Herald Sun
SAT 26 NOV 2005 CROWE CALL By CLAIRE SUTHERLAND FRIENDS don't have to agree on everything. Which is lucky, really, because otherwise you wouldn't catch Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe in the same room. The co-stars of director Baz Luhrmann's next film have vastly different views about personal endorsements. Crowe doesn't do them. Kidman does -- most notably in the form of a multi-million dollar Chanel campaign. "She asked me about it,'' Crowe says. "I said, 'Don't do it'. She said, 'It's worth a lot of money'. I said, 'Mate, don't do it' and she did it.'' Crowe's palms go to the ceiling. "I don't have a problem with advertising or endorsements per se. What I have a problem with is somebody whose job is changing characters suddenly becoming an icon. It doesn't make any sense to me. That may be because I'm simple or it may be because I have an understanding of what makes things credible to me, and that doesn't agree with me.'' And it's this inability to compromise his credibility that has seen him placed in the box marked "volatile actor''. Not that he hasn't helped hammer a couple of nails into that box himself -- most recently in the form of an airborne communication device. "Yes, I lost my temper, what I did was stupid,'' he says. "I admitted that straight away. I've taken accountability for it, never tried to make any excuses for that.'' The people who don't have an issue with Crowe are his directors. The likes of Ron Howard (Cinderella Man), Michael Mann (The Insider) and Ridley Scott (Gladiator) are men without an unkind word to say about Crowe. "I'm good company to my directors on the set,'' he says. "I'm about them. If I can sense that Ronnie (Howard) is having a bad day, I will try and make his day better, as subtly as possible so that he doesn't believe that he needed help. "Ridley is an irascible old bastard who drives many a film crew person up the wall. He doesn't worry me in that respect. "I did a 30-hour day with Michael. Two dawns on one work day! "The thing is, he never has to go looking for me, he never has to wonder if I'm still ready to do the scene because I am. "I might be thinking I wish he'd f---ing hurry up, but I'm not going to tell him. I'll wait until we've wrapped the film and say, 'S--t, what were you thinking, son!' '' But if Crowe is professional on the set, that doesn't mean he isn't willing to express his opinions. "I'm not the boss, mate. I'm the lieutenant, a highly paid lieutenant and the directors who hire me hire me because they want my input. "It's the same as Paul (Dainty) wanting me to do (the AFIs). He knows I'm not going to show up on the night and phone it in -- sorry about the phone gag.'' An actor who speaks his mind is a rare thing indeed. Crowe criticised his Cinderella Man co-star Craig Bierko for being underprepared (although, it should be noted, only after Bierko accused him of being unfriendly). "He was saying it was a really intense boxing environment and it was all about method acting,'' he says. "I'm not a method actor. I've never studied the form. Never been to a Stella Adler class or whoever . . . it was. Craig just didn't take the responsibility of what he had to do seriously. "He didn't realise that learning 10 rounds of choreography was going to test him. So if you're not ready, Craig, what do we do? What's everybody else who's ready do for the rest of the day while you learn it? No, man, you're learning it before we start so you've got it. "Now Craig Bierko is great in the movie, and that's the point. The work he was doing before the movie was how he could be great.'' Crowe talks like a man supremely confident, but there's still an insecure, underemployed waiter/actor inside him calling the shots. "I can still remember exactly what it feels like. It just comes from touring with a theatre show and the whole time you're earning money, but you're never free to spend that money because it could be 12 months before another opportunity like this comes along.'' THIS despite the fact that he could get the head of any film studio to listen to him any time he feels like it. "That's not true . . . in order to get to the point where I'm going to the studio in the first place that requires a lot of work. They wouldn't be responding to nothing,'' he says. "Look, I often don't get the roles I want. I don't have any sour grapes but there's been quite a few over time that I wanted and I haven't got for one reason or another. "Certainly it hasn't happened in the past five or six years. "But I don't think it's healthy to think in those kinds of terms and I wouldn't go to a studio on a whim and every studio in town knows that about me, if I'm ringing them up about something it's serious." Equally serious is his attitude to his music. "A lot of people have accused me of using one career to bolster the other, but that is in fact untrue, and provably untrue. "I've turned down a seven-figure deal from Sony because (Sony boss) Tommy Mottola said to me, 'It's good to be with Sony, Russell. We drink blood and we don't take no for an answer' and I thought that sounded like the exact opposite of a place I'd like my music nurtured.'' By now, Crowe was to have completed another flashy Australian film with Kidman, Eucalyptus. The film famously collapsed in January amid reports of an underprepared script. Crowe remains an executive producer on the film and is adamant it will be made. "It will get up again. I know so,'' he says. "It was a really brave decision that (studio) Fox made and I agreed with it at the time, as disappointed as I was. "You're talking about a film that I was working on for 12 months, you're talking about a film that the people cast in it were personal friends and people were shaping their schedule to do a favour for me by being in the movie so when it fell over it was very traumatic but I'm the one that fronted the crew in Bellingen.'' New Zealand-born Crowe started acting as a child with mostly non-speaking roles in television shows. It was his primary school teacher Elizabeth Morgan who gave him his first shove in the right direction. "She recognised that performance thing in me so she would let me do plays on a Friday afternoon which would involve the class and everybody would get a role, and they were invariably war plays where everybody died, but it would fill my imagination for the week. "But initially I was so scared of performing I wouldn't get on the stage. I wanted to, the desire was great, but I couldn't actually do it, I couldn't make my legs walk forward until one time she put me up on the stage and said, 'Now sing a song', in front of the whole school on a wet Friday afternoon. "I said, 'I don't know what to sing', and she said, 'Sing the first thing that comes into your mind', so I sang Michael Jackson's Ben and got a really good response to it and she kind of looked me in the eye and said, 'There you go, that's what you want to do isn't it'?'' ONE of Crowe's early jobs was for Paul Dainty, who has now tapped him on the shoulder for the job of hosting tonight's L'Oreal AFI Awards. Dainty wanted Crowe to finesse a stage musical he had bought, Blood Brothers, but Crowe was chucked off the project when Dainty instead took other advice. "I got really sick trying to make that thing better, working 22-hour days, and when the disagreement came down to it, he preferred that I left the show. So I did leave the show and promptly sued him. We wrangled over that for a year and a half until he paid me the amount and we've been friends ever since,'' Crowe laughs. L'Oreal AFI Awards, Channel 9, 10.55 tonight. Russell Crowe and The Ordinary Fear of God play the Grand Central, 293 Swan St, Richmond, tomorrow night. |
The Herald Sun: Rusty tidies up his
act - Mathew
Charles RUSSELL Crowe will cap off an eventful year by touring Australia to perform a series of exclusive corporate Christmas gigs. But the Hollywood superstar will be plucking his less lucrative passion for four-to-the-floor Oz rock rather than the acting that has helped him become one of Australasia's most famous entertainers. BusinessDaily can confirm an item that appeared on British online gossip site Popbitch that Crowe has made himself available for the one-off events from December 1 through to January 21. But exactly which Aussie companies will fork out the dough to hire the man who described himself earlier this year as a "messy, psychologically damaged weirdo" remains a closely guarded secret. Crowe is known to be uncomfortable with the corporate side of the entertainment industry, and has refused to sell his image to advertisers. That antagonism to corporate life sparked a well-publicised spat with fellow superstar George Clooney this year over the latter's willingness to advertise everything from suits to cars and drinks. But that paled into insignificance after Crowe's phone-throwing incident at a US hotel in June. Crowe is unlikely to reform his band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts for the tour, which he disbanded before the release of his debut solo record earlier this year. In addition to the exclusive events, which are likely to include Christmas bashes, Crowe is expected to perform a series of low-key gigs at local pubs. At the Corner Hotel in Richmond, a popular venue for local and overseas artists, band booker Richard Moffatt said he'd be rapt to host Crowe. "I think it'd be hilarious. It'd be great to have him play here," Mr Moffatt said. Crowe has appointed entertainment impresario Paul Dainty to handle his tour. Thanks, Steph |
