Crowe Calls

Russellšs response: "Oh gee whizz. Thanks Mate. Remind me to buy you a beer later. I wasn't really listening, mate. As soon as you said fate and the destiny thing. I was kind of like, I nodded off. So I'm gonna quote a great mate of mine, Joaquin Phoenix: 'I don't know how to answer that.'"


"I mean, sometimes I'm doing nothing more than scratching my nose and they take that as some kind of hugely vigorous physical act."


I know it's supposed to be a non-masculine pastime, but having that sense of rhythm can help you in different ways. You can shift your internal beat to adapt to where you are and what you need to do.


Squaring off against his alter ego, voice dropping to a playful basso profundo, he growls out the picture's tagline, "A hero ... will rise."


Tomas Arana: [During Gladiator filming] I found him the same old Russell, full of energy, fun and as passionate and hard-working as ever. He really challenges you as an actor and is great to work with. We are both fellow Aries, he April 7th and me April 3rd, and have many things in common. I am sick of him talking always about Australian football, which I think they play with a boomerang. (I couldnot resist that dig).


"I've got to keep my life apart from Hollywood. I'm committed to acting, and I get great satisfaction from it, but I don't take it too seriously, and I realise that it's not rocket science."


After being compared to Burt Lancaster.. He casually comments: "I've been compared to about 19 different people so far, eventually it'll be to Donald Duck."


"I compete with my own laziness," is his answer to charges that he is a workaholic. "I have a great ability to sit in a single place and do nothing for long stretches of time."


"Are you really as difficult as people say?" question. I only have that reputation because people say that. [Laughs.] Well, it must be true. Man, I'm an intense bastard when I'm doing my job. I don't fuck around.


"How does it feel to be a sex symbol now?" he scoffs. "This is a serious question? It's got "sex symbol" in it and it's a serious fucking question? Give me a fucking break." Then he laughs uproariously.


''I'm the world's worst tourist. Once I learned that about myself, I've tried to change the way I deal with being on location, because it seems silly to go to these magnificent places and only see the hotel room and the set. So I try to relax by having a poke about, looking under a few bushes to see what's there. But I've never gotten on a plane to go on holiday, never. When I have a holiday, I'm at home playing with my cows.''


"All the songs come from some real point. Sometimes you combine characters, as any writing does, but it's about personal experiences. What I do in my day job is I take on somebody else's life and I project their thoughts, emotions and feelings and their time and place and geography, through dialogue and costume. But that's a performance. It really has nothing to do with me. It is me, physically, and it's me driving the train, but I don't live in 1952, I wasn't born in a computer, I've never been a neo-Nazi skinhead. But these songs, these are about my life, about things I've experienced. Not that I really believe anybody should give a shit, but I do and the way I express the things that I've seen personally is songs. It's an absolutely valid creative expression, and it's of no greater or lesser importance than any performance I do as an actor. These are all reality-based stories."


One time I woke up in a hotel room in Los Angeles, and for some reason I thought I was in another hotel room in New York. And there, the bathroom was on the right hand side of the bed, so I got up and walked straight into the television and knocked myself out, Woke up the next morming, flat on the floor. Still didn't get to go to the toilet.


Uncle Russell shifts his attention outside the car window and visibly perks up, a huge grin spreading across his face. "It must be love, people!" he roars at a young couple lustily battling it out on the sidewalk; then silent again, he watches as their ellipsing bodies retreat into the afternoon light.


"A little insanity is good for clarity, don't you think? You have to deal with what comes up. You have to think about things deeply . . . to learn to walk to your own heart. I do it all the time. If I can't . . . how the hell is someone else suppose to?"


I've already answered all your silly questions! I don't need your silly questions again. I've got all these other peoples with silly questions to ask me. So you can shut up, alright?


L.A. Journalist: Let's talk about being a "straight shooter," which you said you were and which Ridley is. One of the things that endears you to the press in general is that you do come without that pretense and baggage, you are who you are. But that has to be handicapping to a degree since so many people get ahead by being whomever they need to be, not who they are. Crowe: Just break that down for me, mate. Take out all the compliments and all that crap.


n the meantime, it's back to the land for Crowe, who was hurrying through a weekend of interviews in order to return to Australia for a cattle auction. "Got to keep the grass down," he said, when asked why he needed more cows. He fiddled with the crocodile tooth around his neck--a souvenir from his recent cross-country excursion. Asked if he had wrested it away from its original owner, he grimaced. "I wouldn't hurt a crocodile," he said. "Unless, you know, it was a dentistry thing and he needed a hand."


This American woman asked me for a decaffienated coffee. In New Zealand in 1986 if you asked for a coffee it was a teaspoon of Nescafe. I come over here and suddenly I'm faced with long black, short black, cappuccino, coffee latte. And decaffeinated. So I take her a cup of hot water. And she says 'Russell, this is just boiling water,' and I say 'Lady, when we decaffeinate something in Australia we don't f*** around.' She complained to the management. (While he was a waiter at Doyle's, a popular restaurant in Sydney, Australia)


Success is a matter of luck. Ask any loser.'


" When the job is over ,though, I always go home. Get back to where the air is clean and the conversations aren't".


Denton: "When you go to the first screening of this movie and there you are butt-naked on the screen-are you cringing in embarrassment? or are you, as I suspect,....." Russell: "Excuse me?" Denton: "....checking out the babes to see which ones are impressed-come on" (laughs) Russell: "And taking notes..fourth row, second seat "very good reaction" (giggle)


Rosie Interview:

RO: "You don't have any Australian accent in the movie."
RC: "Ahhh, no. I have an American accent and more specifically, a Los Angeles accent in the movie."
RO: "Did you just do it right there?"
RC: "No." (He smiles sheepishly)
RO: "You did a little bit right there, heh? You're trying to freak me out. It's like the X-Files ... "
RC: "Uhuh."

RC: "No. I didn't know Danny. But, umm, it's funny ... in the film all I do is punch him once and stand over his dead body. So, but we managed to still become friends. Ah, we were at the Cannes film festival recently and I think, ahh, the amount of press was kind of taking its toll and he said, [does a fairly good DeVitto impression when he speaks for DV] 'How long are you gonna' stay?' and I said, 'I'm supposed to be here for a few more days' and he goes "Ahhh, we're going to Paris. You and me. Come on. We're going to Paris."
RC: "So we get on this little private jet and stuff ... and I'm not use to all this sort of stuff. So, we fly into Pais and the two cars come to the plane to pick us up and he gets in one and I get in the other. We're driving down the freeway, you know, and the phone in the car rings and so I pick up the phone, you know, and get [Danny DeVitto speaking] 'Ah, a friend of mine wants to take you to dinner. Alright? He's gonna' make us dinner. Friend of mine.' So, we'll not go to the hotel we'll go to the restaurant instead, you know. So we go to the restaurant and, umm, we pull up to the Cafe [?] Augustine on the Left Bank and the friend who's making dinner comes out with a little apron and a glass of whine and it's Francis Ford Coppola! [In a very good *gangster Brooklyn-like* accent] And I gotta' tell ya .... Francis, he makes a great tomato sauce, you know?"


*Taken from Belinda's Raging.Comments concerning Russell Crowe.*

Case in point, Russell Crowe. A man among sniveling actors. A man who makes women ovulate at the mere thought of him. He wrestles tigers, fights tobacco industry heathens (while smoking the whole time) and knocks the heads of guys who hit women. Here is a man. Always, at least for now, playing an American because apparently the American heterosexual male has become a rare breed.



Much thanks to Michelle for digging through Russell's mountain of interviews and her contribution to this site.

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