Russell Crowe Walks Out of Insulting Interview

Russell Crowe did a BBC radio interview yesterday with interviewer Mark Lawson to promote his new movie Robin Hood. In the interview the host comments that his accent in the movie sounded more Irish than English, which upset Crowe.

Lawson says he heard a hint of Irish in Crowe’s accent from the movie, to which Crowe responds:

"You’ve got dead ears, mate, seriously dead ears if you think there’s an Irish accent."

Lawson then asks if the accent is more northern English, to which Crowes sarcastically responds:

"No I was going for an Italian, yeah. Missed it? F*ck me. Anyway."

Lawson then continues to try to get under Crowe’s skin to elicitate an angrier response by asking about something that happened during the filming of Gladiator. Lawson then asked about a claim from a book that says Crowe didn’t want to say the line:

"And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

The book also claims Crowe walked off the set twice before saying that line, and it claims that Crowe had a dispute with the film producer of Gladiator Branko Lustig over pay for some of his assistants, which prompted Crowe to call Lustig at 3 am to say:

"You motherf*cker. I will kill you with my bare hands."

The book then claims Lustig was so convinced Crowe wanted to kill him that he called Steven Spielberg to quit the movie saying:

"Steven. I’m leaving. Russell wants to kill me. I’m leaving."

Lustig is a 77-year-old Jewish concentration camp survivor.

After Lawson asked about the line from the book Crowe got up and left the interview saying:

"I don’t get the Irish thing by the way. I don’t get it at all."

Crowe was right to walk out of the interview because if any of those things happened they are now in the past, and he probably would like to move forward, but the problem he faces, which Lawson did not bring up, is the rumor that Crowe also exhibited the same behavior on Robin Hood which caused the movie to get delayed and go way over budget.

Posted in: Russell Crowe