March 17

Complete scans of the Total Film March 2002 ~ thanks to MM



The Outsider

Keeps his distance. Takes no bullshit. Head in Hollywood, heart on the ranch. Slipping into the skin of a schizophrenic genius for A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe talks exclusively to Total Film about insanity, Oscars and resurrecting Maximus

By Martyn Palmer

According to screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard is a wonderful human being. Talking after a BAFTA screening of Howard's A Beautiful Mind, he describes the helmer as a caring, sharing, open sort of chap - and inhumanly talented to boot. Mr. Goldsman, a very nice man himself it has to be said, is in full flow when Howard's leading man decides he's stomached quite enough flattery.

Up to this point, Russell Crowe has confined himself to politely answering questions, telling gags and barking the odd spectacular expletive. But now he's torching a Benson & Hedges (it's a nonsmoking area, but who's going to argue?) and no doubt thinking of uncapping his first bottle of beer for 22 days, back at his London hotel. Akiva is still going strong and doesn't spot the signs that Russell is restless. "His heart is too big, truly as big as an ocean..." he gushes, when a clearly embarrassed Howard offers his star an opening: "You'd better start interjecting..." This is all Crowe needs. "I was going to fucking say, is there anybody here from fucking ITV? We could make a whole fucking TV series for about three years out of this. Doesn't he go on? 'Heart as big as an ocean...."

The audience whoops with laughter. Goldsman, bless him, takes it in his stride. It's clear that Russell Crowe is not big on Hollywood's prime currency: bullshit. Heartfelt as they were, Mr. Goldsman's comments urged the outing of the Australian within: the part that cuts through the crap.

The next day, back in his hotel suite, we sit down to discuss A Beautiful Mind, the Oscars and persistent rumors about a Gladiator prequel. The night before, we shared a couple of beers, post BAFTA, and he was -- and still is - in an extraordinarily good mood.

A Beautiful Mind is not a biopic but "inspired by" the life of John Forbes Nash Jnr. Spanning five decades, it's the story (if an eccentric outsider who's hailed as a genius after inventing a groundbreaking mathematical "game" theory'... And then mania comes knocking. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he evaporates into a lost world where his only hope for salvation is the wife who stands by him. Miraculously, Nash went on to receive a Nobel prize in 1994 in recognition of creating what's considered to be one of the most influential ideas of the 20th century. As Nash, Crowe is superb and Oscar buzz is again building for last year's winner. Speaking of which...

MP: How's the farm?

RC: Fucking fantastic, thank you. It's looking good. And my cows are very nice too, I'll have you know.

MP: The last time we met, on set of A Beautiful Mind, you had the Oscar with you, wrapped up in a towel, in a holdall...

RC: Yeah, but that's because I didn't know what to do with it. It was the Oscars and then a plane to New York and straight to work. I wasn't going to let it out of my sight.

MP: Where is it now?

RC: Safe and sound, thanks.

MP: So come on: what was it like winning the gong?

RC: It's funny, because I have to do a physical sort of explanation. You're sitting in your chair like this, kind of casual. Then Hilary Swank reads out my name, and you feel like this (Crowe impacts into his chair). It's not slouching down. It's more like the Earth sinks from under you. I felt it was one of the finest moments of my life, quite frankly. But I never really had a chance to feel the significance of it, so to speak. The time I really saw its effect is as getting back to Australia at the end of this movie and having a night in a restaurant with some friends. Legend has it that the Oscar ended up going through the roof. That's not true [laughs]. The guy was waving it around but it was his other hand that went through the roof! It was a very Australian celebration.

MP: Is it true your Oscar had a cameo during one scene in A Beautiful Mind?

RC: It's not on film. But we were filming the Nobel Prize ceremony and there were lots of extras involved. Ron needed them to jump up and cheer but they were flagging. They'd been there all night and were bored and tired and wanted to go home. I mean, I know what that's like, I've been an extra and it's hard to keep your energy levels up. So I was doing a little stand-up to get them going. At one point I did pull out the Oscar just to get a reaction. It was like "Now, if you're going to go to an awards ceremony..."

MP: John Nash then: Nobel Prize-winning genius, good at sums and all that. How about you?

RC: In my third year of high school in Auckland (in New Zealand], when algebra was beginning to play an important part in it all, I had a Hungarian maths teacher. I'd just arrived from Australia. He'd just arrived from Hungary. When he took me for maths that's when I parted company with it. I was never able to catch up after 12 months of broken explanations. I used to use his lessons to do my English homework. I was never a big student of maths but that's not really required. It's called acting.

MP: Did you meet Nash before you started work?

RC: I didn't want to. I suppose the career comparison with this would be when I played Jeffrey Wigand for The Insider. But it was different. When Michael Mann was talking about it as something he wanted me to create as opposed to copying, there wasn't a plan for me to meet him. But the more stuff I saw on his, the more I felt I couldn't get near him unless I tried to physically replicate him. So when I began to feel that I needed to wear his type of glasses and have hair like him, it felt more important to meet up. And I got some really good stuff out of that meeting, got some great insights into what really affected him.

MP: How is this different?

RC: Well, with this story, Nash is still alive but the bulk of what we are doing is him as a much younger man, and in the intervening years there is 35 years of medication. When you start researching the disease, you see how people's physicality is massively changed by the medication. Even the tone of their voice changes. So you're going to be taking who Nash is now and trying to find, through 35 years of smoke and mirrors who he was as a younger man. I mean, I just had 17 black and white photographs to work off. Nash as he is now is not a true witness to who he was as a younger man. We would ask questions like "Did you ever smoke?" And he would say "No" and yet we know he smoked for several years. "Did you ever wear a beard?" "Not that I can recall..." And we have photographs of him in Europe wearing a beard. From that point on, we realized the movie would be based on broader aspects of his life.

MP: But you did finally meet him?

RC: Yeah, on the very first day of shooting. But by then I had already made a whole bunch of decisions, so I was on a certain track. But I ended up using that particular conversation later in the film. All I did was ask him "Would you like a cup of tea?" And he gave me such complicated answer it was like "Whooa!" I ad-libbed that in a later scene. But there was no way we could absolutely replicate that man. We didn't have the research.

MP: It's a tough subject, though. Schizophrenia, mathematics...

RC: Yeah, but it's much more than that. For me, the relationship between John and his wife, Alicia, was so strong and compelling. It wasn't just a film that dealt with mental illness. It was a great romance, it was a wonderful, committed relationship that lasted through it all.

MP: How was it, playing mad?

RC: Mate, I had a lot of nightmares while I was making this. I didn't start sleeping properly until I got back to the farm in Australia. Each Sunday night, before going back to work the next day, no matter what I did to try and relax, it didn't work. I'd get 45 minutes sleep and turn up for work, for a 12 or 14 hour day, feeling fucked. It was weird. Just got into my head, I suppose. But I think that's part of the process. You delve into this stuff and you can't help but ask yourself how your mind would react in this situation. MP: When you start thinking of the subject matter, obviously things come up.

What was Ron Howard like to work with?

RC: You can't undersell Ron Howard. He's a very smart bloke. He's got the whole world thinking he's just a gee-whiz kind of wide-eyed innocent. He's sucked in the whole planet. I mean, this is a very smart guy who's worked in the business since he was a kid and understands the medium completely. He has all the space he requires because he's fooled everybody into thinking he's not a threat. Unlike me!

MP: I keep reading about a Gladiator prequel....

RC: No idea. Got nothing to do with me.

MP: So there's no chance of you playing Maximus again?

RC: The obvious thing would be to do Maximus prior to the beginning of that story. But because it's an obvious idea why would you do it? There is another idea which we've come up with that we're going to see how far we can take, which is kind of shocking. But Ridley is definitely the man for it. I've gone over it with him and he just went "Wow, if we can pull that off!"

MP: Is it related to Gladiator?

RC: Directly related, but it's such a bold idea that the original producers just looked at us and said "You guys are off your rockers!" and it was like "Yeah, and that's why it's a really good idea..." So, as usual they can't see it and we have to show them. But there is the other idea: you know, cut to Maximus being shut in a cave and three days later he resurrects himself.... But you know we'd have to buy the rights to that book and it might be a bit expensive. I did that as a gag tone of them and he goes "What book's that?!"

MP: Some people think your performance in The Insider deserved the Oscar and not Gladiator...

RC: You know, it's very easy to over-analyse the character of Maximus because of the commercial success. But the bottom line is, before the movie opened, critically they were singling the performance out as something extraordinary to watch. The journey of that guy - and I'm not blowing my own trumpet here - is a great journey. There are a lot of emotional points. You know, with a lot of movies you're aiming to have weeping when the credits roll. With Gladiator we needed people weeping at the end of act one when Maximus sees the bodies of his dead wife and son. If you don't have the audience engaged at that point then the rest of the journey won't work. Ridley and I had a lot of conversations about that scene.

MP: Really? About what exactly?

RC: I said, "Ridley, mate, I'm going to be ripped apart when I see the wife there..." And he said "You think? Maybe it shouldn't be too much..." I said "Mate, it's got to be snot!" And he said "You really want to go with snot?" And I was like "Yeah, you've got to have some snot in it..."

MP: You're referring to Maximus breaking down when he finds his wife strung up, right?

RC: Yeah. And when I got to the set, they only had the legs from the knee down. A pair of rubber legs tacked to a wall. I said "Fuck, you're going to have to work this out mate because I'm going to have to go and kiss her feet..." And Ridley goes "No, you can't do that, I don't have the rest of the fucking body!" It was a stupid fucking decision. And he was like, "Well, I just made my mind up with certain shots I'm going to see you from a distance..." Okay, so I've just ridden for ten days to get to this woman and I should have anticipated that they would have sent people ahead of me, I should have been there to protect her and my son. So I have to go and apologise and I have to kiss her feet. And Ridley's like, "Yeah, well, I agree with all of that, but I've still only got the legs! But I can get a pair of little legs as well..."

MP: Are you coping with all the extra attention that the last few years have brought?

RC: There's a lot of garbage around it. But I'm going to have some time promoting A Beautiful Mind, some time back at the farm, then I'll go back to work.

MP: What are you doing?

RC: A movie with Lasse Hallstrom called The Cinderella Man. I'm going to play Jim Braddock, who was around in the '30s, during the depression. It's about a boxer, a man with three kids, but it's not a boxing movie. I kept reading about all this shit: after Raging Bull and Ali why I would be making a boxing film? It's like, have a bit of faith, there are broader reasons. It's just a great story and this bloke was truly a down-trodden people's champion.

MP: You're Australian. You like a beer. Why no booze for three weeks?

RC: Until last night [laughs]. Well, it was y Mum and Dad's wedding anniversary and we had a bit of a party back at the farm. It was a late night, I had a lot of beer and I felt like shit the next day and decided to give it a break. You should try it sometime. You look like you need to ....