December 15

Source: Entertainment Weekly

December 15, 2000

Excerpted from The Top Entertainers of 2000
By Angie Argabrite

Talk about diversity: He played a sword brandishing Roman hero, a pudgy tobacco industry whistle blower, and a rogue lover in the middle of a tabloid feeding frenzy (yes, that last one is in real life).

Now EW casts Russell Crowe in a part that suits him perfectly: Entertainer of the Year. The magazine announced this week that Crowe tops its list of 2000's best performers.

''The choice was clear,'' says Maggie Murphy, the EW assistant managing editor who oversaw the 11th annual yearend issue. ''Crowe announced himself as a star this year.''

For starters, the 36 year old actor scored an Oscar nod for his nuanced performance as tobacco industry firebrand Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider. Then he carried one of the year's biggest blockbusters, the $187 million earning crowd pleaser Gladiator.

''He was the most captivating thing on screen,'' says Murphy. And given the tabloid drama surrounding his public romance with his ''Proof of Life'' costar Meg Ryan, one imagines he was pretty darn captivating off screen, too.

Source: BBC via Murph's

December 15, 2002

Russell confirms he's getting spliced

We're not as sad as we thought we'd be.

Had you told us straight after we were confronted by the leather-clad Maximus in Gladiator, that he was soon to be taken off the market, we would have wept into our cornflakes.

But two years later, we greet news of his engagement to long-term girlf Danielle Spencer with a certain amount of indifference.

Maybe it's the hair, maybe the weight gain, maybe the fact that he has a band with the distinctly unsexy name 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts.

Russell, bless him. Maybe we're filled with indignation at that rather forcible conversation he had with one of our colleagues over cutting short his poetry quotation at the Baftas.

But we're finding it easy to come to terms with it.

We're like, so over him.

He popped the question at a restaurant in Sydney last month, having first asked permission from Danielle's father.

Actually, that's rather sweet.

He returned to Australia after a set-to in a bar in London, heading straight for Danielle's apartment, with two dozen white roses.

On his website, he said, "Though I love all aspects of my work... the success of the last three or four years has also brought with it an undeniably massive level of stress, not only to me but to my immediate and extended family and to my friends and friendships." he said.

"Let me clarify something else -- I am in love with Danielle Spencer but I don't get to spend nearly enough time with her.

"Dani has been very patient with all of the speculations of the past year or so which I thank her for. I feel a great need to wake up with her as many days of my life as I can."

Damn it, we're not over him at all.

In fact, could you go away, please? We need some time alone.

Source: The Herald Sun

December 15, 2002

Crowe to tie knot with Dani
By Matthew Bayley

Russell Crowe announced last night he would marry long-term girlfriend Danielle Spencer. The Oscar-winning actor proposed during a romantic meal at the couple's favourite restaurant on November 26, and Spencer joyfully accepted.

Two days before the proposal, Crowe, 38, telephoned Spencer's parents in England and asked her father, Don, for permission to marry his daughter.

Exclusive Sunday Herald Sun photographs show Spencer, the 32-year-old singer-actor, wearing a huge Cartier diamond ring as she shopped this week.

"They are thrilled," Crowe's publicist, Wendy Day, said last night. "Their families are thrilled. It's very romantic. Russell is thrilled Danielle's going to be his wife."

Crowe, star of Gladiator and A Brilliant Mind had carried around the engagement ring for almost a month, uncertain when he would propose.

In the end he popped the question the day after returning to Australia from Britain at the end of last month, following an embarrassing public brawl in a London restaurant.

"It was burning a hole in his pocket," Ms Day said. "He wanted to find the appropriate time to ask her. He looked for a diamond that was internally flawless. He hoped it would be an omen for their future marriage."

Spencer accepted his proposal and the couple celebrated with a bottle of their favourite Shaw and Smith Barossa Valley sauvignon blanc while contacting their families from the Sydney restaurant.

Ms Day said the couple's parents Alex and Jocelyn Crowe and Don and Julie Spencer were overjoyed by the match. "It's well known that both parents have loved the other partner," she said. "It's a lovely family moment."

No date has been set for the wedding, but Ms Day said it would not be for several months. They have been in Sydney for the past three weeks preparing for Christmas and supporting Crowe's father, who is having medical treatment.

Crowe met Spencer on the set of the 1990 film The Crossing.

Last month, after a fight in a trendy London restaurant created worldwide headlines and fuelled Crowe's reputation as Hollywood's wild man, he professed his love on the website of his rock band, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts.

Crowe said he had been under "an undeniably massive level of stress".

"Let me clarify something else. I am in love with Danielle Spencer, but I don't get to spend nearly enough time with her," he wrote. "Dani has been very patient with all of the speculations of the past year or so, which I thank her for. I feel a great need to wake up with her as many days of my life as I can."

Source: The Herald Sun

December 15, 2004

Diners leave a grand tip
By Ondrej Foltin

It was the kind of dinner you'd pay big money to attend. A gourmet nosh up at Rusty's swanky pad in Sydney's ultra-trendy Woolloomooloo. Guest of honour, S.K. Warne. Distinguished sidekick, Kiwi skipper Stephen Fleming.

This famous trio joined Crowe's father, Alex, father-in-law Don Spencer, plus several prominent businessmen, at an exclusive party last week to raise money for charity.

Guests dined on lobster, bugs, Wagyu beef and pork loin (Warne ordered in spaghetti bolognaise), washed down with plenty of Crowe's finest vino, including a drop of Grange. They listened to classical music provided by a soprano, two pianists, an Egyptian lute player and a Spanish-Lebanese guitarist.

The result: $110,000 for charity. The money will be split between the Shane Warne Foundation for underprivileged children and the Australian Children's Music Foundation.

"It was a wonderful gesture by Russell, who is the patron of the foundation," Warne said yesterday. The dinner went into the wee hours, with copious amount of wine consumed. "Russell's cellar took a hammering," Warne said. "But the best part of the night was when Stephen Fleming did the Haka, complete with all the spit and saliva. The money raised for the foundation is fantastic. Now we just need to make our Boxing Day breakfast a success."

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald | Reviews | Rock

December 15, 2005

Russell Crowe at The Vanguard, December 13
Reviewed by John Shand

Change from the grunts a step above pub rock

What price fame? An alcohol-fuelled woman beside me was there to jeer. She apparently paid her money specifically to wield her secateurs at an Aussie she decided had grown too big for his own good - or perhaps, in some way, for hers. She laughed and gabbled derisively though the songs, ridiculed Russell Crowe's height, and asked him why he could smoke on stage, when she was not allowed to in the audience.

"It's part of the performance," was Crowe's deadpan response.

Ah, yes, when you could hear it there was a performance going on, and despite the soft target someone like Crowe presents when he steps from the zillion-watt Hollywood glare to a modest little stage in a Newtown bar, it was rather good.

The six-piece backing band retains three members from the last incarnation, but the name has lost its Grunts and become The Ordinary Fear of God. The songs are new, mostly written in collaboration with Canadian guitarist/singer Alan Doyle, and carry occasional echoes of Elvis Costello or Bruce Springsteen, while the likeable title track to the new CD, My Hand, My Heart, nods boozily towards Tom Waits.

Once warmed up, Crowe was chummy enough, telling entertaining background stories to the songs. The pick of these - so good it even silenced my neighbour - was Mr Harris, written for Richard Harris by Crowe on the back of a coaster in a Dublin pub.

They had planned to attend an Australia/Ireland rugby test together, but Harris died before the match came round. Crowe went anyway, and Ireland beat Australia at home for the first time in 37 years. The lyric suggests Harris played his part in the victory, while the music was both lilting and haunting, enhanced by six-part vocals.

Crowe's own voice seemed to grow as the night wore on, until there was ample strength and ample passion to convincingly front a punchy and versatile band, which was a marked step up from mere pub rock.

Russell Crowe performs at the Vanguard every Tuesday until January 24.