SATURDAY PROFILE: Russell Crowe

Published on Saturday 16 November 2002 00:00

YOU’LL find any number of “Russell Crowes” staggering the streets of Glasgow or Edinburgh tonight. Men with a belly full of booze and an attitude best described as “chippy”; no women can be immune to his charms, no man is a match for his fists and no service, however discreet, comprehensive or swift, will ever be good enough.

You’ll find them in every city: London, Los Angeles, Auckland or Perth, and that one of them should turn out to be the most talented actor of his generation, a veritable chameleon, so brilliantly versatile as to transform himself from a bloodied gladiator to a maths nerd in a single year, is hardly surprising. What is refreshing is that this time, Crowe has now had to endure the role of the loser.

The image in this week’s newspapers of Russell Crowe, battered and bruised with his left eye beginning to balloon, will have delighted readers weary of the actor’s boorish behaviour, which has included assaulting a BBC producer, starting a fight in a bar crowded with lumberjacks, and head-butting a fellow actor in an early role. The image of Eric Watson, a fellow New Zealander and no slouch with his fists, pummelling Crowe to the floor in the toilets of Zuma, a London restaurant, sounds worthy of a DVD release and wide circulation around the actor’s ever-increasing list of enemies.

Crowe, we are told, is a hellraiser. The latest, and youngest, addition to an lite team whose duty is to drink pubs dry, tussle with figures of authority and in the case of the late, great, Oliver Reed, whip out his private parts to display a rather intimate tattoo. (It is not known if Crowe has any similar tattoos, but it is known that during the act of love he enjoys crying out: “Go, Russ, go”).

The fact he was in Britain for the funeral of Richard Harris, a founding member of this distinguished group of actors/brawlers, adds an attractive symmetry to the suggestion. One old bruiser dies, a younger man, with whom he worked and greatly admired, steps up to take his place. But where Crowe differs from Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and their American counterparts from Hollywood’s Golden Age, men such as Errol Flynn and John Barrymore, is in the breadth of his ambition. A furnace burns within the breast of Russell Crowe, driving him on to ever greater roles and more powerful performances; he is a man in love with his craft and conscious of the breadth of his ability.

To a man, his hellraising peers held their profession in disdain as a job to which they were perfectly suited and richly rewarded but for which they had neither love nor allegiance, or what little love they once had had long since worn away.

The closest parallel to Crowe is the actor Mickey Rourke, who in the early 1980s had Hollywood at his feet. The problem was that in spite of loving his chosen profession, Rourke felt it lacked masculinity, so he took every opportunity to prove himself in other arenas, taking up championship boxing and involving himself in heavy drinking and public brawling. The end result was a career in tatters and a long stretch in the purgatory of direct-to-video titles, a situation he is even now attempting to turn around.

Yet even if Russell Crowe was tomorrow dispatched back to the touring theatre group from which he emerged, his body of work is deeply impressive. From his break-out role as Hando, the leader of a racist skinhead gang in Romper Stomper, he went on to pay his Hollywood dues in films such as the western The Quick and the Dead, and a Denzel Washington thriller, Virtuosity. But it was as Bud White, the blue-collar cop with a heart full of hate in the Oscar-winning LA Confidential, that lit him up as a true talent. His finest role to date was in Michael Mann’s film The Insider, where he transformed himself into a 53-year-old chemist with a conscience.

When Mann originally pitched the role to him he dismissed himself as too young. The director said: “I’m not talking to you because of your age.” He then put his hand on the actor’s chest and said: “I’m talking to you because of what you have in here.” What Crowe had in his heart was further realised in the role of Maximus in Gladiator, for which he was duly rewarded with his first Oscar. Yet even this failed to satisfy him. He recently said: “I’ve made 23 movies and I think I’ve given 23 bad performances. I’m still prepared to believe that I’m learning this job, and sooner or later I might give a performance I like.”

LOS Angeles is little more than an office to Crowe. “I’d move to Los Angeles if Australia and New Zealand were swallowed up in a huge tidal wave, if there were a bubonic plague in England, and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack. In Australia, they treat you like a piece of furniture. Your mates are your mates and the folks who hate your dark and bloody guts, they don’t change their minds. That’s why I love it.”

It is to Australia and his 560-acre farm, Beacon Hill, that he returns whenever time allows; the pastures and acres of rosewood and red cedar are where his heart truly belongs and he has on occasion quoted the Australian poem Clancy of the Overflow by Banjo Paterson to describe his feelings for the land.

And the bush has friends to meet him

And their kindly voices greet him

In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars

And he sees the vision splendid

Of the sunlit plains extended

And at night the wondrous glories of the everlasting stars.

Crowe was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 7 April, 1964, but he pinballed between there and Australia for his first 15 years, as his parents moved between managing bars and catering companies. As a child, he spent time with his parents on the film and television sets where they provided the food.

His first acting job was at the age of seven in a TV series called Spyforce, which he followed up a few years later with a brief role in Neighbours. Yet his initial goal was to succeed in the music business. He performed with a number of bands before indulging in his Bowie period, when he became the persona of Russ le Roc and with his backing band, The Romantics, released the prophetic single I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando.

Although his father, Alex Crowe, wanted his son to attend university, the family couldn’t afford the fees and suggested a technical college and apprenticeship as “something to fall back on”. Instead, Russell set out on his own with the words: “Mate, I’m certain in my life that I’m going to fall on my face, but it’s highly unlikely that I’m gonna fall back.”

After stints with an insurance company and work as a nightclub DJ, his big break was to win an audition for a national tour of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and although he was unable to sing with any great proficiency, he won the director over by his stage presence.

This led on to later roles and at the age of 24 he appeared in Blood Brothers opposite Peter Cousens, a classically-trained actor with whom he soon came to blows. On stage, Crowe was expected at one point to throw a gun away but he never controlled the direction and it persistently struck Cousens. One night, after one strike too many, the actor stormed into Crowe’s dressing room. Crowe’s fellow actors held him back but he broke free and headbutted Cousens, breaking his nose. The play’s director insisted both men write a letter of apology and when Russell Crowe refused he was fired.

The actor’s relationships with directors still remain tense and difficult but in the end highly productive. Crowe’s view is that it is his duty to explore the character in every possible way and defend him when necessary against dishonourable treatment. When the studio suggested a love scene between Maximus and the emperor’s daughter, he refused to countenance such a thing on the grounds that his character had too much respect for his dead wife and child to embark on a quick fling.

As a single man, Crowe has no such restrictions and has a reputation as a serial seducer. His conquests include Sharon Stone, Courtney Love and most recently Meg Ryan. The couple met on the set of Proof of Life and embarked on an affair that led to the collapse of Ryan’s marriage to Dennis Quaid, but not, as had been hoped, to the altar.Ryan reportedly broke off the relationship with a phone call on Christmas Day 2000 when Crowe was dining with his family on his farm. After the call he went to his room and did not come out for the rest of the day. Proof, if it was required, that a heart truly does beat under that rough and unshaven exterior.

Since then he has been providing a shoulder for Nicole Kidman to cry on and rekindling a long love affair with the actress Danielle Spencer, whom he once thought of marrying. He dismissed the thought at the time, clinging to the maxim: “He who travels fastest, travels alone.” Today, however, he has talked broodily about having children.

Only time, divided by his constitution and appetite for alcohol, will dictate whether Russell Crowe will continue his antics or if a calmer personality will one day emerge. Judging by his performances on the cinema screen, film fans will hope the quiet life never beckons or that the fire in his chest will one day dim.

Crowe himself believes Hollywood has not yet changed him: “I don’t think fundamentally I’ve changed at all. I’m still the same a***hole I was 20 years ago.”

Factfile

* The man who once had a role in Neighbours now commands $25 million a film, earnings enjoyed only by two other actors: Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise.

* He once released a single called I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando and still tours with his band, 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts.

* When told that he had been awarded a "Silver Heart" by the Everyman Theatre in London and that a previous recipient was Joan Collins he replied: "Joan Collins? You can shove your Silver Heart up your a***, mate."

* He sparked a fight in a bar in Alberta by dismissing ice hockey as a game for wimps.

* During the filming of Proof of Life in Ecuador he preferred to live on the jungle set in a caravan rather than stay in a hotel with the cast which was a three-hour drive away.