‘I am an intense bastard when I’m doing my job.
I don’t suffer fools and I don’t mess around.
I want you to be ready, prepared, let’s go mate.
Commit heart and soul.’
– Russell Crowe
If L.A. Confidential proved Russell was a movie star in the making, The Insider showed his acting chops as well. Russell remembers reading the script and loving every page of it. ‘It was magnificent – one of the top three or four experiences of a read I’ve had – goosebumps and the whole bit.’
Russell loved the story – about a research scientist who comes under attack when he takes part in an exposé of the tobacco industry – and was particularly interested in the powers that the industry had. The film also served the notion that even with the truth out there, the sheer addictive power of cigarettes meant that stopping wasn’t easy. To this day Russell still smokes but, he acknowledges, ‘The fact that I could go through a project like that and haven’t quit is an indication of the power of this addictive drug.
‘After The Insider I know the exact chemical compounds in a commercial cigarette. But I’ve been smoking since I was ten. I know it’s terrible but I’m a great fan of irony.’
So he loved the script, the idea of the film and its message. The only problem was he had no idea which part he was being asked to play.
The Insider was based on the true story of Dr Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco company executive who revealed inside details on the US news show 60 Minutes – details that would shake the tobacco industry to its core. However, his actions led to an intense smear campaign against him.
Looking at the script again, Russell just couldn’t understand which part director Michael Mann wanted him for. The role of CBS producer Lowell Bergman was earmarked for Al Pacino, and Wigand was a bespectacled, chubby man in his fifties with thinning hair.
So Russell was shocked when he learned that he was being asked to play Wigand. ‘I thought it was a silly mistake,’ he remembered. ‘There are many, many 50-year-old actors who are just marvellous, and I knew my co-star was going to be Al Pacino and you couldn’t have a kind of paternal thing going on. They had to be peers, two men from different tribes trying really hard to get together and realising that it would be a lot easier if they really liked each other.
‘Anyway, I’m part way through my speech to him about all this when Michael puts his hand on my chest and says, “I’m not talking to you because of your age. I’m talking to you because of what you have in here.”’
To have that sort of belief in his talents touched Russell, and a meeting with the real-life Wigand sealed the deal – leaving him obsessed with making sure that Mann’s faith was justified.
‘I can remember being aware that there was something going on with 60 Minutes. I read newspapers, but its significance wouldn’t necessarily have affected me at that time, because it’s a very intrinsically American story.
‘I was lucky that Michael is a very organised man. I had access to the 60 Minutes interview, to all of the different news reports that were run in different places. Still, I’d never played a real person before. I operate in a fictional world where, if you make a decision about your character, you can rationalise it any way you want. I realised that this was a real man who suffered a massive emotional impact because of this series of events. This guy’s life changed completely, as did his opinion of himself and his self-esteem. So I had a meeting with Jeffrey. I asked a lot of really hard questions and it was a very emotional conversation, but he answered every question straight, looking me dead in the eye. I got up from that table and I thought to myself, “I must honour this man.”’
Typically, Russell immersed himself in his character. He would listen to a six-hour tape of Wigand over and over again until he got it right. Two months before shooting, Mann would rarely leave Russell’s side as they went through every detail about his character – his motives, his beliefs, his feelings – even down to what he wore and why. Eventually Russell told him, ‘“Michael, it’s been a very interesting thing hanging out with you, but I need to learn the dialogue.” I mean, he was driving me nuts.’
Talking about his character, he said, ‘Playing somebody who’s still alive and kicking is a tightrope job and it’s complicated by the fact that Jeffrey is by no means a simple person.
‘He’s flawed, as we all are. He’s a human being. Ultimately I think the social impact of his actions was a byproduct of a man trying to protect his family. Jeffrey didn’t set out to be a hero, and he doesn’t consider himself a hero now. There were true and real reasons in his mind for doing what he did, and most of them had to do with how one man protects himself and his family against a powerful corporation.’
If Mann’s idea of casting Russell as Wigand surprised the actor, it stunned Pacino.
The veteran actor was initially unconvinced about Russell’s casting, admitting, ‘I thought at first he might be too young for the role. But then, as he started to play it in rehearsal, he was just transformed. I thought what he did was just brilliant.’
The pair would go on to become great friends. ‘When you think of Al you tend to think of words like “intense”,’ Russell said, ‘but he’s a very relaxed fellow. He’s very comfortable with himself and he’s like a rumpled old blanket, you know?’ – even more so after Russell got him a Louisville Slugger baseball bat personalised with Pacino’s name.
‘It cost about $40 and it was no big deal. So, I just left it in his trailer. I didn’t know Al Pacino was the world’s biggest baseball fan. I mean, it wasn’t baseball season and we’d been watching basketball. He thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and he’s like, “How did you know?”’
Pacino would return the favour, with Russell returning to his home in L.A. some time later to find boxes waiting near his door. ‘They’re from Al, and I start opening them up and it’s a baseball pitching machine, the whole box and dice,’ he says. ‘A bloke that was working with me, a very dry fellow from Canada, said, “Well, Russell, thank God you didn’t give him a pair of flippers!”’
Pacino wasn’t the only actor impressed by Russell’s talents. Christopher Plummer, said, ‘[I am] an enormous fan of Russell, who I think is probably the most versatile actor on the screen today. I mean, who would ever believe that he was Australian with that extraordinary performance in L.A. Confidential and also this one in which he is Mr Wigand to the nth degree. He is absolutely perfect; he transforms himself.’
But in Mann, Russell had found someone who was just as intense, dogged and driven on the film set. ‘If any actor tells you that it’s an easy gig working with him, they’re lying through their teeth,’ Russell said. ‘Because he works really long hours and he’s extremely intense. But he works on the principles that I’ve tried to hold on to in what I do: detail and collaboration… The bottom line is, he cares. And there’s that kind of forthrightness about him.’
In another interview, he added, ‘Working with Michael was a huge learning curve. I remember the first shot we did was of me walking through a doorway. Seventeen takes it took. And two days later we re-shot it. Eventually I was like, “Michael, don’t spend the first ten takes looks at the fucking shadow on the wall. Don’t even call me until you’ve worked out where the fucking shadow is. Don’t waste this stuff, because I’m working from take one. I don’t care who you’ve worked with before, mate. I don’t need a warm-up, I’m ready.”’
‘I think I actually loosened him up a little, because later he said of me, and I’m not telling you this to blow my own trumpet, “All right, you’ve got the best Ferrari on the market. So what are you gonna do? Are you going to leave it in the garage or are you gonna get in and drive it?”’
The pair were so obsessed with every little detail that they even disputed at length how good a golfer Wigand was. Mann needed a scene to highlight Wigand’s isolation, but at the same time to show elements of his self-discipline and drive. Hence, a scene at the driving range. But when Russell found out that the real Wigand wasn’t as good a golfer as the one that Mann wanted, he believed it helped shape why Wigand never fitted in with the corporate future. He refused to budge on the issue.
Mann said of his experience working with Russell, ‘He’s totally an actor. Totally. I don’t know what goes on between roles. Look at On the Waterfront, at Streetcar or even The Young Lions, and you see this raw, powerful talent that’s dead serious and accomplished. That’s Russell to me. I’m dying to work with him again.’
On its release, the film would come under fire from some critics over the order of events being changed for the film. This was a criticism that enraged Russell. ‘What a load of bollocks. If we made movies in real time, we would be sitting in a cinema for four and a half years. I heard them saying, “Do you realise, in The Insider they compressed time?” What was all that about? OK, so Wigand was not on a golf driving range when he discovered people were following him. Stiff shit. Was he being followed? Yes. Were they doing it all the time? Yes. Did he feel pressure, which changed his life for ever? Yes. It incenses me in America that they can wave a red herring and people say, “Oh, I never believe in Hollywood movies.” This is not Oliver Stone and his paranoid delusions of JFK. This is the truth. This is how corporate America operates, and it has to be cleaned up.’
It was a powerhouse performance by Russell – and one that saw him receive his best reviews at that time. ‘Crowe has been made up to look like such an ashen-gray, middle-aged, Middle-American schlub that the occasional emergence of the actor’s Australian accent doesn’t matter. His performance is an unravelling knockout,’ said the San Francisco Examiner, while the Los Angeles Times called him ‘marvellous’.
They weren’t alone in their admiration – Russell also received an Oscar nomination in 2000. ‘I’ve watched the Academy Awards since I was a kid. I work in the business. I’ve worked in the business since I was six years old. It’s a peer-voted system. It is the pinnacle of public achievement. And that doesn’t mean that everybody who wins one is on the same level. But – I’m just talking about in terms of public perception of what you do – there’s nothing bigger than that for my job.
‘So, to have any kind of cool attitude towards it where you say (adopts fake American accent), “It’s not important and I don’t believe in competition between performers” and all that is odd. I mean, I don’t believe in competition, but it’s not that sort of competition. It’s not a football match. It’s a recognition thing. And it’s not four or five people lined up to do a 100-metre sprint. It’s four or five people who have already been acknowledged by their peers.’
Despite the ease with which Russell had put on weight for the part, he found it incredibly hard to lose again. ‘I was aiming to gain 30lb, but a certain thing happens when you take on a sedentary lifestyle, and I ended up enjoying myself too much. I had a strict, medically controlled diet of bourbon and cheeseburgers. It took six weeks to take its toll. I thought, “Six weeks on, six weeks to get off,” but once the film was over and I started to diet, it took five and a half months. I had my cholesterol checked at one point and I was in dangerous territory. I was surprised my body was taking it so seriously.’