source: The Daily Telegraph
February 5, 2003
Rusty wants home work
Reformed Hollywood hellraiser Russell Crowe is on the lookout for an Australian film project to sink his acting talents into.
Enjoying the farm life on his property in Coffs Harbour, Crowe told Empire magazine he was keen to shoot a movie in his adopted country.
"I'm constantly on the lookout for an Australian project," Crowe said. "I can't tell you when I will film another movie in Australia, I can only tell you I want to."
Crowe revealed his desires while accepting the Best Actor gong for his role in A Beautiful Mind in the 2003 Empire Magazine Awards, voted on by 25,000 readers.
He trounced the competition from Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) and Ed Norton (Red Dragon).
Crowe was given the dangerously pointy award at his property at Nana Glen where he is taking time out from the acting caper and preparing for his wedding to longtime girlfriend Danielle Spencer.
Getting a mate to take the snap of him with his prize, Crowe said he was enjoying his R & R.
"This year for me will be about making time for reality although I read I was in a ski-lift in Aspen the other day," he told the mag.
"I've been home since November, in Australia, on the farm, and I've never skied, but I'd like to wish all the other mes a Happy New Year.
"It's quite a nice looking award, too, with plenty of practical uses around the home."
Perhaps a paperweight, a doorstop, or maybe just somewhere to put his cowboy hat.
Source: Fametracker.com
February 5, 2005
Fametracker Fame Audit
Name: Russell Crowe
Audit Date November 12, 1999
Re-Audit Date March 21, 2002
Age 37
Occupation: Actor
Experience 22 films since 1990
Assessment
The world was a very different place back in November 1999. Al Gore was just gearing up for a cake-walk of a presidential campaign. The dot-com boom was still booming, sort of. The world was excited about Y2K, but jittery about the Y2K bug, which was going to shut down our cities, launch ballistic missiles, and cause planes to nose-dive into the sea. And Russell Crowe had an approximate level of fame equivalent to Bill Pullman.
In other words, Crowe was a well-respected but relatively marginal actor just coming off Mystery, Alaska and just about to star in The Insider, and who seemed like he deserved to be a lot more famous than he was. Well, as you no doubt recall, he grabbed an Oscar nomination for that movie. Then he starred in an unpromising sand-and-sandals epic called Gladiator. Then he stole Meg Ryan. Then he won an Oscar. Then he got another Oscar nomination. Then he started running around Hollywood goosing women, quaffing ale, and setting things on fire. Oh, and Proof of Life was somewhere in there, too.
Russell Crowe didn't just get more famous; he got super-famous. He got Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise/Harrison Ford famous. And what's worse: he can actually act. In fact, he actually seems to enjoy acting. He seems determined to continue actually acting now that he's a household name and fantasy fodder for millions of men and women worldwide. He seems, for now, resolutely unwilling to switch the locomotive of his career from the Serious Actor track to the Sex Symbol Action Superstar track.
Don't get us wrong: there are reasons to have misgivings about Russell Crowe. Number one: Vanity rock group side-project. Number two: BAFTA producer beat-down. Number three: For those of you unfamiliar with the nuances of Hollywood euphemisms, the word "perfectionist" can be translated roughly as "unrepentant asshole." The word "driven" can be translated roughly as "obstinate prick." And the phrase "dedicated to his craft" translates roughly as "stubborn asshole who'll keep the crew up until 4 AM because he didn't like the way his eyebrows twitched in the sixty-third and most recent take."
Russell Crowe is often described as a driven perfectionist who's dedicated to his craft.
But ask yourself: would you rather he be a driven perfectionist, or the second coming of Nicolas Cage? Sure, Crowe's role in A Beautiful Mind was overly actorly, but would you rather he was carjacking Ferraris with Giovanni Ribisi to a Limp Bizkit soundtrack? Or would you rather he was a squeaky smooth, non-BAFTA producer beating, non-Meg Ryan-stealing, Scientology-espousing, Oprah-visiting, sham-marriage entering kind of movie star?
For once, here's an undeniably skilled actor (who's also sexy and charismatic to boot) who's actually risen to the top of his profession. And isn't that how the whole thing is supposed to work, anyway? And if not, how is it supposed to work?
Source: The Sun-Herald
February 5, 2006
One will do, crows our Russ
By Christine Sams
He might have missed out on an Academy Award nomination last week but Russell Crowe has declared he is happy with one Oscar.
The actor has joked about the American obsession with multiple trophies, saying: "That's not part of my culture."
"Americans don't get it because they look at me and say 'Are you hoping for an Oscar?' and I say 'I've already got one,'" Crowe told S. "I don't have that natural accumulation gene," he added, with a laugh.
"[I mean] I've already got one ... one'll do fine."
It's easy to suspect the Oscar winner was disappointed with the lack of a nomination this year for his role in Cinderella Man (one of his best performances to date) but he also has a healthy appreciation for the might of his original trophy, which he won in 2001 for his role as Maximus in Gladiator.
