‘Russell is very intense, very intense.’
– Ron Howard
When it was clear that Ron Howard’s next project would be A Beautiful Mind (2001) – a biopic of John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematical genius who suffered from schizophrenia – the director began thinking about who would play the complex lead role. ‘It was, on paper, a great screen performance, but kind of a scary character to take on. So I needed someone with real courage. John Nash is a very complex character and in interpreting that character you needed an actor with the ability, with the presence and charisma to command your interest over a period of time, and the talent to pull it off, also the nerve.
‘When I met with him [Russell] I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced going into the meeting, but I was very, very interested in discussing it with him. I found that his questions were important. The intelligence that he displayed in asking these questions was very exciting for me, because I knew he was charismatic, I knew he was talented. But I saw a level of intelligence that whoever played Nash had to be able to display. You can’t really act it, fake it. It’s not a matter of just saying the words. That spark has to be there, and I saw it there in spades.
‘Russell is very intense, very intense. But I don’t get the feeling it’s a show. It’s really about the vibe that he feels he needs to try to create something, or sometimes it’s about the vibe he thinks the entire set needs to sort of get in the right space to maximise the scene.’
Howard went on to say, ‘Russell is a very charismatic guy but a character actor at heart. He wants to discover a character, define it within his own terms, ingest it and then present it back to you in a way that’s insightful and entertaining. This is kind of his genius.’
The director was keen to work with Russell but sought advice from other filmmakers. ‘They said he really is an intense guy. But it’s all about the work. If you’re prepared and can debate his points, you won’t have problems. It’s not about being an egomaniac who wants things his way. He’s challenging the material constructively.’
While Howard was keen to get Russell on board, it would take him and his producing partner Brian Grazer six months to convince him.
Grazer recalled, ‘Sometimes you can deal with an actor’s questions by saying, “This is what we’re gonna do” and they jump on board. Russell is smart. He actually wanted to see the improvements – he didn’t want to just hear about them. We had to produce them, show him several different drafts. Russell was in Austin with his band. Ron flew down there and Russell grilled him till five in the morning.’
Explaining what it was like with the actor, Howard said, ‘Working with Russell is like filming on a small island. The weather’s going to change every day, but it’s where you want to be. He has a reputation for being dark or tense or stubborn, but he’s not intractable. He is strongly opinionated and he doesn’t suffer fools, but he doesn’t have that almost pathological need to lay blame that some people do. At times he really digs his heels in because he feels that something important is at stake, but once you’ve gained his respect, he wants to be led. That’s really having your cake and eating it too.’
Sylvia Nasar, whose biography of Nash is the source material for the film, said about Russell, ‘What an inspired choice! Crowe isn’t just beautiful. He’s a superb actor who’s got it all: emotional intensity, presence, brains. This is a drama about the mystery of the human mind in three acts: genius, madness, reawakening. Crowe will be totally convincing in all of Nash’s incarnations. He’ll convey Nash’s raw mental power and confidence at the outset, his torment and terrible isolation during his illness, and finally, his incredibly moving triumph.’
Again Russell would be playing a real-life person. Talking about the differences between Wigand and Nash, Russell noted, ‘When Michael was talking about it as something he wanted me to create as opposed to copying, there wasn’t a plan for me to meet him, but the more stuff I saw on him, the more I felt I couldn’t get near him unless I tried to physically replicate him.
‘So when I began to feel that I needed to wear his type of glasses and have hair like him, it felt more important to meet up. And I got some really good stuff out of that meeting, got some great insights.
‘Nash as he is now is not a true witness to who he was as a younger man. We would ask questions like, “Did you ever smoke?” and he would say, “No” and yet we know he smoked for several years. “Did you ever wear a beard?” “Not that I can recall,” and we have photographs of him in Europe wearing a beard. From that point on, we realised the movie would be based on broader aspects of his life.
‘All I did ask was, “Would you like a cup of tea?” and he gave me such a complicated answer it was like “Whoa!”’
As before, Russell took getting into character seriously. ‘With Nash, I wanted to find a couple of things that would help me. One was that I decided to grow my nails. He has long fingers and I thought if I grew my nails it would make me use my hands in a different way when I was writing on a blackboard, picking up paper.’
Maths wasn’t Russell’s strongest subject, however. ‘I had a bit of a hiccup in the third year of high school. The school I was at hired a non-English speaking Hungarian who was a professional of some great standing in Eastern Europe. But he hadn’t learned the English language yet. He probably is a great asset to the teaching staff now, but we were his first class. That was when mathematics and I parted ways.
‘The mathematics, at the moment, are so far beyond my understanding. It’s about instinctively being able to find an answer to a very complicated question and then proving how you got to the answer. Thankfully it’s only a movie because I was hopeless at maths when I was at school.’
What he was desperate to do, however, was show schizophrenia in a different light from other Hollywood films.
‘I was tired of movies that were simply like going to the zoo when it came to mental health. You know that voyeuristic, “Ooh, that’s what a crazy person’s like.” People always say crazy is without reason and I guarantee that’s not true. So I made a more cohesive set of delusions to give the audience a hint of the experiment.’
Nash was a hard character to shake off. ‘I had nightmares, lots of them,’ Russell admitted. ‘No matter what I’d done over the weekend, no matter how I’d tried to relax, 1 could not sleep the night before shooting. But I think that’s part of the process – you delve into this stuff and you can’t help but ask yourself how you’d feel in this situation.’
But it was all worth it. As Nasar said, ‘The Nashes are extremely happy with the movie, especially because, as Alicia [John’s wife] put it, “We’re going to have to live with it for a long time.” Though Nash prefers action movies to dramas, he loved the humour and fast pace, and said, with evident pleasure, that he thought Russell Crowe looked a lot like him.’
The film was hit by accusations that the movie skirted over Nash’s reported bisexuality. ‘It’s about taking an overview,’ Russell said. ‘And fine, so Sylvia Nasar raised the question of Nash’s possible bisexuality. And certainly if you are that spectacularly unsuccessful with women, maybe it’s just that they aren’t for you. But we certainly hint at it. I mean, watch the movie – half the time I’m eyeing up other guys in the corridor. Besides, moviemaking is very Freudian. Any little gesture is a stone into a pond, mate. There’s a future resonance at play here. So our level of sensitivity to the bisexual aspect should be applauded, not machine-gunned.’
Nasar waded into the debate, defending the film: ‘It’s nasty, but nobody’s taking it seriously. Nash had several emotionally intense relationships with other men in his early twenties. In the homophobic, McCarthyite 1950s, that made him vulnerable. But he wasn’t gay. Nobody who knew him thought he was gay. The biography never portrayed him as gay. A reporter from USA Today actually tried to tell that Ron Howard’s not depicting Nash as a homosexual would be like Michael Mann making Muhammad Ali a ‘white Hindu’. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. It was like the 1950s all over again when it was kosher to smear people by making allegations about their sexuality. Of course, people who read the book know otherwise.’
Russell was in a Berlin pub with the other cast and crew when he received the news that he had received an Oscar nomination for A Beautiful Mind – prompting Ron Howard to do a jig of joy at the news. However, the sight of the normally unassuming director dancing his heart out prompted Russell to say, ‘On second thoughts, get down – you’re a great director but you can’t dance for shit!’
Howard said of the recognition, ‘So to have the eight nominations, literally in every category in which we were candidates, it meant a lot to me as a director.’
‘This is a powerful movie driven by a very challenging central character. None of us get nominated if Russell Crowe doesn’t do the job he did in this movie.’
During the BAFTA awards, Russell made the headlines after TV producer Malcolm Gerrie cut the poem – Sanctity by Patrick Kavanagh – he read after accepting the Best Actor prize. It was a decision which would see him pinned to the wall by an irate Russell, with the words, ‘You fucking piece, I’ll make sure you never work in Hollywood,’ ringing in his ear.
Gerrie was at the after-awards dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel when the incident happened. He was talking to Sting when two of Russell’s bodyguards approached him. He was taken to a room where Russell, enjoying a bottle of Victoria Bitter, was waiting for him and then proceeded to launch a series of insults at the startled man.
Russell’s recollection of the night differed somewhat from what was reported. ‘I had a conversation with the guy, and my question was “Are you responsible for cutting the speech?” and he said, “Yes.” I told him what I thought about it. He was very dismissive about my opinion, so then I told him what I thought about it, plus some specificity. I never hit him – like some kind of gangland fucking bullshit, the way it was reported. I think the conversation took place just outside the kitchen.’
While it’s not yet known if the TV director did take up the offer of a pint from a chastened or PR-directed Russell, it will no doubt be a dinner party conversation staple for years to come. For Russell, however, it was more bad publicity. The trouble was, it wasn’t one of those things that could be waved over with a dismissive ‘Oh, boys will be boys’ gesture.
A hastily rearranged interview with Empire magazine only fuelled suggestions that he was trying to mend his bad boy image. The journalist’s first interview had found Russell in a boisterous mood. The magazine noted that ‘the meeting was a raucous, bawdy affair involving many tangents, literature, bisexuality, bottled water, tights – some 157 swear words.
‘A few days later Russell Crowe contacted Empire, via his publicist, to express reservations. He had apparently undergone something of a change of heart. Didn’t think he’d given a good account of himself. Wasn’t happy. And, in turn, requested a second interview, to restore what he considered to be a much needed sense of balance.’
Incidents like the BAFTA one and reports of barroom brawling late at night were seized upon by the media. A backlash was beginning and he was giving them as much ammunition as they would need. It has even been suggested that is the reason why he lost out on a second Oscar. However, his most notorious moment would come during his next movie. And appropriately it would be a film about fighting.