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Has Hollywood forgotten what to do with Russell Crowe?

Russell Crowe at the 2000 Oscars luncheon - Reuters
Russell Crowe at the 2000 Oscars luncheon - Reuters

Last weekend, if you so desired, you could have gone to see a horror film called The Pope’s Exorcist, supposedly based on the true-life story of Father Gabriele Amorth, the exorcist of the Diocese of Rome. If you’d expected a sensitive, true-life account of religious faith and conflict, you’d have been disappointed: instead the film is a full-on account of demon-battling, anchored by a typically sturdy Russell Crowe performance – complete with Italian accent! – as Amorth.

It met with an indifferent critical and commercial response, opening fifth at the UK box office on its opening weekend despite a veritable blitz of advertising, and although all involved in it will surely dust themselves off and move onto other projects (I can’t wait for The Archbishop’s Amanuensis), the question remains: “What is an Oscar-winning actor doing in nonsense like this?”

It's a question that Crowe is possibly asking himself, if his glum remarks about the impending sequel to his signature role in Gladiator are anything to go by. Although it was never expected that his character would return, given his heroic death at the end of the first picture, it clearly rankles to see Paul Mescal taking on the mantle of the indomitable fighter. “I mean, look, the only thing that I really feel about it is slightly jealous, you know?” he said, with a degree of understatement that is of a piece with Crowe’s often taciturn remarks to the media. “Because I was a much younger man, obviously, and it was a huge experience in my life.”

“You don’t always get that kind of longevity with every film you do, so, it obviously holds a special place in my heart,” he acknowledged. But Crowe could be forgiven for wondering how, in the last two decades, he has gone from making the likes of Gladiator and The Insider to appearing in B-movies like The Pope’s Exorcist and the road-rage thriller Unhinged.

The latter was more notable for being the first film released in the 2020 break from Covid-19 lockdowns than any particular quality, but Crowe was a typically intense, charismatic presence in it. Yet it seems an especially cruel fate for an actor of his calibre to be the outstanding feature in pictures that do not deserve him. Even as one can imagine the actor sighing “think of the money, mate”, it remains one of the great sorrows of modern cinema to see him reduced to this.

Russell Crowe in The Pope's Exorcist - Sony
Russell Crowe in The Pope's Exorcist - Sony

At the beginning of his career, Crowe flirted with a musical career under the inspired/bizarre pseudonym ‘Russ Le Roq’. The first song of any note that he released was entitled I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando, and this has proved an uncannily prophetic indication of where his career has gone. Like Brando, Crowe began his career in roles that combined screen-scorching charisma with unexpected vulnerability and fierce intelligence.

Brando captivated audiences in The Wild One and On the Waterfront, and Crowe swiftly established himself as a formidable presence in the disparate likes of Romper Stomper, the peerless L.A. Confidential and even the Denzel Washington sci-fi thriller Virtuosity, in which Crowe confidently stole the show from the more experienced actor.

Yet by the time Michael Mann cast him in The Insider in the role of Big Tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, he could exhibit a different kind of virtuosity. Just as Brando put aside his innate masculinity in the Seventies to underplay the roles of the all-powerful Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather and the anguished Paul in Last Tango in Paris, so Crowe – at a far younger age – was able to take on characters decades older than he was with a coiled intensity that played against his natural charisma.

He was deservedly nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, and undeservedly lost to Kevin Spacey for American Beauty. But he had now established himself as perhaps the most thrilling and versatile performer of his generation: someone who could even revive an entire defunct genre, all but single-handedly.

The stories about Gladiator are now legend. How Crowe’s reluctance to take on a part he felt was beneath him was put into context by Mann telling him that the chance to work with Ridley Scott (“one of the top 2 per cent of shooters in the history of cinema”) could not be passed up. How the film began shooting without a finished script, despite its vast budget and attendant potential for chaos. How Crowe initially refused to deliver the film’s most famous line – “I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next” – but then acquiesced, on the grounds that “it was s___. But I'm the greatest actor in the world and I can make even s___ sound good.”

And how the film’s wild success not only led to a short-lived resurgence of the sword and sandals genre, but won Crowe giddy acclaim, an Oscar and the pick of his roles. In less than a decade, he had gone from making low-budget films in Australia and New Zealand to being the biggest star in Hollywood. What could possibly go wrong?

Russell Crowe with Ridley Scott on the set of Gladiator  - Reuters 
Russell Crowe with Ridley Scott on the set of Gladiator - Reuters

Just as Brando torpedoed his career with (usually accurate) claims that he was difficult to work with, so Crowe’s fiery nature came to the fore in a succession of off-screen altercations that were gleefully reported by a far from sympathetic media.

He was widely expected to win a second consecutive Oscar for his performance as the schizophrenic mathematician in Ron Howard’s biopic A Beautiful Mind. But after he “ferociously argued” – descriptions of how ferocious this was have varied – with Bafta producer Malcolm Gerrie over editing his acceptance speech for his Best Actor award, the Academy chose to acknowledge Denzel Washington in Training Day instead, perhaps in horror at how untamed an actor they had in their midst. And when, in 2005, he threw a phone at a concierge in frustration, he was arrested, handcuffed and paid a large sum in compensation, something that he called “possibly the most shameful situation that I've ever gotten myself in.”

For the next few years, this dichotomy seemed to define Crowe’s life and career. When he was well cast, as in his Jack Aubrey in Peter Weir’s magnificent Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World or his oddly sympathetic criminal in James Mangold’s 3:10 To Yuma, he was an electrifying presence. When he clearly felt that the material was beneath him, as in many of his subsequent collaborations with Ridley Scott – the rom-com A Good Year being a particularly egregious example – he coasted along, barely bothering to do much more than show up and deliver the dialogue.

Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander - 20th Century Fox
Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander - 20th Century Fox

And as he grew older, the roles that he was offered became less interesting. An attempt to recapture the success of Gladiator by reuniting with Scott for another infamously troubled production, 2010’s Robin Hood, was a failure, and Crowe did not help himself by storming off a Radio 4 interview when asked about why his Robin spoke with an Irish accent. (“You've got dead ears, mate,” he told interviewer Mark Lawson.)

After Robin Hood, Crowe has not been a major leading man again. He had an unexpected hit as Noah in Darren Aronofsky’s weird, visionary epic, but otherwise he has mainly been found in a mixture of high-profile cameos, supporting roles and leads in smaller projects. Sometimes, these were brilliant: his appearance opposite Ryan Gosling in Shane Black’s The Nice Guys played on his tough persona and demonstrated a gift for comedy he hasn’t been allowed to display enough; and he was a warm, sympathetic Jor-El (another Brando role) in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.

But the disappointments and missed opportunities outweighed the successes, and despite his recent Golden Globe for his uncanny portrayal of the disgraced broadcaster Roger Ailes in the miniseries The Loudest Voice, one struggles to find Crowe in work that deserves him. Perhaps inevitably, his highest-profile recent appearance was as a Greek-accented Zeus in Taika Waititi’s Thor sequel; a glance at his upcoming films reveals more Marvel, more horror and, alas, more work that is beneath his talent.

Russell Crowe with Denzel Washington in American Gangster - David Lee
Russell Crowe with Denzel Washington in American Gangster - David Lee

To an extent, Crowe can be seen as complicit within this shift in his career. He is a wealthy man, happy to continue to live in Australia (on a 400 hectare farm, no less) and with no interest in playing the Hollywood game. He’s always been a straight-talking presence, unafraid to speak his mind on Twitter (no corporate accounts for him) and if the work that he’s offered is lucrative and unchallenging, so be it.

Yet anyone who can see the range and breadth of his ability can be forgiven for finding it frustrating that the actor is no longer being stretched. When compared to his Virtuosity and American Gangster co-star Denzel Washington (who, ironically, has a leading role in Gladiator 2), it is hard not to regret Crowe’s apparently indiscriminate attitude towards roles.

Washington, a decade Crowe’s senior, is widely regarded as a choosy actor who can have success in commercial films like The Equalizer because he alternates between them and classy, cerebral projects like Joel Coen’s recent The Tragedy of Macbeth. Crowe – who would have made a fine Macbeth, and would be an equally exceptional Lear – shows no signs of embracing the great roles that he should now be taking. But then, of course, the scripts might be thinner on the ground.

There is a solution to this, of course. There are any number of directors who would get truly great work out of the actor, whether it’s Mann and Scott or the younger likes of David Fincher, Christopher Nolan or – to mix up a career in which the actor has largely worked with male filmmakers, his early collaboration with Jocelyn Moorhouse on 1991’s Proof aside – Jane Campion. All of them could usefully help him subvert his image and bring out the bruised tenderness that he so adroitly displayed in the likes of L.A. Confidential and The Insider.

Hollywood loves a comeback, and as the recent career revival of Brendan Fraser has shown, there is a great deal of affection for a middle-aged actor who is prepared to stretch themselves in new and hitherto unsuspected ways. So, Russell, come on. Ditch Marvel, find an exciting filmmaker who will get the best out of you and resume your place in the pantheon. Otherwise you won’t be regarded as the heir to Brando any more, but simply as the Pope’s Exorcist. And that is surely a fate even worse than damnation.