Russell Crowe
On the ferocious feuds of Hollywood
‘‘That’s what has been the greatest thing for me in my life,’’ says Russell Crowe. ‘‘That my job is something I have a deep, intrinsic, essential passion for. So when I go to work I don’t really think about the hours. I don’t think about the embarrassment of crying for 12 hours in front of 200 people.’’
He laughs: now that he is thinking about it, it is making him uncomfortable. ‘‘But I don’t think about it those terms, because I just love the job.’’
That’s what he tells his sons, now aged nine and 12.
‘‘I say ‘don’t make a decision about what you want to do for a job for anybody else’,’’ he says. ‘‘I think that’s the greatest advice you can give any young person: that when you’re making those decisions in life, don’t please other people. This is your life.’’
You can’t fault Crowe for failing to walk that talk: he is famously indifferent to pleasing other people. Hard-working, exacting and committed, he sets his professional bar high and expects his colleagues to follow him over it. If that means being branded difficult, too bad.
‘‘You do get on film sets where people bring other things into the environment which have nothing to do with it, you know, which is where things can be complicated,’’ he says. ‘‘That’s the thing you have to understand. That once you step on the set, you can’t be doing your emails while you’re prepping for a scene. You’ve just got to focus on what you’re doing.’’
As he would no doubt tell anyone who broke his rules – a colleague tells me how he once made the mistake of trying to sneak a look at his phone during a group interview and Crowe took it and threw it into a corner.
I met Russell Crowe in one of the beach cabanas at Cannes’ opulent Hotel du Cap. The Nice Guys, a private-eye caper in which he stars with Ryan Gosling, had been given an out-of-competition slot at the annual film festival. It isn’t festival fare, but it’s cheerfully entertaining.
Crowe plays a muscle man for hire who, having been sent to beat up Gosling’s seedy private gumshoe, ends up joining forces with him.
They are looking for a young woman ostensibly lost in the cracks of the porn industry, but it’s the ‘70s in Los Angeles: pollution is so bad that they risk their lives going outside.
The director is Shane Black, who rose to sudden fame and fortune when he wrote the first Lethal Weapon’s script on spec and sold it at the age of 22, then proceeded to fight with studios, do a lot of drinking and drugs and generally become the sort of character who might figure in the background of The Nice Guys ;he is now back, having cleaned up and directed the phenomenally successful Iron Man 3. The producer of Iron Man 3, the Lethal Weapon series and now of The Nice Guys, a script Black had written 15 years earlier when he was last in favour, was Joel Silver. Silver is famous for his extravagance and his ferocious feuds.
‘‘So you’ve got these four guys who have come to this piece, all with quote-unquote difficult reputations,’’ says Crowe. ‘‘But four men who are all passionate filmmakers, who are really focused on what we are trying to achieve. And on that set there are no wrinkles, there are no problems.’’
Ryan Gosling clearly impressed him. He keeps making conversational detours to praise some aspect of his work.
‘‘If people were able to eavesdrop on the conversations Ryan and I would have on set about the best way to make a toilet door bounce or ‘Hmm, ‘what do you think is the most efficient way to break someone’s arm?’, they would think they were listening to a couple of crazy people,’’ he says.
‘‘But he’s really into his job; he’s a cineaste and that is very easy for me, because you talk about these absurd things and then deliver it to camera. He also understands that a camera is an inanimate object that requires feeding. Some people believe that the camera either loves you or it doesn’t, but I’m not one of those people. That’s bullshit, you know. Just because you’re pretty doesn’t mean you’re worth watching. Ryan understands that and puts a lot of work into what he does, even the very simple moments. So we had that in common.’’
In 2012, Crowe’s indefatigable work ethic sustained him through four starring roles in one calendar year. ‘‘Which is almost impossible,’’ he says, ‘‘but the producers of those films worked with each other to create the space. I think I saw my children 30 days in the year because they are not allowed to travel to where I’m working at this point. So that was a tough year. But then last year, after The Water Diviner came out and I’d shot this movie, I got home in May and then I’ve basically taken a year off, just taking the kids to sport and being dad, which has been fantastic.’’
Crowe and his wife Danielle Spencer separated three years ago. He says their sons are not allowed to travel to visit him on set. ‘‘The hardest thing for me is that the decision to go to work is also connected to a massive negative, because it is a decision to be away from my kids. You’ve got school holidays so there could be a little bit more freedom in that, but that’s where we are at the moment. But my kids love what I do for a job. They’re kind of into it. And the home environment we have created around them is very stable, so I can go to work, but it does get more and more difficult to get on a plane.’’
There is another big film on the horizon, however: The Mummy, due out next year, in which Crowe stars alongside Tom Cruise. But it is hard to imagine Crowe dropping the ball any time soon. His drive is indefatigable.
‘‘If you have a passion for something, I think it’s very hard for other people to downgrade it,’’ he says. Downgrade it? ‘‘Well, you know, you might work with somebody whose company you don’t necessarily enjoy,’’ he explains.
‘‘You might work with someone who, for want of experience or whatever, takes you on a journey that’s inefficient. But really, at the end of the day, I am not doing this for anybody else. I do it for me because I love the idea of telling stories and I love the effect it has on people. I do it for my own reasons.’’
‘Some people believe that the camera either loves you or it doesn’t, but I’m not one of those people ... Just because you’re pretty doesn’t mean you’re worth watching.’ Russell Crowe