After being criticised for being humourless and aloof at the Oscars a few months ago, Gladiator star Russell Crowe was in a very different mood as he kicked off his 14-stop US tour with his band Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts.
During the show’s finale, the Antipodean hunk nipped behind a speaker and emerged with the Oscar statuette he won for his role as Maximus in the Ridley Scott movie. He then proceeded to wave the golden figure at the largely female audience packing Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin, Texas.
Yet another display of the arrogance the media has attributed him with, or just a bit of hamming from someone who has never professed to take these things too seriously? According to Russell himself, it was all just a bit of fun.
Explaining that some of the fans at the gig were holding up a huge sign saying, “Is that an Oscar in your pocket or are you just glad to see us?” he said his gesture was simply a joking response. “That obviously took a bit of effort, so I asked one of the guys in the crew to drop what he was doing, run back to the hotel and see if he could find it the Oscar statue amongst the debris – and he did.”
Dismissing the interpretation some chose to put on the incident, the part-time rocker said: “That was a moment between me and the people that really support what I do and respect and understand it. It wasn’t a media moment.”
“I’m sorry that if I’m open enough to react in the moment, that it bothers some people,” he added.
By the time the oufit played New York’s Irving Plaza some of the Aussie-based star’s good humour seemed to have evaporated, however. Russell reportedly manhandled a cameraman before launching into a screaming match with him. “He ran out of a van with his head down like something out of Raging Bull and shoved the photographer almost to the ground,” said a bystander. Crowe’s rep responded that the photographer was deliberately blocking the way and his client was merely “protecting his face”.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
