On Sunday 05 April Andrew Marr interviewed Russell Crowe, Actor.
Please note ' The Andrew Marr Show ' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.
ANDREW MARR:
Of all the movie stars in all the world, the one who's had the most bruising relationship with the press is Russell Crowe, which is a bit of an irony because his new film 'State of Play' is based on the British television series and he's been cast as a newspaper reporter.
Russell Crowe, Actor
It's a thriller set in the murkier corners of Washington politics and co-stars Helen Mirren and Ben Affleck.
Crowe won an Oscar in 2001 for 'Gladiator', directed by Ridley Scott, who's joining forces with him again very soon to make a new version of 'Robin Hood'.
Well I caught up with Russell Crowe in London where he certainly didn't mix his words about the trade of journalism.
RUSSELL CROWE:
It's my belief in my 30 years of experience of being praised, flayed and betrayed by journalists that objectivity is a myth, and that's the perspective that I took from it. And you know ultimately the character that I play eventually gets around to reading from his own rule book, but it's not his instinct to start with. His instinct is to create a smokescreen for his friend.
FILM CLIP: 'STATE OF PLAY'
ANDREW MARR:
This is set in a paper which is a bit like The Washington Post in its heyday, and yet you begin to get the world of the bloggers and Google and it's eating away at American newspapers, Australian newspapers, British newspapers.
RUSSELL CROWE:
Global newspapers.
ANDREW MARR:
Yeah, they're all disappearing.
RUSSELL CROWE:
Without being too cynical about it, if there's a crisis in serious news journalism it's only a crisis that's been created by journalists, you know, and it's a crisis that is avertable, you know, if we stop trivialising the news and if we stop you know having to emphasise something that we know to be a lie.
ANDREW MARR:
And this is … your feelings about this are presumably not unconnected by the fact that every single time your name comes up, there's a little list of adjectives or phrases or adverbs that the average hack will stick against it - drunken …
RUSSELL CROWE:
(over) Well whether it's you know the nightclub in the city that you went to in a newspaper that you've never visited in real life, or whether it's your obsession with knitting that has been written about over and over again, or whether it's you know the comments of some octogenarian former comedian that get repeated you know every year and a half years, two years, whenever that person happens to be on tour and wants to sell tickets, and the editor of that newspaper knows full well what that is about and they run it anyway.
ANDREW MARR:
Yeah.
RUSSELL CROWE:
So you know as long as it can squeeze in next to the ad on page five for women's lingerie.
ANDREW MARR:
People will watch this film and they'll look at the character that you're playing and part of them will think I'd like to be that kind of character - the sort of …
RUSSELL CROWE:
I would like …
ANDREW MARR:
… slightly out of control you know …
RUSSELL CROWE:
I have no problem that the man has faults you know because that's just real life, that's truth, you know. Eventually you know if the asset is put on you, I would like every journalist to say, "You know what, I can stay fluid, I can take truth as it comes and change my opinion. I can … I will rewrite this story. I will redraft this story as many times as I need to for it to actually, for me to achieve a level of objectivity which does deliver the information and the truth of this moment". If all journalists were like that, then we wouldn't be talking of it in terms of crisis.
ANDREW MARR:
Did you immerse yourself in the world of the newsroom, the metropolitan American newsroom to do this?
RUSSELL CROWE:
No.
ANDREW MARR:
No?
RUSSELL CROWE:
No, I did this on the run. I had maybe 48 hours on the ground for preparation before I started. But I've had 30 years of experience of sitting in front of journalists, and you know I've observed a lot and I've experienced a lot and I wanted to bring those personal experiences to the situation. We had a great guy on set from the Washington Globe who was our adviser. And obviously - as you will have seen in the movie - the art direction of this film is very, very specific and some people refuse to believe that that was anything other than an existing newspaper that we took over, but it was in fact a set built from scratch.
ANDREW MARR:
It's gloriously slovenly and messy …
RUSSELL CROWE:
And shambolic.
ANDREW MARR:
Shambolic. That's why it feels right.
RUSSELL CROWE:
Yeah.
ANDREW MARR:
Yeah. You've done a huge range of different characters going right back to Romper Stomper and Maximus and so on. Are you consciously looking for a different challenge each time? Are you thinking, yes, I haven't done this kind of person before?
RUSSELL CROWE:
Not consciously, but that's just my natural bent, you know. So it's highly unlikely that I will be affected by something that I'm reading if I feel I've done it before. I don't consciously think to myself oh I haven't played a journalist, I must play a journalist. I'm reading the script and I'm taking the story as it comes to me, but also holistically what is the world that this character exists in, what are the wider things being said. I mean this particular film, lord almighty this is the most subversive big studio movie I've ever been involved in. You know the subject matter of this. You know not just the friendship stuff that's examined, not just the ethics of journalism that's examined, but it's the privatisation of war and the blurred line between politics and news reporting and you know how many secret handshakes there might be involved in that. You know these are very important things that should be on the breakfast table.
FILM CLIP: 'STATE OF PLAY'
ANDREW MARR:
Are there directors that you just have to keep going back to? I'm thinking of Ridley Scott. Obviously your Oscar, but you're going to be working with him again shortly.
RUSSELL CROWE:
Yeah, I'm working with him at the moment.
ANDREW MARR:
Yeah.
RUSSELL CROWE:
We start shooting on Monday, you know. We are approaching the oldest fictional history, story in the history of English literature.
ANDREW MARR:
(over) This is 'Robin Hood'?
RUSSELL CROWE:
Yeah.
ANDREW MARR:
So thinking back to Maximus and all of that and the forest scenes in 'Gladiator', is this going to be the green wood turned a bit red? Is it going to be a different take on 'Robin Hood'?
RUSSELL CROWE:
Yeah, I think we're aiming for PG 13 though, so there won't be as many decapitations as would be Sir Ridley Scott's preference.
ANDREW MARR:
Yeah. Well that's a disappointment.
RUSSELL CROWE:
Yes, a little bit. But at the same time, you want to tell a story like this for the widest possible audience, you know. I don't think that we should be you know taking the perspective that you know you should only do a movie of 'Robin Hood' for adults. That would be, that would be spoiling it.
ANDREW MARR:
How important is it to you? You sort of break away from the whole Hollywood world. You go back to Australia, you get away from it all. Just in terms of staying sane in this bizarre world you must inhabit, how important is that?
RUSSELL CROWE:
It's very important. Los Angeles was a very scary place when I first went there. It's a very hard place to pin down. There's no heart to it physically. But over time … You know I have a lot of great friends in Los Angeles, it's a very comfortable place for me to be in. It is the business town for the business that I'm in. So if I want to see a particular film or somebody's work or whatever, it's available to me. So it actually now, as a nearly 45 year old, it's a very enjoyable place for me to be in, a very comfortable place for me to be in. But I don't spend time there because I think it's unhealthy to unroll your swag in the office.
ANDREW MARR:
Too claustrophobic?
RUSSELL CROWE:
It's just not my culture, you know. So in order for me to remain who I am, I need to spend x amount of time you know being abused by the Australian press. And they're a rank and rugged bunch, you know, but that's just … that's how I've grown up and so you know if that's what it is, then so be it.
ANDREW MARR:
Okay, rank and rugged. Russell Crowe, thank you very much.
RUSSELL CROWE:
(laughs) Cheers, mate.
INTERVIEW ENDS
Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.
NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.
Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy
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