The role that changed Russell Crowe’s love life: “She couldn’t sleep in the same bed”
Russell Crowe is one of the most recognisable faces in Hollywood. The New Zealand-born Australian has portrayed a gladiator for Ridley Scott, Javert in Les Miserables, and a genius mathematician suffering from schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind. While Crowe has earned elite status for his work, he has previously reflected on how his extreme characters have caused his love life to suffer, pointing out one particular role as a culprit.
Of course, Crowe is well known for committing fully to a role and being very dedicated to his work. During the filming of Robin Hood, he fractured both his legs during a shoot and said he “never discussed the injury with production, never took a day off because of it, I just kept going to work”. During the shooting of Gladiator, he sustained numerous bodily injuries that put him at serious risk.
The actor expressed: “I’ve still got a lot of little scar[s]. I’ve had Achilles tendons go out, knees go out, both shoulders, this shoulders actually had an operation on it… I’ve got a lower back thing that just won’t go away, and that’s from a couple, sort of, fall impacts during fight sequences”.
However, it was for the 1992 Australian action-thriller film Romper Stomper that Crowe instead suffered damage to his personal life, as opposed to his physical body. The harsh film, which has been compared to American History X and This Is England, tells the story of a gang of violent Melbourne neo-nazi skinheads. Crowe had to physically transform for the role, with temporary tattoos and a shaved head to play the character of Hando.
During a 2000 interview with FeatsPress, the actor talked about how the role affected a relationship he was in at the time: “I’d been going out with a girl for a couple of years when I did Romper Stomper, and that movie dramatically affected our relationship,” he said. “She just couldn’t sleep in the same bed as a skinhead.”
Crowe admits he “wasn’t wearing the boots all the time, but during the course of the shoot, I had the tattoos and obviously the shaved head, and she just didn’t want to know about it.” In the film, we can see that the tattoos Crowe speaks of are huge, one covering his torso and another his whole left arm.
Despite the personal issues, Crowe’s performance was critically acclaimed, and he won an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for ‘Best Lead Actor’. But the feature was also highly controversial. In one horrifying event in March 2000, a British prisoner in a Young Offender’s Institution was killed and the killer compared himself to Crowe’s character in Romper Stomper. The murderer had, horrifically, seen the film two days prior to the incident and claimed it had shaped his actions.
At the time of the interview with FeatsPress, after receiving his second Oscar nomination for Gladiator, Crowe described himself as single and said his home is still very much in New South Wales: “Although I don’t see as much of it as I would like. I’ve been away working a lot in the last few years. One day I’d be lucky enough to settle down and have kids, definitely. But it’s a bit hectic at the moment.”
It’s easy to forget just how impactful a role can be on an actor’s personal life. It may seem trivial once it is up on the screen, but taking on the personality of an undesirable character is a heavy load to bear. For Crowe, it might have only been a less-than-serious relationship, but for many others, it can be a life-changing experience.
