Crudup Gets in Tune
For a low-maintenance guy like Billy Crudup, looking the part of '70s rock
star Russell Hammond in Almost Famous wasn't tough to pull off. "The wardrobe
went a long way," says the actor, 32, of his character's groovy threads. "And
I never cut my hair. I just wait for someone to tell me what to do with it."
As for getting into character, that was slightly more challenging. "The
priority was to stay with the script, to accomplish the things that
[director] Cameron Crowe wanted in each scene," says Crudup. "I didn't just
go into my trailer, play five bars of [the 1971 Led Zeppelin hit] 'Stairway
to Heaven' and pop out as Russell Hammond."
--TING YU
Rolling Stone
"Along with Crowe and Nancy Wilson, Frampton wrote the original Stillwater
tunes, appeared in the card-game scene, and, most important, was the
headmaster of what came to affectionately be called Rock School. In the
film, the members of Stillwater are played by two musicians, John Fedevich
and Mark Kozelek, and two actors, Crudup (on guitar) and Jason Lee (as singer
Jeff Bebe). Some fine-tuning was clearly in order. "Basically, we had band
practice...with Peter Frampton," Crudup says with a laugh. "I would not have
imagined that I would be sitting there, learning to play rock songs and
getting paid. I didn't think it was in the realm of possibility - otherwise
I would have asked for it sooner."
Fugit also enrolled at the Rock School. Like Crudup, the kid has taken up
guitar full time and jams with friends back home. "I'm not saying I'm cool
or anything," he says. "But I have a few more friends and wasn't quite as
nerdy as William. Almost there, but not quite."
The Rock School also helped form a bond between Fugit and Crudup, a
stage-trained actor who grew up in Virginia, Texas and New York, attended New
York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and made his name in indie films
such as Waking the Dead and Jesus' Son. Crudup, 32, says he is just as
suspicious of celebrity as his character is. "Russell is constantly trying
to simplify his life and get back to the point where he was just playing
music with his buddies," he says. "He's struggling with how art and commerce
collide. Actors, by virtue of being actors, are celebrities. That's
dangerous - provokes a perverse value system. Lester Bangs predicted the
future."
BTW, Crowe says Russell Hammond is based on Glenn Frey (of the Eagles).
