Spirit Of A Naughty Boy Trapped Inside A Bulldog Body

©1997 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
September 21, 1997, Sunday, ALL EDITIONS

HEADLINE: Hollywood stardom beckons as Crowe flies high

BYLINE: Steve Murray; STAFF WRITER

Australian actor Russell Crowe has a high-pitched, rapid-fire giggle that sounds like the spirit of a naughty schoolboy, trapped inside his bulldog body. It mostly pops out when he's making fun of himself:

"I was walking out of the screening the other night at the Boston film festival," he says, "and this girl behind me goes, 'You're not so big.' ''

And here comes that explosive giggle.

OK, so maybe he's not that big physically. But after his starring role as muscle-roped detective Bud White in "L.A. Confidential," Crowe may be on his way to being very big, Hollywood-style. For the film adaptation (which opened Friday) of James Ellroy's noir novel, director Curtis Hanson ("The Hand That Rocks the Cradle") tapped Crowe because he'd seen him play a dangerous skinhead in the '92 Australian film "Romper Stomper" and wanted some of that bottled-up energy.

With all his roles, Crowe adjusts his workout routine to fit the character's physicality. "For Bud, I was doing really big weights and eating copious amounts of food because I didn't want him to be cut," he says. "I wanted you to see a very large, muscled man. I mean, in the book it says he's the largest man in the LAPD. I called Curtis Hanson and said, 'Look, I don't know what you've seen, but it must've been smoke and mirrors, mate, 'cause I ain't that big!' "

Truth is, he's shy of 6 feet: "I'm 5-11 1/2 and a bit. In Australia, we call that a Collingwood Six-Footer," he says, referring to a football team. "Collingwood's kind of like the Buffalo Bills ---they always get there, but they never win."

Touring five cities to promote "Confidential," Crowe has been keeping up his energy (and his patience) by getting in a daily workout. This morning, he regrets it. Shaggy, scruffy and sleepy, he got up at 5:45 to hit the gym, then race to a TV morning show: "It was a really dumb idea," he admits. "Some of my answers will probably be a bit disjointed, but I'll warm up."

A cup of coffee, a Marlboro, and he starts clicking.

One thing that attracted him to "L.A. Confidential" was the way it split its story among several lead characters. "There's a simplistic attitude sometimes with major studio films, where you've got one person to watch while a lot of other people satellite around him," he says. "A lot of studios think what you need to see is Harry or Brucie walk through the door, and everything is going to be solved. But this is an old-fashioned, true ensemble picture."

Though he shared screen time with most of the film's stars, his Bud White is a man of few words. "He doesn't communicate a lot. With Danny DeVito, I got to punch him once, then stand over his dead body," he says. "Same thing with Spacey. I didn't do any dialogue with him. He says something once, and I think I reply, 'Uhhhh.' "

During shooting the actor became pals with "the demon dog" ---novelist Ellroy's pet name for himself. "He's a great writer, incredibly fertile mind and a lot of fun to hang out with," Crowe says. Best of all, Ellroy understood that the streamlined film version of his convoluted book had to be appreciated on its own terms. "Normally by the time you get to principal photography, the writer of a novel is feeling somewhere between bludgeoned and raped. But here we are, the movie is not only finished, but the novelist is also on the road promoting the film because he digs it."

Now 33, Crowe has been hedging on U.S. stardom for a few years. But his big break hasn't quite happened. He played a computer-generated villain battling Denzel Washington in "Virtuosity." A soulful gunslinger opposite Sharon Stone in "The Quick and the Dead." And most recently, another retro detective romancing Bridget Fonda in "Rough Magic."

"Didn't set the world on fire, did they?" he says of those films. "But that's not what I'm in it for. Even with all this chat about ('L.A. Confidential') ---it's a great film, well-made and all that stuff, all the journalists are digging it and it's going over huge in film festivals. But who knows what's going to happen?"

Take "The Quick and the Dead," a high-powered Western spoof directed by quirky Sam Raimi. "I was really surprised people didn't get it the way that it was intended," he says. "I thought it was funny as hell. Now it's getting this cult following, and people are saying, 'Man, why didn't I see this when it came out?' "

Some of those folks are from around here. "There must be a lot of film fans in Atlanta," Crowe says. "I get a lot of letters from people here, and they see everything, rather than just the big American ones they've caught on cable." Next, Crowe stars opposite Salma Hayek in "Breaking Up," a romantic comedy-tragedy about just what its title says: "We love each other, and we can't stand each other."

Born in New Zealand, raised in Australia, Crowe came to acting through his family . . . indirectly. His parents were on-set caterers when he was young, and his grandfather was a cinematographer. Crowe got the acting bug on his own and made his first TV appearance at age 6. "I was basically third generation in the business, but the first one stupid enough to stand on the other side of the camera," he says.

These days he lives a seven-and-a-half-hour drive northwest of Sydney, in the bush country, and has no interest in relocating to Los Angeles. On his farm, "There's lots of animals around, lots of trees, and bugger-all people. That suits me fine. I'm only 40 minutes away from a town, but it can be totally, totally isolated if that's what you want. I'm not a farmer as such ---I'm more a farmer's nightmare. Once I've spent time bringing an animal up, I can't kill it. So I've got a whole lot of cows, and they're just my mates.

"I'm a bit of a joke in the district."

He spends much of his free time with his girlfriend of more than a year, a writer-painter-musician from California. "She's from Northridge, where the earthquake happened a couple of years ago," he says. "So I tell her she's the epicenter of my personal earthquake."

There's the giggle again, followed by an Elvislike, "Oh baby!"

GRAPHIC: Color Photo and teaser box: (Appeared on L/01 with reference to this L/03 story) Australian actor Russell Crowe (above) has played an Aussie skinhead, a nice gay boy, a gunslinger hooked on Sharon Stone and a computer-generated villain terrorizing Denzel Washington. Still never heard of him? You will soon. He plays a 1950s' detective smitten with Kim Basinger in the film noir "L.A. Confidential." / Warner Bros.

Photo: Familiar face?: From the computer-generated villain in "Virtuosity" to a gunslinger in "The Quick and the Dead," Australian Russell Crowe is making a name for himself with U.S. audiences. / Charlotte B. Teagle /
Staff

Chart: RUSSELL CROWE ON . . .
-Kim Basinger: "My Little Georgia Peach, as I called her. It put a smile on her face every morning. Finding out the differences between the real Kim and the public image Kim was very interesting. In reality, she's a jeans and T-shirt-wearing, stay-at-home mom who's so committed to being a mother and so committed in the marriage. She's a deeply committed woman, trying to save animals from testing for various makeup products. But her public image is the epitome of glamour."

- Danny DeVito: "I see him almost as a role model. He's a great actor, a fine director, and another string to his bow that some people don't groove on is that he has a company called Jersey Films, and he's produced some of the most eclectic, outrageous films of the last 10 years, from 'Pulp Fiction' to 'Get Shorty.' Apart from that, he's a wonderful man, a loyal friend and a great father."

- Kevin Spacey: "He's got a brilliant mind, he's so fast on his feet. He knows how to tag a scene, and he's got incredible instincts. So just from a film fan point of view, just to be watching him while he was working was great."

- On the lure of film noir: "As a genre, noir is a lot broader than people first think when they hear the tag. It covers a lot of decades, not just the '30s. In reality, it could be the '50s, or anytime. Everybody likes a thriller, everybody likes intrigue, and everybody likes to not necessarily know what's going to happen straight away."

-Actors he admires: "A lot of it has to do with a single performance, like Steve McQueen in 'Junior Bonner.' I zero in on him. Or Sterling Hayden in Stanley Kubrick's 'The Killing' or Brando. As a young man he was just astonishing. But I like watching movies, and I see a lot of people coming up. You're about to find out from the rest of the world that Mark Wahlberg (in the upcoming 'Boogie Nights') is now going to be considered a great actor. But the moment I saw him do an acting piece, I went, 'This guy is incredible.' And Leonardo DiCaprio is a hell of a good actor. He's the real deal. He has the instincts, he has all the abilities. There isn't a single role I don't think he couldn't play."
---Steve Murray

(Thanks to Darcy for providing this article)