March 29

Source: New Jersey Online

March 29, 2001

Fans get something to Crowe about
By Joyce J. Persico

Princeton Borough -- At the four entrances to the quadrangle, the crowd spoke in whispers, waiting for the precise moment when they would get a glimpse of the famed gladiator in their midst.

Some peered from third-floor casement windows, others jostled each other for a better view.

Suddenly there he was, Maximus (aka Russell Crowe), with a boyish, Howdy Doody haircut and a vintage charcoal colored suit, visible from the Dodge gate entrance.

A collective gasp went up from the people, and cameras clicked as Crowe turned to the waving onlookers, raised his right hand and . . . waved back.

"It's him! It's him!" the Crowe watchers sighed, as the 36-year-old New Zealand-born actor emerged from a blue plastic tent and returned to the small reception scene being filmed.

His Sunday night best actor Oscar win for "Gladiator" behind him, Crowe is filming the $40 million Ron Howard movie "A Beautiful Mind" at Princeton University until tomorrow, when cast and crew move on to other New Jersey and New York locations.

The Universal Pictures production will return to Princeton in June to finish shooting the story of Nobel Prize-winning Princeton University researcher and former math teacher John Nash Jr. Nash won the Nobel Prize in 1994 after battling schizophrenia.

Paul Clarkson, a Princeton resident who snapped a photo of Crowe's wave, said a friend had seen Nash, a West Windsor resident, earlier yesterday buying milk and bread at an Acme supermarket in nearby Princeton Junction.

"I was in a movie myself when I was stationed in the Army in Germany," the white-haired Clarkson explained," 'G.I. Blues' -- with Elvis. Except it wasn't really Elvis. It was his double. The real Elvis had puffier cheeks."

A younger onlooker drew some Crowe crowd envy when she revealed the actor had spent "a half-hour signing autographs" near Blair Arch on Tuesday "around 4 or 4:30" and that she got two.

Rumors abounded in the crowd's midst.

"A crew member told us he was staying at the Nassau Inn," a middle-aged woman declared.

"He's at the Hyatt," another female announced with authority. "A crew member told me."

"Which one is Russell Crowe?" asked a student on a blue mountain bike at a corner of the quad off University Place where filming continued yesterday.

Two sisters from Parsippany drove to Princeton Borough for a glimpse of Crowe. Two Asian girls, speaking in Chinese dialect sprinkled with the word "Gladiator," giggled as they watched from the sidelines. Laura Arcieri of Boston, a freshman student, spotted the actor Tuesday in an area where cast and crew cars were parked.

Californian Robert Cross, a graduate student who watched from the sidelines didn't realize Crowe and Howard were filming.

A workman from a university construction site, trying to exit onto University Place through a cluster of onlookers, asked, "What, are you waiting for him to flip you the bird?" He was referred to a published photo of Crowe doing just that to a student photographing him from a dorm room a day earlier.

A freelance photographer with an Australian accent kept his high-powered lens trained on Crowe and the ballcap-wearing Howard until being shooed away from a dorm window by a member of the film company.

Four New York-based actors eating snacks on University Place groaned about being bused to the set from mid-Manhattan every morning at 4:30 a.m. and not returning home until 8:30 p.m.

"There is more on God's good earth than Russell Crowe," extra David Siegal joked. David Brace, also dressed in a vintage '40s suit, said, "Everyone has been great to us. Russell's been very nice to us."

"But we love it when they hit that 16th hour," added Siegal. "Because then we get what's called golden time -- overtime."

Not one of the extras, who included Michael James and Fritz Siegal, both of New York, realized the real John Nash is still living.

Back at the Dodge gates, Cindy Fauver and her daughter, Jaime, of Florence continued their two-hour vigil, not for Crowe but for director Howard and co-star Ed Harris, who wasn't in the scene being shot.

A few more construction workers noisily ambled by and asked, "Is there anybody who's anybody there?" while standing on tiptoe for a glimpse at the production.