Editorial Comment:

Russell Crowe - Film star of the week.

By: Barry Norman

In: Radio Times ( UK) 22-28 October, 2005-10-20

Four years ago in this very column I repeated a prediction I had made earlier that Russell Crowe would be the first superstar of the 21st century. I also suggested that the only thing that might hold him back was his personal behaviour.

Flash forward to today and where are we? Well, in much the same place actually. Crowe isn’t yet a superstar, though the potential remains, and it becomes increasingly likely that he isn’t one because of the way he behaves off set.

Here’s a brief catalogue of his misdemeanours: the apparently heartless dumping of America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan; threatening a TV producer because the man had left his poem out of a telecast of the Bafta awards; a brawl in a London restaurant; another outside a bar in Australia; a fight on a Mexican beach; and hurling a telephone at a hotel clerk in New York.

The Ryan incident, it is said, cost him the best actor Oscar for A Beautiful Mind while the assault on the hotel clerk caused audiences to avoid his latest film, Cinderella Man. Neither allegation is provable, but even if true they shouldn’t matter.

Russell Crowe, whom I’ve never met, may possibly not be a nice man, but what has that got to do with his work? The scatological Mozart probably wasn’t very nice either, but that’s no reason to boycott his music.

The salient fact is that, at 41, Crowe is an extremely fine actor. Ridley Scott, who directed him in Gladiator (for which he won the Oscar) and is currently directing him in A Good Year, reckons he is the best of his generation and I see no reason to quarrel with that.

His range is remarkable. He first attracted Hollywood’s attention as a neo-Nazi skinhead in Romper Stomper, then won international recognition as a blue-collar cop in LA Confidential before giving an immaculate performance in Gladiator, which reinvented the historical epic.

Furthermore, with almost casual virtuosity, he was equally good as a casual whistle–blower in The Insider and a schizophrenic genius in A Beautiful Mind. To an audience (or Oscar voter) these, the things he does on screen, not what he does in his private life, are all that should matter, although ironically the anger and excessive testosterone that sometimes seem to rule him might contribute to the passion and sheer masculinity he brings to his roles.

It would be sad indeed if that passion should leave him but I doubt that it will. Now he is married (to the actress Danielle Spencer|) and has a child, he claims to have calmed down. But he was married with a child when he threw a phone at the hotel clerk, so that doesn’t prove much.

What I find commendable about him is that occasional failure seems to spur him on. The marital drama Breaking Up was pretty bad, but he followed it with The Insider. The disappointing Proof of Life was succeeded by A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander and Cinderella Man. Whatever you might think of those films Crowe was not to be faulted.

Will he, though, become the superstar he should be? Right now the signs aren’t healthy. He openly despises Hollywood and has enraged fellow stars such as George Clooney by criticising their habit of cashing in on their fame by making commercials.

But people like Clooney are the movie establishment and you don’t get far by antagonising them. Crowe has got where he is on sheer talent but he seems unable, or unwilling, to further his own cause by making friends or influencing people, and as time goes on that could count against him.

I sincerely hope it doesn’t. I believe he is potentially a great screen actor and I’d like him to be around long enough to prove it.

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Thanks. Christine