Russell Crowe

Spotlight By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Russell Crowe is a busy man. 'I've just been running around the five boroughs of New York chasing Denzel Washington, and that requires a little bit of effort,' he says of a movie he's shooting at the moment. 'The movie's called American Gangster.' If all goes according to plan, he adds, it will be out sometime late next year. But already Crowe has refocused his attention to the matter at hand. 'Yeah, so let's talk about that movie next time, yes''

Next time it is. This time, the spotlight is on A Good Year, directed, like American Gangster, by Ridley Scott. It's a departure for Scott: having long been known as a tempestuous Australian who slinks into difficult roles with chameleon-like acting ability, here he finds himself in what some might call a romantic comedy. He plays Max, a rich investment expert in London who is forced to go back to his recently-deceased uncle's vineyard estate in Provence to sell the property. There, he reconnects with his past and finds love both in a woman and in the land.

'If he asks me to jump off a cliff, jump off a cliff I will,' Crowe says of Scott, and it's no surprise: Scott, after all, directed Crowe to a Best Actor Oscar in 2000's Gladiator. 'Ridley and I share a lot of common ground, we share a sense of humor, we share a work ethic, and I know from a performance point of view that whatever I come up with on camera, he's going to capture. I trust him absolutely.'

This doesn't seem to be any interview platitude, either: the man clearly has done his homework concerning his director and friend's professional life. 'All the way back to The Duelists, his first film. I mean, he's been making movies for a long time,' Crowe says. 'Obviously I thought Alien was pretty scary, and I thought Blade Runner was a great experience, and working with him on Gladiator is a seminal thing in my life.'

Gladiator was a turning point in Crowe's career, the movie that turned him in to the leading-man star he is today. 'We created something together in the trenches, despite the odds of budget, despite the studio heads'' and here he jumps into a hilariously nasally American accent ' 'saying, 'no no no, we want a sex scene, you have to have a sex scene!' Crowe is disdainful of the suits but laughs about the results. 'I'm sorry boys, but it doesn't suit the character. We can't be avenging the death of the wife and child, and stop for a bit of nookie along the way. I'm very sorry, it's not gonna happen.'

It's no coincidence that Crowe's character in A Good Year, Max, shares his name with Crowe's signature character, Maximus. He's like the flipped side of the coin. 'Max is a warrior. He's a contemporary, financial district, modern-day warrior. And he goes through a journey of discovery.'

This time, of course, swords and sandals were swapped with wine and France. 'I tasted around,' he says of his time on location, 'and eventually found a couple of wines from there that I really liked.' Then, with a laugh: 'I've been an imbiber of God's nectar for many a year.'

The British Scott was already familiar with the area. 'He [Ridley] will casually abuse French people without being conscious of the fact that he's doing it, in the English manner. Just as my French friends will casually abuse the English in the same way. And, as an outside, as a New Zealand-born Australian, this, to me, was very funny.'

Crowe's joy in talking about the movie is so authentic, it's hard to imagine that this is the same man whose public life consists of violent stories of phone-throwing. When he makes a point about his character spending all of his money to buy a painting for his love interest, someone asks Crowe if he thinks this means money can buy love. He responds to it in the calm, measured voice of someone who's been told to keep their anger in check a few more times than most. 'No. I think you're missing the point completely,' he says. 'Money's got nothing to do with it. If he has to put himself in the position where he has nothing in order for her to take him seriously, then he's fully prepared to do that.

Like Max, who discovers his roots, Crowe had a period where he reevaluated his life as well. 'My main period of reevaluation was probably in 2002, when I was doing Master and Commander, and I realized just how many months a year I'm spending away from my family and away from Australia. It was getting to be ten, eleven months a year. And it'd been going on for years. Basically since I did The Quick and the Dead, in '93, '94, I'd been on the road. And here I was ten years later and I was still on the road. And doing a 26, 27 week schedule. It just kind of occurred to me that I might me missing out on a few things.' He has since gotten married and is now a father of two.

Which is perhaps part of what drew him to this project in the first place. 'Probably about February or march of last year, [Ridley and I] sat in a room together, and we spread out the seventeen projects that were available to us, and this is the one we chose to do.' And while he's happy to admit the film is lighthearted and funny, he doesn't think it's fluff: he stresses that the film is more about his character's rediscovery of the world. 'When we meet Max he's a very wealthy and successful person, and at the end he's still a wealthy person ' but, even more successful, because he's stepped away from it.'

He certainly appears to be a kinder, gentler Crowe than we've come to know from the boxers and gladiators and masters and commanders he's come to have been known to play. 'Ridley was doing seventy-five setups before lunch,' he says, jumping into yet another anecdote about his director. 'It's a comedy, Ridley. It's a low-budget comedy. You're driving the French crew absolutely crazy.'

He jumps into an exaggerated French accent this time: 'If ze keep working like zis, ze will kill us all!' Then he sits back and lets out a high-pitched giggle.