Russell Crowe says he regrets rejecting biopic due to ‘cheating aspect’
Actor and musician did not want to have an ‘unearned’ music advantage through playing a musician he loved
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Russell Crowe has said he regrets turning down a role in his career after feeling that it would have given him an unfair advantage in music.
The Oscar-winning actor has played a wide variety of roles throughout his near-40-year career, including Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator (2000), mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr in the dramatic biopic A Beautiful Mind (2001) and 19th-century villain Javert in Les Miserables (2012).
However, Crowe, 60, has also rejected several opportunities over the years, and recalled one in a recent interview with British GQ for its Heroes issue.
“There was an experience that I was offered – I now know the director, and I know that him and I working together, surrounded by music, would’ve been a fantastic experience,” Crowe explained, adding: “It was a biopic of a musician that I love.
“I kind of felt there was a cheating aspect to it, you know. It would put me in a position from a music career perspective that I wouldn’t have earned.”
Crowe has performed music since the 1980s, in the Australian band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts and collaborating with other artists such as Samantha Barks, Scott Grimes and Carl Falk.
In 2011, Crowe and Doyle released their album The Crowe/Doyle Songbook Vol III, which includes themes of love and heartbreak.
Elsewhere in the interview, the Sleeping Dogs star said that he’d written the album as a message to his then-wife, Danielle Spencer, to whom he’d been married since 2003.
"That entire album is me talking to my [now ex-] wife, saying, ‘We can’t get divorced. What are you doing?’
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“Pretty much every song that I wrote for that album – ‘Too Far Gone’, ‘Sadness of a Woman’, ‘Love is Impossible’, ‘Disappeared’ – that’s all about my marriage. And I was wondering if having her sing those words, if she would see through them and understand what I was trying to communicate to her.”
Crowe and Spencer divorced in 2018, and share two sons: Charles, 20, and 17-year-old Tennyson.
Later this year will see the release of a Gladiator sequel starring Paul Mescal. In another recent interview, Crowe admitted he is “slightly uncomfortable” with the idea of another film, and has refuted suggestions that he may appear in the Ridley Scott-directed project.
The Heroes Issue of British GQ is now available via digital download and on newsstands.
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