Russell Crowe on the characters he plays

I am looking for quotes from Russell dealing only with his comments on a character he has played --How he saw him, how he prepared for the role, etc..
Please e-mail me with your finds. Put "Crowe Character Quotes" in the subject line. Add your source where possible. (I have picked the more prominent films)

From Australian Legends of the screen: Russell Crowe -  January 2009

"The bottom line is I just love my job," he says "I love to create a character, I love to go to work, I like to be on a film set - all the other stuff that goes with acting, that's all stuff that I've had to learn to deal with, but learning my dialogue, deciding what the character is going look like, walk like: I love doing that stuff. I can do that everyday of my life for the rest of my life and I am as happy as Larry."

Nottingham - The Sheriff

I won't be playing two roles in Nottingham.If I ever were to do that I'd pick roles that were more diverse, say Tuck and Marion. RC

State of Play - Cal McCaffery

Russell himself is concerned about the state of modern journalism and how stories can be twisted. -- “If you trivialise the news decade after decade, and if you turn news into entertainment, if you corrupt how people get information, if you have a cynical view where you can take a bit of fluff that’s not true and you know it’s not true, but you can bang it out to make something that fits nicely on Page Five next to the ad for women’s lingerie, if you start thinking like that, then sooner or later people are going to distrust what those sources all are, and we’ve built a generation that don’t know how to discern bull from truth,” he says. - Press and Journal (Thanks, Cindy)

Do you like Cal McAffrey? Do you have sympathy for him? -- I think he goes on a journey of rediscovery and finds out just how far away he is from his ethical standards. I’ve sat in front of journalists for 30 years of my life, so I have a lot of observational material to call on. I’ve been praised, flayed and betrayed, and those experiences obviously are going to colour the way I think. - Latest 7 (Thanks, Cindy)

Body of Lies - Ed Hoffman

"Politics are not on its sleeve. It may allude to current world events and situations, but at it's core, this is just an espionage film. This is a film about betrayal and it's a film about seduction [and] it's a film about deception."... "It just felt right for the character and it's what Ridley wanted as well. He wanted the image of Ed to feel like a retired football player whose knees didn't allow him to train anymore or something like that. He wanted him to have, even though he did feel that there should be some grace about him, he just wanted him to be heavy. And he wanted to show that this is a guy that actually spends most of his time sitting down."

Your character, Ed Hoffman, has to make some pretty tough decisions and yet seems to carry on a normal home life as though he hasn't a care in the world. -- "Ed doesn't feel the pain of any of the decisions he makes. He's completely insulated from that. He's tens of thousands of miles away at the end of a phone line."
 
 On his gaining weight for the characer: "You can probably understand that this is really tedious for me to talk about, because how many times have you seen my body change in movies in the last 20 years? You know I'm gonna do it, I just do it; it's no big deal. I don't think of it as a big deal. I don't want any pats on the back for it. I think it's right for the character. It's the way Ridley has seen the character, so I do it. But I went from 88 kilos to 117 kilos. When I get back to about 85, that'll be the journey completed. It's just part of the function of doing it. I happen to believe that it's more real for the people in the audience if you're playing a boxer and you look like a boxer. It's as simple as that." 
 
 "It just felt right for the character and it's what Ridley wanted as well," Russell told Nancy. "He wanted the image of Ed to feel like a retired football player whose knees didn't allow him to train anymore or something like that. He wanted him to have, even though he did feel that there should be some grace about him, he just wanted him to be heavy. And he wanted to show that this is a guy that actually spends most of his time sitting down."

American Gangster - Richie Roberts

Well, I didn't know anything about Richie. He wasn't like a big feature in what we knew of Frank Lucas, so I wanted to know about him and who he was. The thing I found out was that he was a true patriot – he came out of school, had a look around and decided to become a Marine. He went into the Marine corps and whatever he discovered didn't really satisfy him so he went into the police force. And what he discovered there didn't satisfy him either, so he went to law school and became a prosecutor. And that didn't satisfy him either. Every one of these American institutions that he went into, in the country he absolutely believed, in was affected by some kind of benign corruption, so he ended up becoming a defence attorney because he could still be a patriot from that point of view. He could be an advocate for people without defence, stand up for people who required defence, and he could stand on the outside of the castle and chuck rocks. He could say: "I don't care if you're the president, it's my duty to ask what the f*** you're doing, mate." So he stuck to his guns, and he stayed an idealist and he's still a patriot. I really respect him for that.

3:10 to Yuma - Ben Wade

"I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated."

A Good Year - Max Skinner

On Max - "I'm portraying an English banker who is an absolute asshole and who inherits a vineyard in Provence. His principal mentor throughout his life was his Uncle Henry and he taught him the difference between a good and bad red wine and the difference between a good and bad cigar and the importance of a blue suit. Unfortunately he taught him all that around the age of 11, and things have changed. All the things that his uncle put inside him as a young man are still there but they've just been reconfigured by life. By going back to Provence he becomes revitalized." - Urban Cinefile

It hasn't been difficult for Ridley Scott to convince me to play in AGY. I had read neither the script nor the book the film is based on. It's how he spoke of the story which attracted me. To wrong-foot the audience with a sentimental comedy was fun. Ridley and I agree on film aesthetic,have the same work ethic and share the same sense of humour. On the set we have a similar aim and we try to solve together any problem which may arise. I really enjoyed beeing given this responsibility by him. Sometimes I had to cheer up the actors. Ridley and I also have constantly worked on the script. I'm responsible for the tennis match. Didier Bourdon's character and mine should have to fight each other in the vineyard. I found it such a cliché. With Ridley, I've no problem to be heard. I appreciate his personal involvment as any of his actors does. And we both respect a film's cost and the profit it may return. If we can do better for less money, we do it. Now we are shooting a third film together, 'American Gangster' about organized crime in the seventies.

The Cinderella Man - Jim Braddock

Braddock was the underdog but Americans took him to their hearts because they saw what he was doing as their struggle," the Australian Crowe told the Adelaide Advertiser. "It was one of those great moments in history where the whole of the working class had a hero who fulfilled what they asked him to do."

"...Howard points out that boxing legend Jim Braddock is a role Crowe has "always wanted to play. It's a shame he had the injury, but the guy he's playing got injured all the time. He says that dealing with this injury is helping him understand the heart and the spirit of the guy he's playing." He adds, "That's a good way to rationalize it, isn't it?"

Physically, it was a very tough film. While preparing it, my shoulder has been dislocated and I had to undergo surgery. 21 days later I was back on the ring, a decision which, according to my physician, will certainly have further consequences. I had to do it. Had I quit, the film would have fallen through. I knew how important this story was for Ron. He had been speaking of it for seven years. But we had to change the working plan and its 36 consecutive days shooting boxing matches. We worked hardly to prepare the matches choreography because we wished to give a specific tone to each of them. CM drew us closer, Ron and I. I hope to work again with him. He has a good technical skill and is self-confident enough to take risks while giving his actors much freedom.

Master and Commander - Jack Aubrey

The Making of Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, The Official Guide to the Major Motion Picture by Tom McGregor - p. 135 -- "Of Jack, Russell Crowe says that he had to be a patriarch. If you want him to be the man you think he is, then he has to be concerned with the welfare of every person on board. The more effort Jack puts into the teaching of these young men then the easier his life is. There’s a very human side. He doesn’t want anyone under his charge to fail themselves or what is required by the community of the ship."

p. 137 -- "Stephen", says Russell Crowe, "is Jack’s saviour in many ways. He’s the outlet for the art that works inside this otherwise monolithic figure of authority: he needs Stephen to be there..... They (Jack and Stephen) have a very, very different view of the world, they also come to cross words, but at the same time they’re both reasonable enough men to realise the size of the planet they travel on and how much they need each other. There are, "he finishes, "freedoms of expression he allows Stephen that he just cannot allow with his officers."

p. 137 -- "Jack", he (Russell) says, "had to be "always definite – but not necessarily correct." You have to train your men," he continues, "to respond to your being definite and not to question the moment."

indieLONDON.co.uk -- ".... I loved the image that Peter (Weir) put in my head when we talked about this man (Jack Aubrey), a sailor with calluses on his hands, who has grown up in the navy and knows every part of his ship – if the sails aren’t going up fast enough, he will jump down and grab the rope and see what is causing the problem. And those same callused, thickened hands then pick up this delicate, feminine instrument, the violin, and he will play from his heart the things he can never say."

BuyMagazine, march 2004 -- Q: What makes your Master and Commander character, Jack Aubrey, tick? RC: He considers his duty to be of primary importance.... He’s completely a rebel. He’s not one who follows the rules. Still, fulfilling of his duty as his main aim.

A Beautiful Mind - John Nash

Inside the Actors Studio, January4, 2004 -- Q: How did you prepare that part? -- RC: ... I had about 16 black and white photographs or something of Nash. And it kind of occurred to me later on, you know, in the process of discovery, that these were episodic photographs of he’s actually in the photograph, but he’s not in the room, man. You know? He’s off on some other planet, you know? Cause there was just a slackening of his face, muscles in his eyes, were... had a certain direction. They weren’t looking directly at anything, they were like, you know, they’re still somewhere around here, but he was actually, he’d left for a while.

Proof of Life - Terry Thorne

Reel.com: Just the physicality of Terry Thorne in Proof of Life for example. It's much more contemporary than the body of Maximus [in Gladiator]. He's gone to a gym. He's worked on farms and he's big and round and everything. Terry's got this striation because he works out at the gym and he's got X amount of time in the day to do that kind of physical work. The more you inform yourself and fuel the internal engine that drives the character, then you get to the point where you can be standing on a hillside, saying no dialogue, but completely communicating to every person that's watching that film all of those peaks of desperation, joy, sadness, and acceptance without saying a single word.

The Vancouver Sun 12/99 (Thanks to Maximum Crowe): "He's (Terry) got a very good bedside manner. He's very calm and reassuring to the client, but there is a distance. He has his business sincerity level but at the same time what happens in our story cuts through his ordinarily objective persona where he is affected more emotionally by the people involved."

RUSSELL (giggles):"This is a busy day in Ecuador. Kind of landslides & stuff, but beautiful country, physically incredible, which I think is shown off in the movie." JAY:"And the stunts you do,now you see,I always have this arguement,people always go 'ah no,you can't do your own stunts because of movie companies.'But this is really you hanging from this helicopter,isn't it?" RUSSELL: "Yeah,well if I can give the director as many 100% shots as I can,then the audience stays right within the story.They don't say,'Oh hold on a second,that body shape is a little bit different,'or' His nose is bigger'or whatever. So I think it just adds to the excitement of the movie." The Tonight Show w/Jay Leno; Russell promoting PROOF OF LIFE (12/00)

Gladiator - Maximus

I got attached to Maximus. I really liked him, I thought he was a good bloke. But I think you’ve got to be careful of that, because we see his great love—we see how much a capacity for what he’ll do for love. But on the other side of the coin, he is a brute. He’s a trained killer. When Max goes to the dust, he cleaves your arm off."

“He’s just a big-ass fucking bloke, you know,” Crowe says of Maximus, “with big, long, fat muscles from wielding swords and driving a horse with 70 pounds of armor on. I mean you try doing that day after day. It beats the piss out of a StairMaster.”

Studio Magazine, France -- Q: Do you regard Maximus as a hero? - RC: No. I think he’s a man guided by love. The love he feels for his Emperor Marcus Aurelius, for the Roman Empire, for his wife and his son. Each time he comes to a decision, it’s consistent. He’s a straight man, but he’s also a warrior, a fiery and rough man who is able to split in two his enemy with a blow of his sword, because, at that time, soldiers bodily fought and that’s the way Maximus leads his life.

Q: No comparison with "Willis - Stallone - Schwarzenegger" action heroes then? - RC: This kind of action heroes leaves me cold and it really gives me a pain in the arse. As far as they’re concerned, the big mistake is their monolithism. A good soldier is a man who can control his fear a little bit longer than the others. Those heroes are never scared of anything. The approach to my character is different, more subtle. Maximus is a General. To help me playing the character, I gave him a past. The past of a 9 year-old kid who would have joined the Roman army, would have climbed one grade after another, would have been noticed during battles and would have become – and the film starts here – a General who is faithful to Marcus Aurelius. He’s a man who truly built his life, who has a wife and a son, vineyard and olive groves, who doesn’t give a damn about the fact that his armour is shining or not. He knows what is important and what is not, and his life is even more precious because of that. It can’t be more different to the action heroes you’re talking about. They’re crude characters with a gun in their hands!

The Insider - Jeffrey Wigand

Le Nouveau Cinema, France - "Jeffrey Wigand, the character I play in "The Insider“, and Maximus, the hero of "Gladiator", are men of valor and honor who embrace a heroic fate“, explains the actor. "The first goes up against the tobacco industry; the latter against a maleficent emperor. In both cases, it is a bit the story of David vs. Goliath. But that’s as far as the comparison gets, because Wigand is a brilliant chemist and endocrinologist, a very cerebral man. Maximus on the other hand is a fierce fighter, a pack of sheer brutal force."

London Sunday Times, March 5, 2000 -- "I can usually make a decision on behalf of any character I play, because it’s fiction...But this (JW) is completely different. The full emotional impact of Wigand was not really there until I met him. He was saying how all the things he knew and relied on in his life – his house, wife and children – were no longer there. Not until I saw the damage in his eyes was it really clear. He was impotent. How was he going to fight back? If he had reacted in a contemporary American way, he would have probably got a gun, gone into the tobacco company and started shooting people. But he is a true American hero, while remaining slightly bewildered by it all."

Mystery Alaska - John Biebe

"There's a great journey my character has to go through in this film," Crowe says. "For 13 seasons he's played in the Saturday game, then suddenly he's 34 years old, and a 17-year-old kid who's a better skater comes along and Biebe is taken off the team. As soon as he's removed from the game, the biggest hockey event Mystery has ever known happens when the New York Rangers come to play the town team. Internally he's falling apart, but he has to maintain the appearance of self-assurance." -- From the Mystery, Alaska press pack

Not Grace, Not Finesse, Just Atavism - "I talked to [director] Jay [Roach]...and through that conversation I realized he would let me actually...play the lawman who doesn't have a love for guns, doesn't feel a need to protect himself from a weapon and can go into the community with an upright back and clear eyes, because he's never done anybody any wrong." Crowe describes his role in the picture as more a protective friend rather than the authoritative cop associated with today's police officers. "He doesn't wear a gun and doesn't carry handcuffs," he explains. "He's not a violent person. He's elected the sheriff of the town, and it's something that he just does because he knows that, given this particular group of people, he can stay balanced. The only thing he gives up to the fact that he's an officer is he wears a badge sometimes. That's it. The other people who work for the sheriff's department--they're loaded, man. They have access to the weaponry, they use the weaponry, they wear the weaponry. He doesn't want to do that because in his mind his job is a totally different thing. I mean, he does have a rifle in the truck, because you never know when a polar bear's going to be doing some bad s--. But he's just not the sort of man who'd carry a pistol. A different kind of bloke." (Boxoffice.com 1999) Thanks, lyden52

LA Confidential - Bud White

One of the most painful things of the LA Confidential character I played was that the author, James Ellroy, kept telling me that Bud White wasn't a drinker. I said, 'come on, this is 1953. He's a blue-collar bloke, a cop. You're telling me he doesn't sit around with the boys after his shift and have a beer?' And Ellroy says, 'absolutely not.' So for five months and seven days I didn't have a drink. It's probably the most painful period of my life."

Inside the Actors Studio, 4/1/2004 -- Q: How did you see Bud? - RC: You know, I always thought he was just trying to do his best job. You know, he obviously had a history which affected the way he dealt with certain things.

Rough Magic - Alex Ross

Because of that thing I was just talking about before about, I mean, here’s a man who’s All American boy grew up sort of like totally believing in his country and his country’s foreign affairs policy, shall we say. 2nd World War begins, Pearl Harbour happens, he enlists in the Marines, through a certain set of circumstances and lucky basically, fights in every theatre of war in the Pacific and finds himself volunteering to go to Japan for a special duty after the bombs because he’s so caught up in the fight for victory and the fight for right, y’know, that his own personal beliefs have been sort of suppressed, shall we say, for awhile, and when he breezes into Nagasaki with that attitude…Cuz, you’ve got to understand, y’know, for most people the war is not about big tracks of land it’s about and particularly in the Pacific, it’s about that beach, and that bush and that little hill over there and that tree and that cave, it’s a very small thing, y’know, so when he gets to Nagasaki with that energy that he’s been having and that and the resentment he’s built up against an enemy and he sees it’s a mass destruction and it starts clicking over in his mind that this is not just a bunch of soldiers that have been killed this is three and four generations of the same family, this is mothers and kids and dogs and canaries and everything, just wiped out, he sort of turns around which is one of the reasons why he does the job that he does which is basically under the guise of being a journalist he does whatever his political contacts which are also assumed to be military ask him to do and that he can’t go home and he comes from Westchester County, he keeps a place in Los Angeles and he lives in Mexico. He can’t go home, he can’t sit down and talk to his Mum. He can’t say, y’know, this is what I did in the last four years, y’know. He can’t sit there and talk to his Mother about what happened on Iwo Jima, y’know, when it was teeming down with rain and 10,000 men had dysentery and they were there to kill people. Y’know, he can’t just sit down and have a polite chat with his Mum about that, y’know, because it’s not gonna work and everyone wants to treats you like a hero and in his mental space, he’s not thinkin’ he’s a hero, he’s thinkin’ he’s a killer of people, y’know, he’s thinkin’ he’s a murderer. So he can’t face it, and it’s a journey, that 90 per cent of service men went through at the end of the war. More HERE

Thanks to 7dlh7

Virtuosity - SID

"He gets out in the world, has a look around at society, and in the one-half of one-half of a second it takes him to work these things out, he decides that, essentially, human beings really want to die. From his point of view, he's actually being very generous with his time." - Rob Salem, Toronto Star

"As is revealed in the movie, Sid is totally interactive so he's just playing with what he's got. He's come out of the machine, he's looked around, he's examined humanity in the one half of the millisecond it takes him to work it out, and he realizes that human beings couldn't possibly go around doing what they do if they didn't want to die. He's just trying to help them out. He's a very generous guy." The Calgary Sun

The Quick and the Dead - Cort

Here's a quote about Cort from TV Week 3/6/95: "This town is dark and bleak, full of outlaws and baddies," Russell explains. "The characters played by Sharon and myself are the only two people who have a semblance of goodness or spirituality about them. I am basically brought into town so that Gene Hackman can shoot me. I don't have what you'd call a glamorous role. There is a competition between 16 gunfighters and I am thrown into it. Every time I have to have a gunfight they only give me a single bullet, so I have to get it right. I spend 99 percent of the film chained up, being bashed up and having horse ---t thrown at me!" - Elena C.

The Sum of Us - Jeff

"There are many questions I would ask a character....for instance 'Do you believe in the death penalty?'....before I ever got 'round to 'What is your sexuality?'. I think other factors are more important in terms of human relationships and the way society operates than what someone's sexuality is. Sexual orientation is not something that people necessarily choose; it's just who they are." .... Interview Magazine, Sept.1997

The Silver Brumby - The Man

Russell playes the High Country loner: intense, single-minded and determined in his pursuit of the unforgetting silver brumby. He sees The Man as one of the universal characters of film; a drifter on horseback chasing an illusive dream. He says that the intensity of the pursuit of Thowra brings out a nobility in both The Man and the horse. - The Silver Brumby Movie Book

Romper Stomper - Hando

Russell was being interviewed right after Virtuosity and was asked to comment on which role showed some of his best work.

Do you agree with people who say 'Romper Stomper' is your best work? -- "I particularly like Love in Limbo. Arthur - an anally retentive Welsh Baptist virgin - was some of my most delicate work. It was funny actually, because halfway through that film I started preparing for Romper Stomper, so Aden Young has all these photos of me in Arthur's silly old suits and ties reading Mien Kopf.”

"Every role has different things that speak to you. With 'Romper Stomper,' I was afraid of delving into the darkness of the neo-Nazi ideology on one hand, but on the other hand, I could tell that it was going to be a very important social document. That was the imperative behind my doing it." (Sorry, I don't have the source)

"The scary thing about my character, Hando, is the marriage of ultra-violence with ideology. Plus the unpredictability of it being just plain f**king mad. Racism is one of the most evil and heinous thought patterns that a human can get into. For that alone, it is important for me to do that character to demonstrate how wrong it is." - HQ, Summer '91

"The reality is I'd be scared of a Hando. I hate his ideology. I hate what he stands for. Basically, Sid is the same thing. The scary thing is that he is very close to the people we all laud and applaud and give a lot of money and power to." - The Calgary Sun

Hammers Over the Anvil - East Driscoll

Russell enjoys East's wholesomeness and admires the strength he develops through his association with horses. "I see the control East has of the horse as inspirng - it's more a sense of agreement and co-operation than control - kind of a partnership," says Russell. - From Production notes from the press kit by Beyond Films (kaspinet.com)

Proof - Andy

The Crossing - Johnny

"Johnny's simplicity is part of his complexity and he has an inability to communicate his feelings to her (Meg), which is so Australian. He's a product of his environment and he wants to progress within it, to marry Meg and have a family, with all the stability that represents. He's tied to the town through his mother and his dead father." - From The Crossing press release

Russell does not identify with Johnny at all. Johnny, he explains, is totally at home in the country - hunting, being practical, "a down-to-earth, primal and atavistic man". Russell, on the other hand, is "not practical, can't fix cars and abhors the idea of hunting." - From The Crossing press release