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Russell
Crowe to appear in Ben Hur
Russell
Crowe urges US to fight Steve Irwin's battle - 22nd
April 2009
Australia's
own gladiator Russell Crowe has thrown his weight
behind a push to protect a north Queensland river
on a wildlife reserve created to honour the late Steve
Irwin.
In
an interview during US prime time on the David Letterman
show, Crowe said he was trying to save the area in
memory of his Wildlife Warrior friend who died in
2006.
"He's
(Irwin) not here to stand up for himself and I just
feel, as his friend, that we can't do nothing,"
Crowe said on The Late Show.
"It
is a global irresponsibility to do that. I made an
offer to the Environment Minister (Peter Garrett)
to have a talk about it, but he hasn't bothered to
respond."
Crowe
explained the Wenlock River operated as a water filter
and was home to some unique plant and animal species.
His
plea added more than 13,000 signatures to an online
petition for the "Save Steve's Place" campaign,
taking the total number of signatures to 135,000.
A
spokeswoman for the Irwin family's Australia Zoo said
Steve's widow, Terri Irwin, and others associated
with the fight were thankful for Crowe's support.
Cape
Alumina has been conducting environmental studies
on the site after winning a court battle to access
about 15 per cent of the 135,000-hectare reserve.
The
reserve on Queensland's Cape Yorke Peninsula was purchased
by an Irwin family company, Silverback Properties,
after Irwin's death.
Terri
Irwin has strongly condemned the planned mine and
says it will destroy a pristine environment, including
the Wenlock River.
Cape
Alumina chief executive officer Paul Messenger said
while Crowe was entitled to an opinion, not all of
what he said was correct.
"I
think Steve Irwin had many friends and some of them
are high-profile people who are entitled to their
opinion," he said.
"But
it is important to remember that we are not planning
to mine the river or affect the river at all. We have
no plans to mine any wetland areas."
Mr
Messenger said Cape Alumina had permission to mine
the land about three years prior to Ms Irwin being
granted the reserve and said he expected operations
to get under way in 2013.
Photo
Credit: Reuters
Russell
Ira Crowe (April 7, 1964) is an Academy Award-winning
New Zealand-Australian actor. His acting career began
in the early 1990s with roles in Australian TV series
such as Police Rescue and films such as Romper Stomper.
In the late 1990s, he began appearing in US films
such as the 1997 movie L.A. Confidential. In the 2000s,
he was nominated for three Oscars, and in 2001, he
won the Academy Award as Best Actor for his starring
role in the film Gladiator.
Biography
Early
life
Crowe
was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Jocelyn
Yvonne (née Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe,
both of whom were movie set caterers; his father also
managed a hotel. Crowe's maternal grandfather, Stan
Wemyss, was a cinematographer who, according to Crowe,
produced the first film by New Zealander Geoff Murphy,
and was also named an MBE for filming footage of World
War II. Crowe's maternal great-great-great grandmother
was Maori,[citation needed] and as a result Crowe
is registered on the Maori electoral roll in New Zealand;
Crowe also has Norwegian, Scottish, Irish and Welsh
ancestry. Two of Russell Crowe's cousins, Martin and
Jeff Crowe are former New Zealand national cricket
captains.
Russell Crowe as the man inside the costume of "Shirty
the Slightly Aggressive Bear" in The Late Show.
His character was inspired by Hando, a role Crowe
played in 1992 film Romper Stomper.
Russell Crowe as the man inside the costume of "Shirty
the Slightly Aggressive Bear" in The Late Show.
His character was inspired by Hando, a role Crowe
played in 1992 film Romper Stomper.
When
Crowe was four years old, his family moved to Australia,
where his parents pursued a career in film set catering.
The producer of the Australian TV series Spyforce
was his mother's godfather, and Crowe at age five
or six was hired for a line of dialogue in one episode,
opposite series star Jack Thompson, who years later
played Crowe's father in The Sum of Us and who coincidentally
had been educated at the same school which Crowe was
to attend for two years: Sydney Boys High School.
From
his youth to the present, Crowe has had a special
love of horses. "They're just like people,"
he told CraveOnline, "there are some horses that
you have a deeper connection with immediately, and
you can work on that over time. He has also noted
that he sometimes finds it difficult to part with
his equine co-stars when a film wraps.
When
he was 14, however, Crowe's family moved back to New
Zealand, where he attended Auckland Grammar School
with his cousins Martin Crowe and Jeff Crowe. He did
not complete secondary school, leaving early to help
his family financially. In the mid-1980s Russell,
under guidance from his good friend Tom Sharplin,
performed as a rock 'n' roll revivalist, under the
stage name Russ Le Roq, and had a New Zealand single
with "I Wanna Be Marlon Brando."
Crowe
returned to Australia at age 21, intending to apply
to the National Institute of Dramatic Art. "I
was working in a theatre show, and talked to a guy
who was then the head of technical support at NIDA,"
Crowe recalled. "I asked him what he thought
about me spending three years at NIDA. He told me
it'd be a waste of time. He said, 'You already do
the things you go there to learn, and you've been
doing it for most of your life, so there's nothing
to teach you but bad habits.'" In 1987 Crowe
spent a six-month stint as a busker when he couldn't
find other work.
After
appearing in the TV series Neighbours and Living with
the Law, Crowe was cast in his first film, The Crossing
(1990), a small-town love triangle directed by George
Ogilvie. Before production started, a film-student
protegé of Ogilvie's, Steve Wallace, hired
Crowe for the film Blood Oath (1990) (aka Prisoners
of the Sun) which was released a month earlier, although
actually filmed later. In 1992, Crowe starred in the
first episode of the second series of Police Rescue.
Also in 1992 Crowe starred in Romper Stomper, an Australian
film which follows the exploits and downfall of a
racist skinhead group in blue-collar suburban Melbourne,
directed by Geoffrey Wright.
Hollywood
After
initial success in Australia, Crowe began acting in
American films. He first co-starred with Denzel Washington
in Virtuosity in 1995. He went on to become a three-time
Oscar nominee, winning the Academy Award as Best Actor
in 2001 for Gladiator. Crowe wore his grandfather
Stan Wemyss's Member of the Order of the British Empire
medal to the ceremony.
Crowe
received three consecutive best actor Oscar nominations
for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. Crowe
won the best actor award for A Beautiful Mind at the
2002 BAFTA award ceremony. However he failed to win
the Oscar that year, losing to Denzel Washington.
It has been suggested that his attack on television
producer Malcolm Gerrie for cutting short his acceptance
speech may have turned voters against him.
All
three films were also nominated for best picture,
and both Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind won the award.
Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003, he also
starred in two other best picture nominees, L.A. Confidential
and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,
though he was nominated for neither. In 2005 he re-teamed
with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for Cinderella
Man. In 2006 he re-teamed with Gladiator director
Ridley Scott for A Good Year, the first of two consecutive
collaborations (the second being American Gangster
co-starring again with Denzel Washington, released
in late 2007). While the light romantic comedy of
A Good Year was not greatly received, Crowe seemed
pleased with the film, telling STV in an interview
that he thought it would be enjoyed by fans of his
other films.
On
9 March 2005, Crowe revealed to GQ magazine that Federal
Bureau of Investigation agents had approached him
prior to the 73rd Academy Awards on March 25, 2001
and told him that the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda
wanted to kidnap him. Crowe told the magazine that
it was the first time he had ever heard of al-Qaeda
(the September 11 attacks took place later that year)
and was quoted as saying:
"You
get this late-night call from the FBI when you arrive
in Los Angeles, and they're, like, absolutely full-on.
'We’ve got to talk to you now before you do
anything. We have to have a discussion with you, Mr
Crowe.'" Crowe recalled that "it was something
to do with some recording picked up by a French policewoman,
I think, in either Libya or Algiers...it was about
taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as
a sort of cultural-destabilisation plan".
Crowe
was guarded by Secret Service agents for the next
few months, both while shooting films and at award
ceremonies (Scotland Yard also guarded Crowe while
he was promoting Proof of Life in London in February
2001). Crowe said that he "...never fully understood
what the fuck was going on".
Charities
Crowe,
who was in Toronto filming Cinderella Man with director
Ron Howard, learned of a fire-bombing at a Jewish
elementary school that took place in Montreal. Police
said a note with anti-Semitic comments was found on
the outside wall of the gutted library. He was so
distraught that he offered (reported $250,000 donation)
to help rebuild its library to help the school get
back on its feet. Montreal resident Shelley Paris
says, "It was a huge morale boost for the school
community. He said he was very upset about what had
happened that a place of learning should be attacked
that way. He wanted to make sure that our students
knew that he was thinking about them and that he was
very upset about the fire-bombing."
On
another occasion, Russell Crowe donated a large sum
of money ($200,000) to a struggling primary school
near his home in rural Australia. Crowe's sympathies
were sparked when a pupil drowned at the nearby Coffs
Harbour beach in 2001, and he believes the pool will
help students become better swimmers and improve their
knowledge of water safety. At the opening ceremony
in characteristic Crowe style he dived into the pool
fully clothed as soon as the venue was declared open.
Nana Glen principal Laurie Renshall says, "The
many things he does up here, people just don't know
about. We've been trying to get a pool for 10 years."
Personal life
On
7 April 2003, his 39th birthday, Crowe married Australian
singer and actress Danielle Spencer. Crowe met Spencer
while filming The Crossing (1990). Crowe and Spencer
have two sons: Charles "Charlie" Spencer
Crowe (born 21 December 2003) and Tennyson Spencer
Crowe (born 7 July 2006).
Most
of the year, Crowe resides in Australia. He has a
home in Sydney at the end of the Finger Wharf in Woolloomooloo
and also a 320 hectare rural property in Nana Glen
near Coffs Harbour, New South Wales.
It
is believed Russell is looking for an upmarket home
in the Townsville or Thuringowa area for his niece
to live in, so she can study at James Cook University.
On
June 2005, Actor Russell Crowe was arraigned Monday
afternoon in Manhattan Criminal Court on charges of
second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession
of a weapon for allegedly throwing a hotel telephone
that struck a hotel employee in the face. The man
was allegedly hit in the face by the telephone during
a row at the Mercer Hotel.
Crowe
stated in November 2007 that he would like to be baptised,
and feels that he has put it off for too long. "I
do believe there are more important things than what
is in the mind of a man," he says. "There
is something much bigger that drives us all. I'm willing
to take that leap of faith."
Football Club
On
19 March 2006, the voting members of the South Sydney
Rabbitohs National Rugby League rugby club voted (in
a 75.8% majority) to allow Crowe and businessman Peter
Holmes à Court to purchase 75% of the club,
leaving 25% ownership with the members. It has cost
them A$3 million, and they will receive four of eight
seats on the board of directors.
Crowe
has been a major supporter of the Rabbitohs rugby
league club for many years, appearing at many home
games, and supporting the club during its time when
they were forced from the National Rugby League competition
for two years. Crowe paid $40,000 for a brass bell
used to open the inaugural rugby league match in Australia
in 1908, which he then returned to the club. In 2005,
he made them the first club team in Australia to be
sponsored by a film, when he negotiated a deal to
advertise his movie Cinderella Man on their jerseys.
He
is friends with many current and former players of
the club, and currently employs former South Sydney
forward Mark Carroll as a bodyguard and personal trainer.
He has encouraged other actors to support the club,
such as Tom Cruise and Burt Reynolds. Business and
television personality Eddie McGuire has been offered
a seat on the Rabbitohs board.
Crowe
has helped organise the rugby league game that will
take place in Jacksonville, Florida between the South
Sydney Rabbitohs and the European Super League champions
Leeds Rhinos on 26 January (Australia Day). The game
will be played at the University of North Florida.
Other sporting interests
He
is also a fan of the Richmond Football Club in the
Australian Football League.
As
with Leeds Rhinos, Russell is well known to be a supporter
of Leeds United.
Russell
Crowe is a big supporter of the Michigan Wolverines
football team, he watched the Michigan-Notre Dame
college football game from the Michigan bench on 15
September 2007. Before the game, he appeared in the
Michigan locker room, and players said he gave a rousing
performance, urging them to play with honour and heart.
Former Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr is a good friend
of Crowe's and had previously gone to Australia to
spend time with Crowe's South Sydney Rabbitohs. After
the 7-5 2005 season, coach Carr used Crowe's film
Cinderella Man to encourage his team, which went on
to win 11 games in a row until The Ohio State University
beat them in the 2006 season.
Russel
Crowe is also a fan of the NFL, and has appeared in
the booth of Monday Night Football at an Indianapolis
Colts and Jacksonville Jaguars game on 22 October
2007.
Crowe
is also considered to be a friend of Kostya Tszyu
who is a boxing world champion, and it is said that
he instructed Crowe while shooting "The Cinderella
Man" movie.
Musical
activities
Crowe,
going under the name of "Rus le Roq", recorded
a 1980's tune titled "I Want To Be Like Marlon
Brando".
Crowe
and a friend formed a band, "Roman Antix",
which later evolved into the Australian pub rock band
30 Odd Foot Of Grunts. Crowe performed lead vocals
and guitar for the band, which formed in 1992. The
band had found neither critical nor popular success
but had several releases including 1998's Gaslight,
2001's Bastard Life or Clarity and 2003's Other Ways
of Speaking, plus various CD releases now out of print.
The band's web site indicates that group has "dissolved/evolved"
and states that Crowe's music would take a new direction.
He
continued with a collaboration with Alan Doyle of
the Canadian band Great Big Sea in early 2005, which
also involved members of his previous band. A new
single, Raewyn, was released in April 2005 and an
album entitled My Hand, My Heart has been released
for download on iTunes. The album includes a tribute
song to the late actor, Richard Harris, who became
Crowe's friend during the making of Gladiator. In
2002, he directed the music video clip (which starred
former child actor Duy Nguyen) for his wife Danielle
Spencer's single 'Tickle Me' from her 'White Monkey'
album. On March 10, 2006, Russell Crowe performed
with his new band The Ordinary Fear of God on The
Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Crowe
landed a role in a musical, "Grease", in
1983. From 1986-88, Crowe headlined in the touring
production of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".
Russell
did about 458 performances of The Rocky Horror Show.
He played Dr. Frank N. Furter 50 times, and 400 times
as Eddie and Dr Scott. (Credit:
Wikipedia).
Biography
Russell
Ira Crowe (born April 7, 1964 in Wellington, New Zealand)
is an Oscar-winning New Zealand-Australian film actor.
Crowe
was born in Wellington, New Zealand, of British, and
Norwegian descent. When he was four years old, his
family moved to Australia, where his parents pursued
a career in filmset catering. His maternal grandfather,
Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer who, according
to Crowe, produced the first film by New Zealander,
Geoff Murphy. The producer of the Australian TV series
Spyforce was his mother's godfather, and Crowe at
age five or six was hired for a line of dialogue in
one episode, opposite series star Jack Thompson, who
years later played Crowe's father in The Sum of Us
and who coincidentally had been educated at the same
school which Crowe was to attend for two years. This
was Sydney Boys High School.
When
he was 14, however, Crowe's family moved back to New
Zealand, where he attended Auckland Grammar School.
He did not complete secondary school, leaving early
to help his family financially. In the mid-1980's
Russell, under guidance from his good mate Tom Sharplin,
performed as a rock'n'roll revivalist, under the stage
name Russ Le Roq, and had a New Zealand single with
"I wanna be Marlon Brando".
Crowe
returned to Australia at age 21, intending to apply
to the National Institute of Dramatic Art. "I
was working in a theater show, and talked to a guy
who was then the head of technical support at NIDA,"
Crowe recalled. "I asked him what he thought
about me spending three years at NIDA. He told me
it'd be a waste of time. He said, 'You already do
the things you go there to learn, and you've been
doing it for most of your life, so there's nothing
to teach you but bad habits.'" In 1987 Crowe
spent a six month stint as a busker when he couldn't
find other work.
After
appearing in the TV series Neighbours, Living with
the Law and The Late Show (Australian TV series) as
'Shirty' - The Slightly Aggressive Bear, Crowe was
cast in his first film, The Crossing (1990), a small-town
love triangle directed by George Ogilvie. Before production
started, a film-student protege of Ogilvie's, Steve
Wallace, hired Crowe for the film "Blood Oath,"
a.k.a. "Prisoners of the Sun" (1990), which
was released a month earlier, although actually filmed
later.
After
initial success in Australia, Crowe began acting in
American films. He went on to become a three-time
Oscar nominee, winning the Academy Award as Best Actor
in 2001 for Gladiator. Crowe wore his grandfather
Stan Wemyss's Member of the Order of the British Empire
medal to the ceremony.
Crowe
received three consecutive best actor Oscar nominations
for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind. All
three films were also nominated for best picture.
Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003, he also
starred in two other best picture nominees, LA Confidential
and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,
though he was nominated for neither.
On
March 9, 2005, Crowe revealed to GQ magazine that
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had approached
him prior to the 73rd Academy Awards on March 25,
2001 and told him that the Islamist terrorist group
al-Qaeda wanted to kidnap him. Crowe told the magazine
that it was the first time he had ever heard of al-Qaeda
(the September 11 attacks took place later that year)
and was quoted as saying:
"You
get this late-night call from the FBI when you arrive
in Los Angeles, and they're, like, absolutely full-on.
'Weve got to talk to you now before you do anything.
We have to have a discussion with you, Mr. Crowe.'"
Crowe recalled that "it was something to do with
some recording picked up by a French policewoman,
I think, in either Libya or Algiers...it was about
taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as
a sort of cultural-destabilization plan."
Crowe was guarded by Secret Service agents for the
next few months, both while shooting films and at
award ceremonies (Scotland Yard also guarded Crowe
while he was promoting Proof of Life in London in
February 2001). Crowe said that he "never fully
understood what the fuck was going on." The FBI
confirmed Crowe's statement (which is uncharacteristic
of the agency in that it usually does not comment
to the media).
Crowe
has been involved in a number of altercations in recent
years which have given him a reputation for having
a bad temper. When part of Crowe's appearance at the
2002 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA)
awards was cut out to fit into the BBC's tape-delayed
broadcast, Crowe accosted producer Malcolm Gerrie.
During the filming of A Beautiful Mind on the campus
of Princeton University, Crowe made an obscene gesture
to Princeton student Meredith Moroney whom he spotted
photographing him, which raised a media stir. In 1999,
Crowe was involved in a scuffle at the Saloon Bar
in Coffs Harbour, Australia, which was caught by a
security video.
In
June 2005, Crowe was arrested and charged with second
degree assault by New York Police, in connection with
an incident at the Mercer Hotel, SoHo, New York. Crowe
threw a broken telephone at a hotel employee, and
was charged with fourth-degree criminal possession
of a weapon (the telephone). Crowe, who was sentenced
to conditional release, paid about US$100,000 to settle
the civil lawsuit to the concierge, who was treated
for a facial laceration. Crowe's temperament was parodied
in an episode of the cartoon South Park titled The
New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer. In this episode,
Crowe is the star of his own, fictional TV series:
Russell Crowe: Fightin' Around The World, and he travels
the globe in his tug boat to fight people of different
nationalities. Crowe's temperament was also parodied
on the Australian Seven Network skit show "Big
Bite" in 2003. The Network Ten show The Secret
Life of Us was parodied on the show as The Secret
Life of Russ. The "phone incident" was parodied
in Scary Movie 4 when Brenda is dreaming, one of her
lines is "Look out, Russell Crowe's got a phone!"
On
other occasions, however, he has been known to show
compassion. Following the death of his friend, naturalist
and television personality Steve Irwin, Russell remarked
that Irwin was "the Australian we all aspire
to be." He now hopes to star as Irwin in a biopic
about his life. (Credit:
Wikipedia)
Profiles
Hollywood
Gladiator
Media
Man Australia publicly congratulates and thanks Russell
Crowe for his assistance with the South
Sydney Rabbitohs, the Bra
Boys film and Mick Cutajar's
road to the Olympics
News
Russell
Crowe speaks at Souths
Juniors event - Media Man Australia interviewed
for Souths documentary - 22nd March 2007
Media
Man Australia does not represent Russell Crowe in
any capacity
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