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RUSSELL CROWE Is a Man Who Looks Back in Anger, but Mellows When It Comes to Wife Danielle and His Soon-To-Be-Born Son, Writes DAVID LESER

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RUSSELL CROWE Is a Man Who Looks Back in Anger, but Mellows When It Comes to Wife Danielle and His Soon-To-Be-Born Son, Writes DAVID LESER CROWE’SWE’S NEST A genius on screen, but maligned for loutish behaviour off it, RUSSELL CROWE is a man who looks back in anger, but mellows when it comes to wife Danielle and his soon-to-be-born son, writes DAVID LESER. So, here he is. Russell Crowe. Beyond the the brooding, unshaven figure in a tracksuit those characters, gay plumber included. hype and the headlines, coiled tightly in his in front of you bears any resemblance to “There’s part of me that is a gay seat, head buried in his hands, occasionally the alpha male who seems to fight his way plumber,” he says with deadpan delivery. laughing like a little boy, but talking, always so regularly out of the front pages of the “I love laying pipe ... Excuse me, bad talking, and then occasionally looking up world’s newspapers. gag, not for the The Women’s Weekly.” at you with those eyes of his, those famous It’s a difficult call. We often believe what Okay, but what about the rest? What steel blue arrowheads that might easily we read, and yet here he is in the flesh about the man behind the characters, the pass for weapons of war. giving you all the reasons why it’s as crazy one who allegedly starts a brawl outside This is the man some people like to call to believe these stories as it is to believe a Coffs Harbour hotel four years ago, where the drunken lout, the foul-tempered prat, that he is, well, Maximus himself. he is seen on four separate video cameras the insecure punk who leaves vapour trails “Do I feel I need to explain myself at verbally abusing two young women, biting of enmity in his wake, but who also brings any stage?” he asks rhetorically and with a club patron on the neck and throwing a to the screen such boiling, watchable a world-weary sigh, a few minutes into our punch at his brother? Did the cameras lie? genius that he is now regarded as one of interview in a Sydney hotel room. “Well, Did his accusers? the world’s finest actors. this is the explanation, folks. I’m an actor. And then there’s the incident at the If truth be known, it’s a slightly surreal I play roles. You go to the cinema, you pay BAFTA awards ceremony night in London feeling being in his presence. One part of your money. The more effort I put in ... in February 2002, where he reportedly you is programmed not to see the real basic principles of mathematics, possibly pinned a television executive against a person at all, rather just the characters even gravity ... you have a better experience wall because he had the audacity to cut he’s brought to life for our entertainment: in the cinema. 50 seconds from his best actor (for the neo-Nazi skinhead (Romper Stomper), “And all I’m doing is telling a story. I’m Gladiator) acceptance speech? True, he the gay plumber (The Sum of Us), the not going to take that character off the later apologised to the executive, but was brutal cop (LA Confidential), the hulking screen and walk up and down the street it genuine remorse or was it the whistleblower (The Insider), the Roman as that character. So, to meet me, you may behaviour of a man who realised general (Gladiator), the SAS soldier (Proof experience some disappointment. There’s he might have just blown his of Life), the brilliant, schizophrenic maths nothing I can do about that. You can’t expect chance for a second professor (A Beautiful Mind), and now, in me to apologise if other people take that consecutive Oscar (for Russell his most recent incarnation, the British character more seriously than the person A Beautiful Mind)? Crowe, 39, a 18th century sea captain (Master and performing it.” And then there is consummate Commander: The Far Side of the World). So that clears that up. Russell Crowe, the scuffle in the actor and And while part of you is going through 39, is not, repeat not, any of his London restaurant a man who this rollcall of stellar performances, another characters, although everything he has in November of that is often ▲ PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM BAUER. TIM BAUER. BY PHOTOGRAPHY part of you is trying to figure out whether ever experienced in his life has informed year, when he misunderstood. 48 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – DECEMBER 2003 apparently hurled a racial taunt at the said that, I’m not a malicious person. I a kookaburra visiting him before his he was 16, he’d Russell and New Zealand Warriors football club don’t view life with a great deal of grandfather’s death 14 years ago, he adopted the stage Danielle owner, Eric Watson, before punching negativity. I don’t think anybody owes responds warily. name Russ Le Roq Spencer after him twice in the face. (Watson retaliated me anything ... “You’re writing for The Australian and penned his first their wedding by knocking Crowe to the ground with a “But if you’ve got photographers up Women’s Weekly, right? Well ... the single, I Wanna Be on April 7 well aimed jab.) your arse most days of the week of medium of that kind of magazine will not Like Marlon Brando. It this year. Are these incidents the mark of the your life, what are you supposed to do? allow you to express the fact that you was a spectacular flop. man, or are they more the occasional [Does it mean] I can’t have a negative may believe there is something outside “I actually have two or mind explosions of a fiercely intelligent, conversation with a cab driver, for this human existence that you don’t three of the worst recordings highly ambitious, but sometimes deeply example, because he might ring a understand, and you won’t be able to in the history of the New Zealand insecure, individual still coming to terms newspaper and tell on me? If [he’s] a s**t, understand, but you’re getting clues to. music industry,” he said in another with his mega celebrity status? f***ing driver and [he’s] driving me “[You might] have great intentions of typically self-deprecating aside. “So I’ve Well, to try and find out all one can around in a cab I’m going to tell [him]. treating this as a serious subject matter ... got that whole bottom end covered.” really do is keep an open mind, ask the “I can [be having] a conversation but by the time it’s in a British tabloid Although he had significant success questions and hope like hell the interview with somebody that I’ve known 20 years [it looks like] I talk to birds.” in musicals such as Grease and The doesn’t end before it begins. ago and they can be recounting a story Russell eventually relents on this point Rocky Horror Show, it wasn’t until he Do you ever recognise yourself in the of something we supposedly did together, when I insist that his comments will be was 25 that he landed his first lead stories that are written about you, I venture and I can be sitting there and their recorded faithfully and fairly. role in a film, The Crossing, playing at the outset? memory splits off from reality and they “Okay, well, I’ll tell you exactly the opposite the woman he would later “Very seldom,” Russell replies, taking start relating things to me that they would situation. I’m in my apartment in marry, Danielle Spencer. a deep drag on a cigarette. “Every now have told at dinner parties over and Woollahra [in 1989] ... and I was in the “[That’s] a 19-year apprenticeship,” and then someone will print a complete over again. kitchen and I had the window open. Five he tells me now, “and 19 years of ‘No quote which will make me laugh, when I “And as things have progressed in my storeys up and a kookaburra just landed mate, you’re not good enough. Don’t like think about it ... fun to actually say that ... career or whatever, they’ve added a little on the windowsill. I looked at it and it your hairdo. You’re the wrong height.’ my sense of humour can be a little sharp bit of information here or there to spice looked at me. We were this far apart. That None of the things that are relevant to at times and it’s possibly most sharp when it up. And I’d be sitting there listening had never happened to me before and the character or the possibility of I talk about myself in terms of my self- to it going, ‘I’m actually here now, this it wasn’t scared of me. I felt it had playing characters.” deprecating sense of humour. isn’t the dinner party. This is you and me, something to communicate to me, so I This smouldering anger at being “Somebody asked me about playing right, and now it’s very funny that you’ve just looked at it for a second and I knew passed over for nearly two decades is an the role of a captain [in Master and related that [story] ... but it didn’t happen that my grandfather [Stan Wemyss] was important clue to understanding Russell Commander] and I said, ‘It’s going to [like that]’. dead. I just knew it right then.” Crowe, as is the fact that – by his own be very difficult to walk away from 70 or “So you get a lot of that.
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