not only the roles -- but to Hollywood, that's why they actually will want to hire me in the first place.

P: There is no danger there then that you will be perceived as being a kind of an outsider in Hollywood? I mean for instance the Oscars -- you won one and are up for another for this film -- isn't there a danger because Hollywood is a very political place, where you have to play the game, that you might be denied what is justifiable yours?

RC: Well, as I think you know, things are really going badly for me. (Smiles).

P: Yeah they are, aren't they?

RC: But I don't think so, because the great filmmakers don't live in Hollywood either. Everybody goes to Hollywood because that's the center of the business. Everybody is financed from out there and the great film directors work out of there. But you know, Francis Ford Coppola lives in San Francisco. Ron Howard lives in New York, Baz Lurhmann lives in Australia. You don't have to be living there to do the work. And you know, playing the game is also a strange series of definitions as well. I do my job to best of my ability. When I'm required to make a film, I get on the bandwagon and bang the pots. I will question the people I'm working with every day, and I will probably annoy the hell out of them during that period of time. But in post-production when they see the options that I have given them, they realize it's a gold mine you know? And that's only because I'm there to work every day. I'm not late and at the end of the day, if he wants to go another four hours, I'll be there.

P: I suppose the perception is that you're not smooth, that you don't play that political game.

RC: Ahhhh….Smooth.

There you go. (Laughs). Do you ever meet a smooth Aussie, or is that a contradiction in terms?

(Both laugh)

P: You know what I mean. You do the media, but you can be testy with the media.

RC: Yeah, well, why not? Most of the people that work in your job are a pack of bloody idiots.

(Audience laughs)

P: You'll do it under sufferance in that sense?

RC: Well yeah, I mean conversation is one thing, but then other people will come up to you with an agenda you know nothing about, you know? And you're supposed to glad-hand and soft sell, and I'm not like that. If I sense that you're trying to pull the wool over my eyes or (?), then I'll come back at you at that same level of energy.

(Everyone laughs).

And then they put in the column; "Oh, he was being a nasty boy." But they forget to put that "I (the writer) was being an asshole to begin with and then got caught!"

P: The interesting thing about you being an actor -- you were never in acting school.

RC: No. I was on film sets from the time I was six. I knew there was nothing behind those doors.

P: You should explain that -- that was because you're parents were caterers.

RC: Yeah, my parents were, they were caterers, only for a few years but that was a very important time of my life. It was from age 5 to 8 or 6 to 9. So I discovered the reality of a television set, you know? I wasn't seeing it from just being somebody at home watching TV. I was there the day they did the episode on whatever and then could sit back and see it on TV. So I knew it was all a performance.

I knew it was all a creative pursuit. I always wanted to work in film, but I have this thing, that the things I really want in life, I never discuss with anybody. I just leave them sitting inside me and they burn and they become an absolute need. And those things that are really important to me always come up because I don't waste the energy needed in the pursuit by talking about them. And so the same happened with me in film. I was working in the theater and I thought that maybe the best I could get was a lead role in an Arthur Miller or Shakespeare at the Sydney Opera House. That'd be pretty flash you know, so that's what the pursuit was about. And then film kind of found me, not the other way around.

P: Yes, it found you, in fact when you were doing a musical.

RC: Yeah, I was doing Blood Brothers, the Willy Russell musical.

P: You also did Rocky Horror?

RC: 415 performances.

P: . . in suspenders and . .

RC: Yes. I played Eddy and Dr. Scott to begin with. Eddy is the Meatloaf character from the movie, and Dr. Scott is the old fellow in the wheelchair. Actually playing Dr. Scott is when I felt like -- hold on -- this is really easy. The wheelchair, the attitude, the funny voice, you know? I found this is cool -- this is really acting. But then, the last 15 shows I played Frank-n-furter in a little theater in the west of Sydney, so it wasn't Broadway by any means.

P: A lovely turf.

RC: Yeah, it was.

P: What were the audiences like? Were they appreciative?

RC: Yeah. But they were pretty rowdy, you know? One night, every time I was going down on the front, this smart-alec, this girl was squirting me with a water pistol, right at the ass, every time I turned up stage. So at one point -- because you can break that wall being Frank -- I turned around and said something like, "If you squirt me one more time, I'll come off this stage and stick my stiletto up the crack of your ass"

(Everyone laughs)

P: Did it have the desired effect?

RC: Yeah, it did, it slowed her down a little bit.

P: Now, what about the music part of your life? Because reading about you, it seems that when you were young that was the most important ambition you had. Now you just told me the other was a secret burning inside you. You had this band, you had this character called -- what were you called?

RC: When I was 16, I was working in this 1950's nightclub called King Creole's, and everybody in this nightclub has nicknames and mine unfortunately was Russ Le Roq.

(Laughs) But, spelled as the French might spell it, which makes it even cleverer, doesn't it?

P: And then you wrote a song called "I wanna be Marlon Brando."

RC: Yeah, which was about the guy that I was working for, because you know, he had the duck-tail hair, the blue suede shoes, the coats, he drove a Cadillac, you know. So, I wrote this. I'd never seen a Marlon Brando movie. I just hadn't. You know Marlon Brando to me was a bloke, who was on birthday cards and posters and stuff as a bloke who was an iconic tough guy.

P: But you still have the band.

RC: Yeah the band is still together.

P: The band is important to you isn't it?

RC: Yeah, the music is very important as a creative outlet for me. I think anybody from my generation understands the power of a three minute pop song. This particular band which is called 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts.

P: Why is it called 30 Odd Foot of Grunts?

RC: Because I have no desire for my music ever to be taken seriously on a commercial level (laughs). I want to make the marketing of my music as difficult as possible. It's been that name for quite some time now. But I think music -- I think Sting, last night at the Brits, or whatever night this happens to be on last week . . .

P: The other night "Take Two."

RC: The other night at the Brits mate.
(Audience laughs)

RC: (Giggling) You know, Sting said "Music is its own reward." You know? You can be cynical at the fact that he's made trillions out of it, but I think that statement is really truthful, and I think, well, that's a great way for me to say it as well.

I'm not doing the music for attention. I'm not doing it to sell truckloads of records. I'm doing it because it's just one of those things that drives me in life. It's a completely separate performance, but it comes from the same soul as the acting comes from.

P: What's next?

Well, next you have got the BAFTA's on Sunday where you're up for an award. And the Oscars coming up. You're not blasé at all or something about the Oscars?

RC: No, not, at all.

P: You've got a speech ready?

RC: No. Why? You got an old one for me? I'll just change the names, (laughts) something deep and meaningful if you can, mate. No, not at all. Peer-based award systems, you know in your job too, anybody that works in a job that does the same thing, if the people that do the same job as you give you a pat on the back and are saying "well done mate," that's a really important thing. Because, nobody else can really understand it and it's not a popularity contest, it's about doing. I mean I don't win popularity contests mate. (Giggles), I don't know why! (Everyone laughs), Personable bloke.

P: (Laughing): Media friendly.

RC: Media friendly, yeah. Likes a good chat. Knows how to celebrate.

(Everyone laughs)

So I'm not cynical at all. I never was before winning one or getting a nomination. You know I had three nominations in a row. So I had a pretty good run.

P: Yeah and that's without playing the game! So, I wish you well with A Beautiful Mind, which I enjoyed immensely. It's a complex film, beautifully directed by Ron Howard.

RC: Yes, Ron Howard has done a magnificent job.

P: Yeah and I think that the love story that you talked about too, between you and Jennifer Connelly is great, it's a marvelous relationship. I think you can be proud of the film, it's great, I really do.

Russell Crowe, I thank you for talking to me. I much enjoyed that.

RC: Thanks mate.