March 23

Source: The Guardian

March 23, 2001

Russell Crowe |Nominated Best Actor for The Insider in 2000 and this year for Gladiator

It's great, man, what can I say? It's the highest acknowledgement in my profession. So, I don't have any glib lines about it. I'm not cynical about it at all. I was blown away last year and this year even more so. I don't have the time, funnily enough, to kind of come in and really enjoy the process of it because I always seem to be working. But maybe that's actually a good thing. The food's not as fancy as my mum's cooking, mate. She's a damn fine cook. She was a caterer for film and TV shows from the late 60s for about six or seven years and, in 1969, we had bean curd, which is tofu, in the refrigerator and I was the only kid that had that. I couldn't eat it, but we had it.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

March 23, 2001

By Owen Gleibermann

Excerpt~
If Tom Hanks takes home the Academy Award for Cast Away, it's destined to be a ho-hum moment, and not just because it's his third win. Hanks' performance, fine as it is, doesn't reflect anything in the zeitgeist; he's just showing us another angle on his Hanks-ness, his wisecracking-Joe decency. The actor of the moment, the one whose performance this year tapped most deeply into what people are thinking and feeling, is Russell Crowe. In Gladiator, he projects a dream of heroic nihilism: His indomitable surly cool is the attitude of someone utterly at ease with the notion that he would rather die on the spot than spend a single second ingratiating himself. This, the movie says, is what a man is--and what too many men these days probably fear they aren't. Playing Maximus as a kind of ruthless thug royalty, an idealized Nietzschean cutthroat for corporate times, Crowe is Dirty Harry with even more sex appeal--the gruffest, most masculine romantic screen presence in a generation, and maybe since Bogart and Gable.

Source: South Wales Echo (Cardiff, Wales)

March 23, 2002

Something to Crowe about; Welshman Dave Kelly's band is one of few to boast a famous actor in it's line-up.
By Ali Stokes

WHEN the Oscar for best actor is announced in Hollywood tomorrow night one Welshman will be rooting for Gladiator Russell Crowe from the other side of the world.

Newport-born film maker Dave Kelly has more reason than most to be proud of the Australian actor. He's the lead singer in Dave's band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.

"I've never been to the Oscars, but I'd sure like to, " said Dave, who emigrated from Newport to Sydney as a young child.

"A couple of the guys in the band have been to the Oscar after show parties and I'd love to go. Maybe next time I'll get the chance," said Dave, who first joined Crowe's band eight years ago.

Dave, who was born in Newport, spent the first three years of his childhood in Bettws until his parents decided to move to a warmer climate.

His father, a university lecturer in Italian literature at Cardiff University, took the doctors' advice and uprooted his family, including Dave's older sister, settling in Sydney.

"I was always a pretty sick kid, " recalled Dave, who still lives in Sydney. "When I was small I had pneumonia. It was quite a radical change for a young kid. My strongest memories of Bettws was walking out of the house and having my dummy stolen. I was only 18 months old at the time, I must have had victim written all over me."

Dave was 13 when his parents bought him his first drum kit and he remembers practising in the garage until he was old enough to play in local bands.

But it was his day job as a film maker and cameraman, making documentaries for Australian TV, that landed him a place in 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.

The six-piece band had been making music for nearly two decades and Dave met guitarist Dean Cochran and bass player Garth Adams 13 years ago through mutual musician friends.

They asked him to go on the road with them to shoot live footage of the band for their archives.

And during one of their tours, when their drummer quit to go home to New Zealand, Dave was recruited to pick up the drumsticks.

"Because I had spent so much time with them, I was like a seventh member anyway," he said.

"The first time I met Russell he struck me as an average guy," said Dave.

"He wasn't a big name in Hollywood at the time. He had just bought his farm in New South Wales and he had made Virtuosity with Denzel Washington.

"We're all really committed to the band.

Russell's schedule limits the amount of time in the year we can play together. But it's definitely more than a bit of fun. It's important to us. We're all passionate about it."

Last year the band performed a 15-date tour of the United States. And earlier this year they played a sell-out show in London and plan to return to tour the UK next summer. Their album Bastard Life or Clarity was released last week.

"It's interesting that we have a hardcore fanbase and a lot alot of them have heard about the band because of Russell, but there's an equal number who are into us because of their interest in music, " said Dave.

"I just marvel at Russell. He has an amazing focus and intuition.

"I find it hard to relate to the Russell Crowe that everyone sees in gossip magazines. It's not the Russell I know. A lot of the things that are written about him are just fiction.

"I guess there's a small element of people at our shows who are hoping to see Gladiator, but the majority are there for music rather than the movie star."

And Dave's verdict on Russell's guitar playing?

"Put it this way, he's no guitar virtuoso."

The Mirror (UK)

March 23, 2002

Up for yet another Best Actor award, Hollywood bad boy Russell Crowe says music keeps him sane.
By Rebecca Fletcher

When the winner of the Best Actor Oscar is announced in Hollywood tomorrow, there will be plenty of people who hope that Russell Crowe doesn't recite any poetry, doesn't verbally abuse anyone and, in some cases, doesn't even win.

One of the hottest male film stars on the planet right now, he is up for his third successive Academy Award nomination - for A Beautiful Mind - having carried off the statuette last year for his part in Gladiator. Yet, Russell Crowe's reputation for not suffering fools gladly, and a self-confidence bordering on sheer arrogance, have alienated almost as many people as his rugged good looks have charmed.

The 37-year-old, New Zealand-born actor - who prefers relaxing on his Aussie farm, or playing with his mates in a rock band rather than hanging out in Hollywood - is known for snarling his way through interviews, refusing to pose for pictures, and being surly and stand-offish. It didn't help matters when he recently roughed up a BAFTA producer for daring to cut short his Best Actor speech when the ceremony was shown on television

His love life has also come under the microscope, particularly his relationship with Proof Of Life co-star Meg Ryan. "How can you deny yourself something that is absolute and passionate and gigantic?" Crowe asks. "We fell in love. It happens, thank God. It was an incredibly intense period of my life and, obviously, of her life. She's a magnificent person. If anything I owe her an apology for not being as flexible as I might have been. I don't think I'll ever make that mistake again."

Russell is now reunited with old girlfriend Danielle Spencer, 34 - whom he romanced for five years before Hollywood came calling - but his private life is another topic he gets notoriously prickly about and it all adds to the apprehension prior to meeting the man.

The 24 hours leading up to our interview could have been something straight out of Ab Fab. An army of personal assistants, minders and PR people have mobiles glued to their ears, seemingly hanging on Russell's every whim. One minute the interview's on, then it's off, then it's tomorrow but you've only got 30 minutes... Then we're told he didn't get in from partying until 7am so he's tired.

By the time Crowe's actually on his way, you could cut the tension with a knife waiting for the Gladiator star-turned-ogre to arrive. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when he walks into the Berlin hotel suite and turns out to be an all-round great bloke.

With a firm handshake, a "G'day mate", and a polite request to his PA for a bottle of water, he looks remarkably well on only five hours sleep. So, he must be getting pretty blase about these awards now?

"No. Any peer-based award where people doing the same job as you are patting you on the back, is an important thing," he replies. "Not that it's a popularity contest. I don't win those - hmm, I wonder why? The fact is, I don't dwell on what's written. A lot of it is bollocks, so it doesn't matter. I put up with it because it's part of the stuff I do."

That stuff involves a willingness to hit the road promoting the films he appears in. He's currently doing the rounds in support of A Beautiful Mind, in which he portrays the maths genius John Nash who won a Nobel Prize and suffered from schizophrenia. Crowe's European promo tour also takes in Rome, Venice and London and he's due to jet back into Los Angeles just ahead of the Oscars.

His schedule would drive many mad, but it's Russell's passion for music which provides a vital outlet. For the past 17 years, he's been part of an Australian rock band called 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts and it is, he says, what keeps him sane.

"When I was a kid I wanted to be a musician and I've done music all my life, mate," he explains. "Got my first guitar at six and began writing songs. I'm not doing it for attention or to sell truckloads of records. It's just the thing that drives me in life.

"My acting doesn't suffer because of it. If anything, one informs the other. I can bring to my songwriting the places I go and the people I meet as an actor. Without that outlet, there may be a negative effect on my acting."

Russell insists that he'd never give up music for acting, and vice versa. "They're both part of me," he insists. "It's all driven by the same soul. I've been in the band a long time and I'm not going to stop just because I'm supposed to now I'm famous. People say, `Aren't you famous enough?' but that's not what it's about.

"To be honest, with all the rehearsing and touring we have to fit in between my films, life would be easier if I did stop it. I've tried to say to the guys, `Let's wind down, we're too old for this', but then I get a flush of songs and we're off bloody doing it again."

After a sell-out tour of America last year, TOFOG have just released a new album called Clarity. A DVD of the band on tour will follow in the summer, after footage from a hand-held camera was snapped up by Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein.

"I laughed my head off, mate, when I heard they wanted to buy it - it's nothing but a home movie," grins Russell. "It took a lot of effort to make it look that bad."

Whenever he has any free time, Russell heads to his 750 acre farm at Nana Glen, 360 miles north of Sydney, where he unwinds and gets down to his songwriting. His parents, Alex and Jocelyn, and brother Terry live on the property, which boasts a swimming pool, spa and gym, alongside 412 cattle.

"I can have 60 people staying and never bump into anyone," he says. "Well, it is Australia, mate - you get used to it."

As for tomorrow's Oscars, you get the impression that Russell will not be unduly bothered if he fails to pick up another statuette, which would put him alongside Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracey as the only previous consecutive winners.

Having wished him luck, he smiles, shakes my hand and says, "Cheers, mate", as he sweeps out the door with a flurry of minders trailing in his wake.

Source: silverchips.mbhs.edu

March 23, 2008

Blazers brush with fame
Marching band and Blair Players to appear in high-profile film
by Anika Manzoor, Online Managing Editor

Standing on the steps of the Scottish Rite Freemasonry, the Blair uniform-clad marching band plays their fight song while flag-bearing Players from "Beauty and the Beast" march energetically to the beat. Other Players join students from Paint Branch High School as majorettes in orange and cream uniforms, maintaining huge smiles as they perform a complex choreography with rifles. An entertained audience dances with the music. But the focus - of both the arbitrary bystander and the camera - is not on this grand spectacle but on a conversation between two seemingly inconspicuous people walking along the sidewalk - Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams, two of Hollywood's biggest names.

"State of Play," a movie based on the BBC miniseries of the same name, stars Crowe and McAdams as two reporters on the hot trail of a rising congressman (Ben Affleck) and the suspicious death of his mistress. This political thriller, which is set to be released in 2009, is currently in its eleventh week of production, according to Academy-award winning director Kevin Macdonald ("The Last King of Scotland"). The cast and crew spent the first eight weeks of filming in Los Angeles and will spend five weeks on location in D.C., where the movie takes place. More than a third of the movie is shot in D.C., says Macdonald.

Macdonald's purpose with the band and the Color guard is to recreate a famous photograph - a Canadian photograph, McAdams, a proud Canadian, emphasizes later - taken in the 1970s that featured majorettes twirling guns. Macdonald, who claims to find the picture "exotic" due to his British roots, feels incorporating the band and Color guard would provide an aesthetic appeal and appropriately accentuate certain aspects of the movie. "The theme of our film is partly about the military and the American life," he said, "so it seemed like having majorettes with twirling guns would comment on the place of guns in American society. And also it's just very colorful and beautiful and very American - like a piece of anthropology in America."

The life of a movie star

Marching band director Michelle Roberts was thrilled to represent Blair in "State of Play." "It's awesome," she said. "Any outside school opportunity would be a great experience for them and they'll remember it for a long time." Students, however, felt excited about the opportunity for other reasons. Before shooting, Blazers filled out a voucher to receive $130 as extras in the film. Then, they enjoyed an elaborate breakfast complete with make-your-own omelets, sausages, bacon, hash browns and, according to junior trumpeter Jonathan Gootenberg, "sixty types of steak sauce and five bottles of chocolate syrup and 10 different juices."

After a trip to the dressing room, where majorettes changed into costumes that were custom-made for each girl, it was time for hair and make-up. Although senior Tom Warner, who plays the trombone, finds the make-up experience "weird," he enjoyed the pampering. "I feel like a movie star right now," he said. "I'm very glad to have been in band. This makes it all worth it."

Sophomore Tapiwa Kandemiri and other Players, unlike the Paint Branch majorettes, had to learn the basics of twirling before starting difficult choreography. But Kandemiri feels that a couple of hours of practice and the cold weather was worth the experience. "This has been the highlight of my year," she said. "Even though it's really cold and my hands are really numb, I'm having a really good time."

The shooting process, which essentially had two parts, did indeed involve hard work from the Blazers. First, the crew needed to set the visuals and audio of only the background, so Crowe and McAdams were not needed then. A couple of takes and a few close-ups of lucky students later, Blazers huddled from the cold in the temple's cardboard-covered interior - this getup was to maintain the pristine condition of the marble floors - and animatedly discussed the actors. One conversation involved Blazers arguing about whether or not Crowe resembles a teacher at Blair and chatter ensued when McAdams made a brief appearance. Freshman flag bearer Lindsay Rini is delighted to see Crowe. "I like Rachel a lot," she said, "but Russell Crowe is amazing. I loved him in 'Cinderella Man.'"

The second part of shooting involved Crowe and McAdams while the Blazers stayed in the background. After filming a few takes of both the music and the dialogue, the band had to pantomime playing so the sensitive microphones could pick up only the dialogue. During the editing process, a softer version of the background audio will be incorporated with the dialogue, according to the crew.

For what was probably a minute-long scene, take after take in various camera angles was required. Blazers were exhausted after two hours and for many, their excitement was exhausted as well. "It's kind of exciting but it gets old after a while," junior Joe Gilbert, who plays the saxophone, said. "It's very repetitive. And it's cold."

Others have gained more appreciation for the film making process. "I definitely learned a lot being on the set," senior trumpeter Kalisha Holmes said. "I didn't know movies were that hard to make. It makes me appreciate it more, every movie that comes out."

Hollywood unscripted

After the shooting had concluded, many Blazers are worn-out from the tedium and the harsh weather. But McAdams and Crowe were unfazed by the long process of shooting the short scene. "It's not really exactly the same thing," Crowe said. "Every time you do it, you swing it a different way. You have to get used to it, though."

Both actors hope the film can answer their questions about the journalistic experience. "I wanted to explore the ambiguity of journalism," Crowe said. "In my life it has great effect. It's a kind of a conceit that journalists live under, that they remain objective. That's never been my experience. They're all too human, all too emotionally affected. Someone could write absolute rubbish about you because their aunty's having a problem with cancer or something. It's the way they re-balance themselves. So I think examining that conceit and examining the true input of human experience in the journalism that we read, it was very interesting for me."

McAdams, on the other hand, is fascinated with how reporting had changed overtime. "I'm very curious about what has happened to journalism in this country," she said. "For my character in particular, she's a new breed of journalist who is very involved with the internet and [I'm curious] in uncovering whether that's as factual as an older way of reporting or not."

Although Crowe has two Academy-award nominations under his belt and one win for his role in the epic "Gladiator" and McAdams is a rising actress, popular especially amongst teenagers for her roles in "Mean Girls" and "The Notebook," the two looked surprisingly nondescript; Crowe was wearing a shabby coat and carrying a worn briefcase and McAdams was made-up more subtly than even some of the extras. "I'm very low maintenance in this film," McAdams said, as she teased Crowe about the routine three hours he spends in hair and make-up. Crowe hastily pointed out that the bulk of that time is spent hiding his extremely long hair, which he is growing out for his next movie, "Nottingham."

The scene they just finished was a transitional scene, where the two characters discussed two new leads and were about to interview individuals who might be essential to the case. According to the two actors, their characters are constantly at odds against each other. "We fundamentally see the story from different points of view," Crowe said. "I see it from a corporate point of view, she sees it from a personal point of view. There's a consistent battle between the two of us to try and find out which one of those points of views is right."

D.C. is the place to be

While their characters differ in views, McAdams and Crowe generally seemed to be in pleasant agreement. For instance, they both enjoy visiting the area. McAdams, who had filmed in D.C. for her role in "Wedding Crashers" four summers ago, thought it was "gorgeous" then. Now, she is looking forward to seeing the famous cherry blossoms that bloom with the emergence of spring. Crowe, who had been to D.C. numerous times, enjoys the town and the familiarity of the town that he has established. "I like the people here actually," Crowe said. "There's certain friendliness without being obsequious here."

From a directorial perspective, Macdonald enjoys the realness of filming on location. "When you film in the studio, you have to make everything," he said. "Whereas when you're here, you get great things for free. Suddenly you get beautiful flags, you get the blossom on the trees, the blue skies."

The two actors are also in concurrence with their impression of the band and Color guard. McAdams claims to be envious. "They're fantastic," she exclaimed. "It's a really lovely backdrop to the scene."

Despite making jokes about how some of the majorettes were too distracted by McAdams's shoes, Crowe believed the students to be well-disciplined and to have played very well. "It's an extremely tedious gig as they've now come to realize and they've done remarkably," he said. He also feels the unyielding weather that so many have complained about has added to a magnificent background. "[The winds] may have have been uncomfortable," Crowe said, "but the way they were moving the flags and the feathers on their hats, it'll read beautifully on screen."

Although many Blazers were disheartened to have not met the stars, Kandemiri is content with being a part of the film and meeting the director. "I was more excited about the opportunity to be in the movie then to meet [Crowe or McAdams] because I knew we might meet them but we might not," she said. "It's just cool that we got to see them in person." Kandemiri merely enjoyed sharing the memorable moment with her peers. "It was fun that I got to be with my friends," she said. "I know nothing like this might...happen again."

Source: Female First

March 23, 2009

Interview with Leo DiCaprio

FF: You worked with Russell Crowe in the 1990s of course, how was it working with him again?

LD: I got to work with when I was 18 years old. He'd done Romper Stomper, I just did What's Eating Gilbert Grape, so there we were converging on this big budget movie called The Quick and the Dead starring Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone.

We forged a friendship there on that set, because we didn't know where to fit in. We didn't belong to the character actor group or the movie star group.

I remember talking to him about movies a lot back then, the type of actor that he wanted to be, the type of films that he liked and he's still the same guy that he was back then.

He's incredibly funny, he's committed to his work, is a fantastic actor and great to be around. I have nothing but great things to say about him, and I was happy to reunite with him on this movie, because I think he's developed an incredible body of work and given some unforgettable performances.

FF: So tell us, how many times did you get to kick him over in his chair in the film?

LD: That was one of the first sequences in the movie, actually. That was Ridley's suggestion, to kick off our relationship in the movie. I believe that may even have been the second day of shooting. Ridley was very insistent that I kick Russell over in his chair, because we were talking about other ways in which Roger would express himself, after he'd just risked his life, to his CIA superior. That's what we came up with. It kept making Ridley laugh to see Russell tumble off that chair.