Russell Crowe’s bizarre drunken purchase from Leonardo DiCaprio: “There was vodka involved”
Most rich and famous celebrities have more money than they know what to do with, which inevitably leads them into bizarre situations that regular folks will never encounter. While everyday people have to budget and prioritize their spending, celebrities often seem compelled to dream up unusual and extravagant ways to part with their millions. Take Russell Crowe, for example. One evening, while hanging out with Leonardo DiCaprio, the two A-listers spent their time chatting, taking vodka shots—and then entered into a legally binding agreement for Crowe to purchase a bizarre item DiCaprio no longer wanted. As you do.
Crowe spilt the beans on the unusual purchase during an appearance on The Howard Stern Show in 2019. He revealed that it occurred in 2008 or 2009, which more than likely places it during the period he and DiCaprio were shooting Ridley Scott’s spy thriller Body of Lies. In the middle of the conversation with Stern, a smiling Crowe revealed that he agreed to buy a, shall we say, unique item from DiCaprio because they’d had a few tipples, and he believed it would make a fun item for his sons’ playroom. Naturally, though, because Crowe is a wealthy movie star, this was no run-of-the-mill hobby horse or arcade game – instead, he bought his boys a dinosaur skull.
“So, you were drinking at Leonardo’s house,” an incredulous Stern wondered. “You guys were having a fun night, and you say to Leonardo, ‘Gee, this is a fantastic dinosaur head?'” Crowe chuckled and replied, “No, I think he started the conversation,” which is hilarious because now it’s easy to imagine DiCaprio scheming to offload the skull and seeing a tipsy Crowe as an easy mark.
It turned out that DiCaprio wanted to get rid of the ‘Mosasaur’ skull – a giant marine dinosaur which is said to be a precursor to modern lizards like the Komodo Dragon – because another skull was about to come on the market that he was more interested in. Hearing this, Crowe decided on a whim to say, “Well, I’ll buy it. How much you want for it?” DiCaprio agreed to part with the item for the same value he paid: a princely $30,000 or $35,000.
In truth, there was a smidge of method to Crowe’s madness. He revealed that, at the time, his boys were obsessed with dinosaurs, as most young boys tend to be for at least a few years in this post-Jurassic Park world. Amusingly, though, Crowe couldn’t remember what type of dinosaur the skull belonged to, and when he gave it to his kids, he chuckled, “It was not a very popular dinosaur.” So, there you have it: the poor Mosasaur gets no respect, even from dinosaur fanatics like Crowe’s kids and iconic movie stars like DiCaprio.
Crowe ended up selling the skull a decade after he bought it when he put it up for auction in 2018. As part of ‘The Art of Divorce’, an auction selling items he had acquired during his nine-year marriage to Danielle Spencer, the skull went for $65,000, meaning he made a nice profit. However, he admitted to keeping an eye on it since then and claimed, “I think it’s almost doubled in value since I sold it.”
Finally, as a fun addendum to the story, it’s worth noting that the Mosasaur skull is not the same dinosaur skull that Nicolas Cage owned. That tyrannosaurus skull was also famously bid on by DiCaprio, who seems to love him some dinosaurs. However, he lost out to Cage, who later experienced a sting in the tale when he had to return it to the Mongolian government because it transpired it had been stolen from the Gobi desert.
