Sunday Herald Sun - SUN 15 MAY 2005

Russ's heart in his hands - By NUI TE KOHA

Crowe is proud of his songs and acting, as he sees his life is all about communicating, NUI TE KOHA reports

VETERAN actor Richard Harris liked the duality in Russell Crowe.

"It was the New Zealand-Australia thing,'' Crowe says.

"It meant he could yell at me about the Wallabies and speak in hushed respectful terms about the All Blacks.''

Crowe says, "He often said it to me: 'In the one man, I've got a really good night.' ''

Harris, 71, who died in 2002, was the original hellraiser actor. He co-starred with Crowe in Gladiator.

A BBC obituary noted Harris as "a handsome, boozing, brawling, womanising, jet-setter whose moody magnificence brought glamour to even his weakest movies''.

Crowe said he was affected by Harris's openness and candour with truths.

Significantly, that reflective, revelatory spirit permeates the songs on Crowe's new album, My Hand, My Heart.

"You need that distance to say: 'It doesn't matter about being bad or stupid','' Crowe says.

"What matters is you can talk about it, face it, and have that conversation with yourself.''

Crowe gleefully recounts a story, as told to him by Harris, about consummate "bad boy shenanigans''.

"Richard and (fellow British actor) Peter O'Toole were so incorrigible they had an extra section added to the moral turpitude of their contract, stating that over the course of filming in LA, they could not go anywhere near alcohol.

"For most people, it was during work hours. For them, nothing. Full stop.''

Harris and O'Toole were careful -- and the studios regularly checked their trailers.

"(Harris) was very, very clear he was a massive drinker. At that point, he was doing a dozen pints of Guinness and two bottles of vodka a day.

"But they concocted this idea to tell everyone they were on a health detox plan and they were required to eat a lot of fruit, specifically fruit with vitamin C.

"So they'd get a hypodermic needle, three ounces of vodka and inject it into an orange,'' Crowe says. "And their assistant would continuously bring oranges to the set.''

Harris's blunt and enlightening conversations moved Crowe to write a song about the late actor. But the track is about a passion they shared: rugby.

Mr Harris is a choral requiem.

Crowe wrote it on a beer coaster in Dublin after a rugby match Australia lost. Harris and Crowe had made plans to attend the game together, but Harris died weeks earlier.

As Crowe watched the game alone, he figured Harris was indeed there and making Australia play badly.

"Mr Harris, take the field,'' the song says. "The 16th man.''

A creative and revelatory leap forward, the deeply personal tone of My Hand, My Heart suggests Crowe's long-time band, Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts (TOFOG), had run its course and he was ready to represent these stories on his own.

Crowe's album is largely a collaboration with singer-songwriter Alan Doyle, of the Canadian Celtic rock band, Great Big Sea.

Crowe is pushed, ably, by a band -- Doyle, Dave Kelly, Stewart Kirwan, Paul Berton, Bones Hillman and Stuart Hunter -- with an uncanny ability to lift songs where TOFOG might have grounded them.

Under Doyle's guidance, Crowe has emerged with bold lyrics, simple arrangements, complex themes and layered meanings.

It opens with Weight of a Man, a heartfelt tribute to wife Danielle Spencer's strength in a celebrity circus.

What sort of strength would it take?

"What, to hang out with me?'' Crowe asks. "Let's not over dramatise this, I'm only a bloke.

"But can you imagine that, almost, on a weekly basis, the person you made two very important life decisions with -- one, to marry them, two, to have a child with them -- is mocked and ridiculed and thereby are you, because you are the fool and simpleton who married this despicable bastard.

"It takes a great deal and a sense of self to let this stuff flow and not affect you.''

Spencer ignores all of it, but was furious at inaccurate reports Crowe could not put together kit furniture for their son Charles's nursery.


"The fact she arcs up because people don't know I can use a pen knife, Dani is definitely the right partner for me,'' Crowe says.

Crowe's new songs study love, an immigrant story, life without regret but with hope, and new beginnings.

He is justifiably proud of My Hand, My Heart and, for the first time, rates this writing and recording project beside the joy of his acting life.


"My working life is about communication in one way or another. It comes down to storytelling,'' Crowe says.

"I've never had the type of relationship that I enjoy with actors and directors in a movie, in truth, in the (recording) studio.

"And now, finally, I see how similar the process is. That's all this is: the same willingness to get to truths, the same willingness to discuss things.''

My Hand, My Heart is available for download at www.sanity.com.au

Internet: www.myhandmyheart.com

Thanks, Maria