How
did it happen? How did an obscure Antipodean suddenly find himself
as one of Hollywood's sexiest male stars? A sex symbol, moreover,
who is being simultaneously acclaimed as the new Marlon Brando,
the new Clark Gable and the new Mel
Gibson.
The
answer is simple. Hollywood is bursting at the seams with genetically
blessed young men whose aesthetic allure varies from pretty-boy (Leonardo
DiCaprio, Matt Damon) to square-jawed handsome (Ben
Affleck, Matthew McConaughey), but when it comes to manly
screen presence-animal magnetism that, after all these years, still
keeps the likes of Mel Gibson, Sean Connery and Harrison
Ford at the top of the "Sexiest Men" polls-there's a real
shortage of contenders. Young men, these days, just don't seem to
have it.
But
Russell Crowe-36-years-old and just shy of 6ft tall-does.
Walter
Parkes certainly thinks so. He's the co-producer of the summer's
first big blockbuster Gladiator, a sword-and-sandals
epic in which Crowe plays an exiled Roman general
who fights for his life in a series of bloody gladiatorial contests.
"The
exercise I invite you to do," says Parkes, "is,
"Who would you put in the movie if you couldn't have Russell?"
Chimes his producer partner Douglas Wick: "We
knew he'd be fantastic."
Gladiator,
directed by Ridley Scott, is a crucial
break for Crowe. The lead part in a $105 million
Hollywood spectacular puts him into a different league from his previous
acclaimed work in L.A. Confidential and
The Insider. He's a movie star now: a sexy action hero
with the confidence and swagger of a leading man. Big bucks cannot
be far behind.
Russell
Crowe is sitting in the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles,
and he's having problems with Heat's line of questioning,
"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.
If
you watched this year's Oscar ceremony, news of Russell Crowe
actually laughing might come as a shock. While the other
nominees did their best to give the impression they were having the
time of their lives, Crowe sat stony faced.
Maybe
Crowe was fazed by the spectacle of Hollywood at
its most self-congratulatory. Maybe he was depressed that his film
The Insider lost out on all seven of the
Academy awards it had been nominated for. Either way, his grim countenance
seemed to belong to a different actor from the one who had relished
being the centre of attention at January's Golden Globe ceremony,
where he'd whooped it up with his date for the night, Jodie
Foster.
Crowe
is a serious actor, who was seriously good in the serious
role of the Insider's tobacco-industry whistleblower
Jeffrey Wigand. Hence the Best Actor Oscar nomination. But mostly,
he's the funny, bullshit-adverse regular guy who likes sailing, drinking,
fighting (occasionally) and swearing (always.)
In
theory, Crowe lives on a 560-acre farm in New South Wales, Australia.
In practice, he's often on movie sets thousands of miles away. In
1997 he explained why he's quit the city: "I have no need to live
in Sydney any more. The danger for me there is that I can walk out
the door to get a newspaper and come home three days later. Being
on a farm, I structure my day around the needs of my animals, not
my animalistic friends."
Relocating
to Tinseltown, unsurprisingly, isn't an option. "I'd move to Los
Angeles," he once said, "if Australia and New Zealand were
swallowed by a huge tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in Europe
and if Africa disappeared from some Martian attack."
Crowe
was born in New Zealand-he is one-sixteenth Maori-and moved
to Australia with his parents and brother Terry when he was four.
His parents worked as on-set caterers on movies and tv sets, so young
Russell soon found himself getting work as a child extra. A road that
led him into performing as an actor and as a singer in his band Thirty
Odd Foot of Grunts (for whom he wrote the song I
wanna be Marlon Brando). His early years saw him earn cash as
a waiter, bartender, busker, fruit picker and bingo caller, and he
has the unlikely distinction of having performed the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter
on stage in The Rocky Horror Picture Show 416
times.
"From
my early twenties and first professional musical, when there was some
acting stuff required, I realised I was good at it," says Crowe.
"I'm a virtuoso in my job in that there's not an actor
I can't go into a scene with and be absolutely confident that, whatever
is required of my character, I can do it."
Sharon
Stone, who plucked him from relative obscurity to play opposite
her in the 1995 western The Quick and the Dead, feels
the same way about him. "I thought that Russell was not only charismatic,
attractive and talented, but also fearless," she says. "And
I find fearlessness very attractive."
Crowe's
parents also managed pubs and hotels so, as he puts it, "I've
been exposed to the foibles of public-bar life since childhood."
Foibles? "I've certainly been in a position where I'm
on the losing end of a violent confrontation."
The
actor would be the first to admit that he is in some way defined by
being caught between two cultures, "My dad is very much a New
Zealander," he explains, "But the formative years in Australia
set my attitudes towards life, and they're vastly different from your
New Zealander attitudes.
If
a fight starts in an Australian bar," he once said, "everyone
will work on stopping it: "Come on mate, Calm down." An hour later,
you're most likely to see the two protagonists having a drink together.
Whereas if a fight starts in a New Zealand bar, someone's going to
get seriously hurt and an ambulance be called." These words returned
to haunt him last November when he got involved in a fracas outside
an Australian nightclub and was caught on four security cameras. The
news coverage of the incident tells its own sorry tale: he starts
three fights; argued heatedly with a woman; threw a punch at his brother
Terry; and kissed a man who tried to calm him down. One of his adversaries
suffered a broken thumb, and Crowe got a scratch
under the eye.
We
may not like to see our movie stars scrapping drunkenly in the streets,
but it's Crowe's very intensity and physicality that
adds an edge to his acting. Says Burt Reynolds, who
starred alongside him in the flop ice-hockey movie, Mystery,
Alaska: "there's a fire in him that burns all night long,
all the time. And that may hurt him. Because people don't understand
that kind of flame."
Significantly,
it was playing brutal skinhead leader Hando in 1992's Romper
Stomper that got him real attention, and playing violent
cop Bud White in L.A. Confidential that
pushed him to the front ranks of Hollywood actors.
"He's
a racist," says Crowe about the latter of these
characters. "He's self-righteous,. He's a son-of-a-bitch."
But
Crowe is not just a meat-head playing meat-head roles.
The characters always have an inner vulnerability. "In the movie,
you get an idea why Bud's taken this attitude towards life," he
explains. "He doesn't realise how much he's looking for love and
affection and confirmation of his good points, buried as they may
be."
As
for Crowe the person, Michael Mann, who
directed him in The Insider, has this to
say: "He puts on this tough redneck act. The reality is that he's
one of the most intelligent, sensitive actors around."
Those
may well have been the qualities that endeared him to Jodie
Foster, who is directing him this summer in the film Flora
Plum. Crowe, a notoriously private
man, rankles at the tabloid coverage that followed his very public
date with the superstar in January. "It was written that I'd said
that I intentionally went to the Golden Globes with Jodie
Foster to cause a stir, y'know? It's like, what are you talking
about? I just happen to really respect her. And we got on like a house
on fire. But, no, we didn't go shopping for baby clothes, and, no,
unfortunately I'm not Charlie's father. Golly gosh!"
In
his roles, Russell can cook up a beguiling mix of wounded macho and
hinted sensitivity, but on set it often takes a lot to achieve it-and
that can bring him into conflict with directors. Some, like L.A.
Confidential's Curtis Hanson, can deal
with his method. "Russell was relentless in his pursuit of the
essence of the character," he says. "If that makes him a
pain in the ass sometimes you live with it. With Russell it was always
about the work."
Other
directors aren't so sure. Craig Lahiff, who directed
him in 1997's little-seen Heaven's Burning, acknowledges
Crowe gave him 110 percent. "To put it tactfully,
he gave me more than I asked for," he reveals. "He has strong
ideas. He uses a lot of negative energy, and to give a good performance
he makes other actors suffer."
Gladiator
director, Ridley Scott disagrees, "It
was a tough, tough job," he admits. "But Russell's worth
it. That's the key. He's worth it."
In
his home country, at least among the acting community, Crowe
is legendary for bringing his intensity into a performance
of a different kind. One story, about an alleged sexual encounter
with a young actress, relates that the eager young actor provided
his own cheerleading commentary: "Go, Russ, go!"
Blockbuster
success has come late to Russell Crowe. Some blame
the bad choices he made in Hollywood: the virtual reality thriller
Virtuosity; the weak romantic comedy Breaking
up with Salma Hayek: forgettable features
like Rough Magic and Heaven's
Burning. The other school puts the emphasis on Crowe's
own tendency to successfully blur his identity with each
role. Like Samuel L. Jackson, who remained virtually
invisible until Pulp Fiction, despite a
fistful of parts in major movies, Crowe's technical
skill served to keep him in the shadows.
He
earned an Oscar nomination for playing the 53-year-old former tobacco
executive Wigand, donning a grey wig and going on a crash diet of
bourbon and cheeseburgers to gain 35 pounds for the role. But how
many cinema-goers realised this was the same man who brought his fizzling
virility to the part of Bud White in L.A. Confidential?
Gladiator
is a breakthrough role in more ways than one. Not only
is it a massive movie with a huge marketing push, but for once Crowe
is not in disguise. The role of Maximus doesn't require the
dissolution of Russell-rather, it requires him to take every particle
of his Russell-ness, and fuse them into something bigger than himself.
What
you see on-screen is the physical manifestation of SuperRussell-and
that's an image no viewer is easily going to forget.
