‘I had probably 12 mild concussions. If you’re going to make a movie about a boxer, you’re going to get hit.’
– Russell Crowe
For Russell Cinderella Man started in 1997, when he first read the script. He fell in love with it almost immediately but his status wasn’t quite high enough, in the industry’s mind, and so off it sailed into the laps of other actors – like Ben Affleck – who were being courted to play the part of boxer Jim Braddock.
Directors such as Penny Marshall, Billy Bob Thornton and Lasse Hallstrom all circled around the project, but still it didn’t get made. And there was Russell, still hanging around, desperate to get his chance at it. Harvey Weinstein, he decided, was the best man to make the film happen. The fiery, perfectionist actor and the no-nonsense studio boss seemed like a volatile team-up, and one that was about as combustible as you could get in Hollywood.
The pair had previous history, too. Russell had been earmarked to play the Bard in the Weinstein’s company’s Oscar-winning smash Shakespeare in Love. However, he had a problem with the script – a problem that only he seemed to have – and so he refused the role.
‘I was fucking right about that movie, too,’ he said. ‘It was a 100 per cent fucking home run, except the central character of William Shakespeare was not a fucking writer. He was not smelly enough, he was not unshaven enough, and obviously hadn’t had enough to drink. He was some prissy pretty boy. What the fuck? That’s so disrespectful.’
However, his chance to make amends with Weinstein nearly fell through after Russell had to turn down their meeting. ‘He called me at about quarter to nine in the morning and wanted me to magically turn up for a meeting at 12 o’clock in Tribeca, but I was doing press around Central Park. I was, “Look, mate, can’t do it.” So he told me to get fucked. I rang my agent and said, “Hey, Harvey just told me to get fucked before 9am.” He goes, “Oh, my God, what do you think that means?” I said, “I think it means we’re getting somewhere.”’
Armed with the project Russell went to A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard. Cinderella Man would let the director tackle another genre in a diverse filmmaking career that had included action, drama, family and blockbuster. Yet making a sports film concerned him. ‘I worried about trying to find a way to execute the boxing in a way that was really exciting and truthful for fight fans.
‘I knew I would do all the research; I would try to find every good camera angle. At the end of the day I felt challenged by it, until I realised I was really over-thinking it. A great actor who I had already worked with, Russell Crowe, was going to be playing Braddock. We have a great creative collaboration going on. If Russell thinks he can do something, and says he can do something, he will, by God, deliver.’
Talking about teaming up with Howard again, Russell said, ‘We have a lot in common, but we’re also very different in a lot of ways. Ron’s a very smart man and a lot more complex and interesting than people think he is. He’s a strong leader and I respect him a lot.’
To get into shape Russell decided to cut out the alcohol. ‘I’m preparing for my role in The Cinderella Man so I’m getting into shape and alcohol tends to put weight on.’
It was a rigorous routine – even more so because of Russell’s obsession with striving for authenticity. ‘It was very physically demanding. The training was difficult because Jim was a heavyweight boxer back in the time of The Great Depression and the fighters weren’t nearly as big as they are today. I adopted the same training methods that Jim Braddock would’ve used when he was fighting.
‘The film was shot in Toronto, Canada and I met some great young boxers who were members of the Canadian boxing team. I trained with them and I even brought some of them over to my farm in Australia to train.’
However, Russell had to undergo physiotherapy after he dislocated his shoulder in a sparring match. ‘After two months of training and preparation, it was actually the first time I got into the ring to do some sparring, can you believe that? I knew instantly. I felt it go in the second round.’
‘It was the hardest training I’ve ever done, and I’m over 40 now, so it was probably the wrong time to start,’ Crowe added. ‘There’s a lot of old war wounds that came back.’
But the two months of physiotherapy proved a blessing in disguise, according to Russell. ‘By the end of week three we did ten rounds on the hand mitts. I was sparring again by the end of week four. Frankly, because of the injury it extended the time we had to prepare, and the skill level, the body, the choreography, everything moved forward. Everything was given more space and as a result everything was more successful.’
Howard added, ‘We decided this would have more contact than most boxing movies. I thought if I can just take the audience into the ring with him, and let the audience experience those fights, not from a distance, but as much as possible right in there as though they were alongside Braddock in a way.’
In fact, Russell insists all the pain was worth it because it showed the story of Braddock to a wider world. ‘It was terrible. Doctors told me I was crazy for going through with this film, but I couldn’t stop. I really couldn’t. I trained for at least 10 hours a day and my doctor told me that I was tearing up my muscle tissue.
‘I just couldn’t not make this film. There was a whole crew waiting and I just couldn’t stop the film from being made. I was the one that took the script to Ron Howard and convinced Renée Zellweger to play my wife in the film, so I felt a responsibility to see the project through to completion.’
Because of the sheer logistics of boxing on screen, the actors would be hit for real. The film’s on-set doctor believed that the actor took such a battering that he feared multiple concussions. The film’s boxing consultant Angelo Dundee said, ‘If a fighter had the injury like he had, he wouldn’t fight for six months.’
Talking about Russell, Dundee, who was Muhammad Ali’s trainer, said, ‘I’m tellin’ ya, the kid has a great left hook. He could have been a fighter, sure he could. He loves boxing.’
Russell said of working with Dundee, ‘For me to have the advantage of Angelo’s mind, it was a joy. All the pain and stuff goes away because there is amusement and education going on and there’s a transference of knowledge that was really generous of him.
‘He built me to do all the things that he wanted me to do. I’m facing guys who were Commonwealth Games gold medalists.
‘Man, I’m not silly. I wouldn’t go anywhere near those sort of blokes in a different situation. But Angelo built in me the ability and then, in his parlance, just opened them up like a can of tomatoes.’
Russell had originally asked former heavyweight fighter Joe Bugner to be the film’s consultant. ‘I told Russell that pro boxing is a very dangerous business,’ Bugner said at the time. ‘Even in the sparring sessions we’ll be doing, when we’re all padded up, he’ll have to concentrate hard on what’s going on or he can get hurt.
‘After six weeks in the ring with me, he will come out of this knowing a lot more about how to handle himself in a fight.’
Russell decided to go with Dundee instead, but when Russell got injured, Bugner criticised Dundee’s training methods. Bugner revealed that Russell promptly phoned him up and insulted him in a manner for which Bugner will ‘never, ever forgive him’.
He told the Sydney Daily Telegraph, ‘He started at me, calling me an idiot and saying that I didn’t know anything about boxing. I said to him, “Let me tell you something. I’ve been in boxing for 33 years. I know more about boxing than you’ll ever know about acting. I’m not a phony, whereas all you do is read scripts.”
‘I said, “Russell, go and shove your head up your ass.” And I hung up. The guy’s 40 going on 12. I was never going to put up with his silly tantrums. He behaves like a fucking girl.
‘If I saw him, I wouldn’t give him the time of day. If he approached me, I would stand and wait. I would be right there in front of the bloke. And I would have to resort to my old career.’
Angelo, however, said of working with Russell, ‘It went really well. Russell is a nice, easy human being and a great athlete. He runs and rides mountain bike up in the mountains in Australia. He has a nice big ranch with an Olympic swimming pool.’
Talking about working with Russell, Renée Zellweger said, ‘He finds it fun to dissect material and learn about it and live it and tell a story from the inside. So I knew that we would be compatible in the way that we approach the work.’
Asked whether he gave her a hard time, she said, ‘He absolutely did.’
Zellweger would clarify her comments, explaining, ‘Russell is very serious about the way that he approaches his work and the way that his characters come to life, and his level of commitment, in terms of how far he’s willing to go to realise a character.
‘Creatively, it’s so much more satisfying to work with someone like Russell, who really wants it to be honest and he wants the integrity of the project to be maintained throughout.
‘He is so kind and so understanding of everybody else’s position, and it’s just such a gift.’
Paul Giamatti, who played Braddock’s manager Joe Gould, told Rolling Stone magazine, ‘The first thing he said was, “I can just be a horrible, irascible guy, and I apologise ahead of time if I get that way.” I had heard horror stories, but I loved working with him.’
He would add to darkhorizons.com, ‘He’s a super-complicated guy, but really smart. I had more fun working with him than anybody I think I have ever worked with. I play his trainer, so everything I did was with him and I kind of loved him, even though there was a lot about him that I can’t even begin to understand and he’s a dangerously complicated guy! But from an acting point of view, if you walk in the room and start throwing stuff at him, he just loves it, because he seems to me like he is only really truly happy when he’s acting.’
However, Fulvio Ceceres, who played referee McAvoy, has admitted that there are difficulties in working with him. ‘Russell is a bit of a mystery and enigma. He can be the most generous and gregarious person ever and then there can be days that you don’t want to bother him.
‘I don’t profess to know him that well but I’d have to say that overall my experiences with him have been great. I do know that he is one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with and I believe that he is one of the best actors of our generation.’
Another actor in the film, Craig Bierko (who played boxer Max Baer), told journalists that despite working with Russell for a month, ‘I don’t know him from Adam. There was literally not a single moment where I felt like we were actually bonding, or having a conversation.’
As reported on WENN.com, Crowe hit back, blasting, ‘Craig Bierko has an imagination. His recollection of the experience is significantly different from anyone else’s.
‘I spent my 40th birthday party on a satellite connection with my wife and child in Australia. Sorry I didn’t invite Craig. I didn’t think it was relevant.
‘The fact is, he hadn’t done enough work and he had to be drilled and drilled, and brought up to where we needed him to be – because if Max Baer isn’t frightening and isn’t capable, then we don’t have much of a movie.
‘Craig has never been in this kind of situation before. It has never been required of him to put this much work and this much of himself into a role.
‘He didn’t realise what he was getting into… He realised afterwards.’
Paddy Considine, who played Mike Wilson, said, ‘That man is extraordinary. That actor is just extraordinary! If you can’t listen to him, you can’t listen to anybody.
‘First we shot the scene on Russell Crowe about six o’clock in the evening and then, instead of turning around right on to me, we did the whole sequence of the pens being put on the table, which took hours. It was shot from every conceivable angle. Every different actor who brought a pen had to be shot. It was shot from overhead. Here and there. And this is a day that began at six o’clock that morning. So, finally, they brought the camera around to me at almost midnight and I was thinking, “I don’t know how to do this now. I can’t do it. I’m tired. I’ve forgotten completely what Russell said.”
‘But Russell sat off-camera and played the scene as fully as he’d played it six hours before. It was incredible. I’ve never seen an actor do that. So all I had to do is hang out, do you know what I mean? And respond to him. I was thinking, “How can I do this!? How can I do this!?” and in effect, he did it for me. He’s very compelling to listen to.’
Cinderella Man wasn’t the box office hit that Howard and Russell were hoping for, despite AMC Theatres in America taking the unprecedented step of promising a full refund to cinemagoers if they weren’t impressed with the film. Only 100 people asked for their money back.
A cinema spokesperson said, ‘The whole effort was to focus attention on what is a beautiful film that deserves an audience but just hasn’t got one. It’s in competition with films with lots of special effects and big action this summer. This is a quiet film.’
Talking about the exhibitors’ decision, Russell said, ‘Well, to me, that was the exhibitors just not quite believing what was in front of their eyes, that this film they thought was a good movie wasn’t getting the audience it deserved. And they see everything, it’s their job – they screen movies.
‘And you’re talking about a movie that in test screenings got 94 or 95 per cent audience reactions in the two top boxes: “Love the movie” and “Definitely recommend it”. So theatres were just saying to people, “We’re guaranteeing that this is a great movie. Come and see it and we’ll give you your money back if you don’t like it.” I saw it as an incredibly positive thing and so did Ron. It’s his best movie and he’s made some great films.’
Ultimately, however, Russell was disappointed by the box office showing. ‘It’s a fucking prick of a job, you know? Particularly when you get successful with it. People don’t understand why your life suddenly changed when, hey, to them it’s fucking ten bucks at the movies, it’s over in a couple of hours. They don’t understand the prep, they don’t understand the real physical shit that you put yourself through. I mean, the last movie’s an example – shoulder surgery part way through preparation.
‘And it’s a $100 million train, man, and I’m the fucking guy that drives the train. And I’ve got to get back on that train and make sure that this thing is completed. And not everybody takes the same attitude towards it. Not everybody takes it seriously, you know. If it’s not going to be that serious, I don’t want to do it. It’s a personal taste. I don’t like watching an actor have the same fucking hairdo from time period to time period, from character to character – I just think it’s bullshit. It’s a waste of money and a waste of my time as an audience member.’
Russell would be making headlines for all the wrong reasons again – this time he was accused of hurtling a phone at a hotel clerk. Russell claimed that, frustrated with constantly asking for his phone in his room to be fixed and put off by the attitude of the clerk on duty, he went down to complain in person.
His publicist, Robin Baum, told Extra, ‘Words were exchanged and Crowe wound up throwing the phone against the wall. He regrets that he lost his temper, but at no time did he assault anyone or touch any hotel employee.’
His lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt said, ‘This arose because he was trying to get his wife on the phone in Australia. He was in his room. He couldn’t get a line and there was a disagreement.’
Russell was arrested and was arraigned on charges of second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Despite assistant District Attorney asking for bail to be set at $5,000, Russell was released on his own recognisance. He called the hotel incident the ‘most shameful situation I’ve ever gotten myself in.’
His Cinderella Man co-star, Giamatti added, ‘He’s a complicated guy. I didn’t have to fight him for Alpha Male supremacy. He does do that and he’s the first person to admit that he does it. But for some reason he was great with me and I ended up kind of loving him, because he’s amazing to work with. He’s a very kind guy, but he’s a very complicated guy. A lot of stuff gets blown out of proportion. I saw things happen that when I read about them in the paper they had no relation to what I saw happen. He gets a bit of a bum rap. He’s complicated and there are people he wants to pull the Alpha male thing with – why I don’t know. But I didn’t have to. I think maybe he took pity on me, because he realised I was the Zeta male.’
Talking to David Letterman soon after the incident, Russell said, ‘I was in Manchester, England. I flew there on Friday and I flew back to New York on Sunday. I’ve just got to cut myself some slack.
‘I’m just getting used to being a husband and a father away from home and that’s a level of abject loneliness I’m just not used to at all.
‘As my wife says, that’s not really much of an excuse because millions of fathers and husbands travel for business all the time. I’m just new at it. Actually, quite frankly, I hope I never get used to it. I don’t want to be away from my family like this.’
In an interview before the incident, he did say, ‘I can’t wait to see them. I don’t mean to wish the days away, but the day of their arrival cannot come too soon for me. I’m more than a little lonely but trying to fill the void with work to distract myself. My wife is a blessing, my son a gift from God. I don’t know what I have ever done to deserve such good fortune.’
For the police officers involved it was a surreal experience to arrest a Hollywood movie star – and it got even more surreal. ‘I got a little bit claustrophobic at one point,’ Russell recalled. ‘Quite frankly, it was not an enjoyable experience at all, but I went up to the bars of the cell at one point and asked the arresting officer if she would like me to sing her a song.
‘She goes, “That’ll be a first.” So, in order to relax myself, I sang an old Irish folk tune to her.’ The song in question was rather appropriately entitled, ‘I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day’.
Russell was taken to get his mug shot, and as he stood there bewildered by what was happening, the officer who took his mug shot told him, ‘Put your jewellery away, it makes you look like a Hispanic gangsta’ and ‘Don’t smile so much, buddy.’
In a bizarre twist of fate, the same person that took his mug shot would later turn up during the filming of American Gangster. Russell remembered, ‘Oddly, right at the beginning of the shoot, there was a guy walking around the set a lot that I just thought I recognised from somewhere.
‘He came over on about the third or fourth day and he said, “Hi, I’m Scotty. I’m the police advisor on the movie.” I said, “Great, cool, we’ll have a bit of a chat later on…” And he said, “No, no – I, uh, you know that night you had your problem? I took your mug shot!”’
Russell’s close friend Nicole Kidman defended him, saying, ‘Obviously, I heard what happened and I’m a very good friend of his – one of his best friends, I would say. So you’re there for your best friends.’
Russell was stunned by the media’s reaction. ‘Travelling businessmen get touchy or testy with hotel staff in every major city all around the world. That doesn’t excuse the fact that I lost my temper … what I did was stupid. I admitted that straight away. I got a $160 court cost fine for something that would have had more news print about it than some very horrific and specific things that we should know about in our community. That is what I mean by getting it into perspective.’
Soon afterwards, more stories of his diva behaviour began to be reported by the press. One such story accused him of hiring a person to light his cigarettes for him during work on Cinderella Man. But, Giamatti explained, ‘He had boxing gloves on the whole time and he smokes a lot, and his wardrobe guy was sticking cigarettes in his mouth and lighting them. Somehow it became this whole thing about how he had this lackey who had to light his cigarettes for him. That’s not what it was.’
It also didn’t help that Russell began a war of words with Joan Rivers. She said, ‘Usually the bigger the star, the nicer they are. It’s the ones with a few hits that act like they’re special and they’re so not. Russell Crowe is so rude. I have no time for him at all. He’s only sexy in his head. He’s so arrogant. Why would he want to go to bed with anyone but himself?’
Russell hit back, saying, ‘Joan Rivers was calling me an evil son of a bitch. As far as I know, I’ve passed her in a corridor, once. Is it maybe just because I’ve never done one of her puerile fucking red carpet conversations where we talk about what you’re fucking wearing or what your date is wearing? I don’t give a fuck what my hairdo is like. You know, all of these things that supposedly add up to some great gap in my construction as a man, I couldn’t give a shit.’
Despite opening with an impressive $18 million at the US box office, Cinderella Man struggled to keep up that momentum, with some media critics arguing that the phone-throwing incident had hurt his reputation. ‘Crowe has single-handedly turned Cinderella Man into a financial disappointment,’ said showbiz columnist Jeffrey Wells. ‘His ability to demand the big bucks may be in great peril [if] audiences are going to look at his films … and say, “Screw it, I don’t want to pay to see that thug.”’
The movie was also released in the summer, competing with films like Batman Begins.
‘We got taught a lesson about that,’ said Russell. ‘Brian Grazer and Ron Howard said right from the beginning that we had to wait with this movie. But Universal were so buoyed by the reactions to the early screenings that they were really bullish: “We’ll carve out a piece of the summer with this movie because people love it.” And then it comes down to the differences in the American cinema seasons. We didn’t have any capes or hi-tech equipment or utility belts – we just had a bloke in a pair of shorts.’