The Unofficial Russell Crowe Resource Page

This is an interview from a Norwegian newspaper, "Dagbladet".

Man for his Sword

Russell Crowe is Hollywood's reluctant crown prince. He is killingly good, extremely intense, he oozes of sex and has the lead role in this year's most pompous movie, Gladiator.

by CHRISTINA PLETTEN
translated by Kim E.

A lot of people have been impressed by Gladiator after it premiered last week. Wearing a long, black leather jacket and a blue shirt, Russell Crowe is just as tough as Australian men are supposed to be; intensely charming in a halfly scary way. He leans the well-built body over the table when he talks, in deep, at times uninterpretable grunts between frequent smoking of his cigarette.

- Hollywood, he says, - is a freakshow. - I just stop by a few times for a taste of it. He smokes like real men does, holding his cigarette all the way down in between the fingers, and he holds his whole hand in front of his mouth when taking a puff. He swears enthusiastically, and is surprisingly creative when using the world "piss". This year, Crowe was Oscar nominated for his role in The Insider, but he was mostly irritated because he had to sit in a car queue and wear a smoking. - The worst think about award ceremonies like that is that you have to sit and wait for half an hour before you reach the entrance. Normally, I just step out of the fucking car and walk the rest of the way. Everybody stares at the cars and scream after people like Geena Davis anyway. And I walk past them at the other side of the street, without drawing attention, and walk straight in. Crowe had also instructed that he wanted to be seated as close to the emergency exit as possible. - So that I could piss away when I wanted to. All this cirkus about award ceremonies is a bit distant for me. And it has been really boring to get into the smoking just to lose to Kevin Spacey! he says, only half joking. Even though Crowe had to see the Oscar lost to Spacey, there will probably be more opportunities for the versatile Australian. Judging from the panegyric reception of his new film, Tladiator, no-one should be surprised if Crowe has to get into the smoking again next year after a new Oscar nomination.

With nineteen films under his belt, Russell Crowe has a long record as an actor. But this is the year when he is claiming the macho throne in Hollywood, with the lead in the great action drama Gladiator which premiered in Oslo May 19th. Crowe is expected to fill the vacuum after the movie city's older tough guys, among them Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro, who are all close to the Viagra age. He was imported to Los Angeles from Australia by Sharon Stone in 1992 when she couldn't find a real man for the gunslinger movie The Quick and the Dead among Hollywood's young stars. Crowe, says Stone, has an "old-fashioned macho quality, he is rough and charismatic at the same time." In Gladiator he lets the testosterone flow freely. Crowe has the lead role as Maximus, a general in the Roman army who is ordered killed after the emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) has been murdered by his own son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix). Maximus survives, but is captured and forced to fight for his life as a gladiator. Gladiator was an expensive gambling in true Hollywood style. It had a budget of a billion kroner [the Norwegian currency], and to look authentic, a copy of Rome's Colosseum in a 40 percent scale was built. Not since Ben Hur and Spartacus 40 years ago has this type of movie been successful, and the role as Maximus was all-important.

- Maximus is the soul of this movie. It was necessary to find an actor who could possess a warrior's brutality, but who, at the same time, seems like a man or principle and justice. Russell's intensity, dignity and interpretation of all the roles he does made him a clear favourite, producer Doug Wick says, the man between the huge success American Beauty. The critic's favourite Crowe was a relatively unknown name in spite of his Oscar nomination for The Insider, and in that movie he plays a chubby, middle-aged scientist nerd. - He went from being a chubby, middle-aged man to being a gladiator - not bad, director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma & Louise) jokes. - In other words he is a real actor, he can totally sink into a role. Crowe talks about his body in the third person, like a tool. And in Gladiator he seems more like a tractor than a Ferrari. That was the intention, he tells. - I didn't want a modern gym body, you know, with huge, gleaming muscles. The body you see in the movie is created to be able to do the stuff Maximus can, it's a worker's body. And Ridley sent me a letter from England after meeting me there, where he wrote: "Don't lose more weight - chunky is hunky, Russell laughs, who gained 20 kilos for The Insider. - I was so fat that I had problems getting out of the car. It was an unhealthy, cholesterole-in-the-sky type of fat. It was great losing it.

The gladiator fights' grotesque plays is the core of Scott's movie, which is extremely violent. The director was inspired by a painting called "Pollice Verso", latin for "thumbs down". The picture shows a triumphant gladiator in the ring of the Colosseum, looking up at the emperor and awaiting his judgement over the fallen opponent. On the screen, the gladiator fights have been a living painting in blood and death, a raw version which is so authentic that you get taken by the murderish intoxication. - The violence in Gladiator is almost beautiful at the same time as it seems scaringly real. Do you think that we today, two milleniums later, still let ourselves entertained by the same as the Romans? - Definitely. A lot of things have changed physically since the Roman time. We have Ferraris instead of wagons, but when it comes to human feeling and what we desire, yes, then I don't think we have changed at all. We have just become more efficient, says Russell Crowe. - That's exactly what Gladiator is about. It works on several platforms, like an action movie, but as a serious drama as well. In a central scene in the movie Maximus - the gladiator - stands in the middle of the arena, shaking of adrenaline, with a bloodstained sword in his right hand. Around him, broken, lifeless creatures are scattered about, the remains of a drama with life and death as the only actions. Slowly he raises his arms and he stares at the tribunes. The dust falls and the audience's wild screams quiets down. "Are you not entertained?" he yells, furiously. The audience stares back, confused. The confusion spreads through "the fourth wall", out into the movie theatre, where people move insecurely in their seats. Are we entertained? Crowe, as the leather-clad fighter, has us up against the wall and he doesn't want to let go. With an intensity and a sharpness that almost no other actor can match, he has just performed a bloody and tempting butcher dance, and put us all in a shameful trance of joy mixed with fear. Then he puts the sword at our throats: "Is this what you want?"

Russell Crowe was born at New Zealand, but moved to Australia as a kid. He started his career already as a six year old in an Australian tv-series, and toured Australia and New Zealand with Grease and The Rocky Horror Show. Besides making movies praised by the critics, like Proof and Romper Stomper, Crowe plays the lead role in his own rock band, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, where he sings and plays the guitar (one of the first songs Crowe wrote are called "I Wanna Be Marlon Brando"). His breakthrough in Hollywood came with the movie L.A. Confidential, where he plays a frustrated cop. But in stead of settling down in Los Angeles, Crowe has chosen to remain living in Australia, where he owns an enormous ranch in the outback, a seven mile drive from Sydney, with cows and it all. - My life is kind of weird. Last week I hung out of a helicopter in Poland (for his new film Proof of Life with Meg Ryan), then I am taken to Los Angeles for interviews, and then I'm on to jungle training in Ecuador, Crowe says. He is also starring in Jodie Foster's next movie, Flora Plum. The rumours around Jodie and Russell started running wildly this winter when the two of them had fun together at the Golden Globe award ceremony, and it didn't take long before Crowe was said to be the father of Foster's children in the tabloids. The two of them insist that they are good friends only, and Crowe says he is looking forward to the shoot. - I play a circus freak in Flora Plum. Unlike Gladiator it is a small movie with a small budget, and that means a low salary. But that has never been important to me, especially when I get to work with Jodie. - What draws you to roles? - Things giving me goosebumps. - What do you think about Gladiator? - The expectations to this movie has been sky high. I don't like watching my own movies. Perhaps that is because I play serious, emotional roles, and I have to go through everything they go through when I see them again. But with this movie, even though there are a few emotional scenes, I was screaming and yelling like a fourteen year old, and I had a great time. It's a serious drama, but is is damn fun as well. He lowers his voice to an almoust unhearable level. - Max is back, folks, and he's gonna kick some ass.

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