He ain’t Crowe-ing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/12/2001 (8886 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LOS ANGELES — Strange, in retrospect: The first time I saw actor Russell Crowe was in a trailer in a farm complex near Brandon in 1992. Crowe, imported from Australia by prescient local film-maker Aaron Kim Johnston, was playing an Australian flyboy training to fly bombers on the Canadian prairies. He was trying to focus on an upcoming love scene, so we basically chatted casually about Manitoba, about how his grandpa worked for the New Zealand National Film Unit during the Second World War, and about his previous work as a skinhead in the film Romper Stomper.

Me and Russ in a trailer.

Of course, that was nine years and one Oscar ago.

In that eventful decade, Crowe’s career arc has been stellar, culminating earlier this year in a best actor Oscar for his work in Gladiator.

Now, of course, he is somewhat less accessible, an understandable thing given kidnap threats he’s received in the wake of his role as a kidnap negotiator in last year’s drama Proof of Life. Crowe’s much-publicized affair with Proof of Life co-star Meg Ryan is another reason for a prickly attitude with the press.

When he arrives to speak en masse to print press in a meeting room at the Four Seasons Hotel, the memory of a trailer chat fades with each passing minute.

The subject of the Oscar comes up, natch.

A refreshing change: Many actors say the Oscar is a perk but it doesn’t really matter. Crowe says, why yes, recognition from your peers does matter.

“I’m sure, on a deeper psychological level, there’s a part of me that’s kind of relaxed a little bit more,” he says. “I’m sure I’m a little calmer about what I do for a living.”

As for the evening itself, Crowe says he mostly remembers the reaction of his date, his mom Jocelyn, who “cried so much she lost her false eyelashes.

“I came from backstage and went to see her,” he says. “I said, ‘What happened to your eyelashes?’ ‘I don’t know darling, they’re somewhere on the floor.’

“I didn’t do all the parties and hoopla afterwards,” he says. “I did take my mom to meet Elton John, she wanted to do that and I’ve got a photograph of that occasion. Elton’s looking great and she’s like a deer-caught-in-the-headlights sort of thing.”

In Ron Howard’s surprising film biography A Beautiful Mind, Crowe may find himself going for the gold again in the role of the brilliant mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr.

“There’s three big story points, here,” Crowe says of the real-life character. “You’ve got genius, madness, Nobel Prize.”

The film picks up Nash’s life in 1947, as he arrives at Princeton for graduate study in mathematics. Nash devotes himself to finding an original idea that will distinguish him in the academic pantheon, and when he finds it — a radical theory on the mathematics of competition — his career takes an unexpected turn. He is recruited as a codebreaker by a shadowy government agent (Ed Harris), an event that ultimately precipitates a paranoid schizophrenic breakdown. With the help of his saintly wife Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), Nash pieces his life together to the extent that he goes on to win a Nobel Prize in 1994 for his work in economic theory.

Crowe, an extremely conscientious actor, takes great pains to explain that he did what he could to flesh out Nash’s story — it is ultimately a quickie summation of a life of unimaginable hardship.

“It’s ridiculous to talk about it in these terms because you’re talking about 35 years of pain and torment, that he did actually get through,” Crowe says.

“What attracted me to doing this script is not only did you have what I thought was a great story, a personal and human story, but triumphing against the odds. And he had a magnificent romance that spanned five decades,” he says. “If Alicia Nash hadn’t provided a platform of continuity, he probably wouldn’t have been able to get to the point of organizing his mind through the medication and through the disease.”

Nash is still alive, but Crowe says he approached the notion of getting Nash’s direct input with caution.

“You’re dealing with a fellow in his 70s, and . . . is he going to be a true witness to his own life? Or is he going to be a false witness?”

Nevertheless, Crowe did have an impromptu meeting with Nash during the first week of shooting on location in Princeton.

“He just popped up unannounced,” Crowe says. Already content with his approach to the role, Crowe says his motivation was “more fascination than anything else.

“I stood in front of him and asked him a simple question: ‘Do you want coffee or tea?’

“And 15 minutes later, I got somewhere near an answer.

“Such is the level of examination that he’ll place everything that comes his way,” Crowe says. “He said, ‘If I have coffee, should I have it with sugar? And if I have it with milk and sugar, will it actually still be coffee or will it be sugary milk? And if I have coffee will that give me more or less pleasure than if I have a cup of tea? And if I have a cup of tea, how can I be sure it will be of the density and fullness that I actually enjoy, because Sri Lankan tea and Southern Indian tea are not necessarily to my palate. I prefer Northern India tea.’

“And he went on, and I ended up using it in the film,” he says. “Every second I was in front of him, there was always useful information coming my way.”

While the New Zealand-born actor tried to connect with the spirit of John Forbes Nash, he allowed Russell Crowe to pop out during the shooting of the scene in which Nash accepts his Nobel Prize in front of an auditorium of extras, who had been sitting all day in fancy dress during the gruelling process of filming.

“I’ve done some extra work in my time,” Crowe says sympathetically. “And we had 800 or 1,000 people or something in the room that day and we needed them to be as energetic in their first round of applause, so basically I did stand-up in my old makeup between takes to keep their energy level high, you know.”

To sustain that energy level, Crowe enlisted his new friend Oscar.

“Later in the day, when they cameras were on (the extras), Ron needed an enthusiastic round of applause,” Crowe says. “So I exchanged the Nobel plaque I was carrying for the little gold statue and we got what we needed.”

Some might have interpreted the gesture as a display of ego. Crowe says it’s more a case of getting the job done.

“When we make feature films, we make ’em any way we can,” he says.

A Beautiful Mind opens in Winnipeg on Jan. 4.

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