Russell Crowe Arrested

The star of "Cinderella Man" got himself arrested this week for throwing a telephone at a hotel employee who displeased him. This was not a first offense for the guy who is probably the greatest leading man of the era ("Gladiator," "A Beautiful Mind," and "Master and Commander"). Remember back on New Year's Eve 1999 when everybody was too worried about Y2K glitches and terrorism to party hearty? Well, not old Russell. He gave the last millennium a properly Australian send-off by getting involved in three separate drunk and disorderly incidents with the police.


I've been writing a bit about Crowe lately. From my June 20th cover story in The American Conservative on Hollywood's politics, I noted:

In contrast to Hollywood's leftist politics, which have been in stasis for decades, its increasingly moderate values reflect more recent trends, such as the clean-living fad that emerged in reaction to the Great Hollywood Snowstorm of roughly 1975-1985. As cocaine laid waste to a brilliant generation of filmmakers, the Boy Scout of the bunch, Steven Spielberg (who as a lad had earned more than twice the number of merit badges required to make Eagle Scout), went on to stupendous success. Similarly, the top stars of recent years, such as Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Harrison Ford, are highly disciplined professionals who can be counted on to establish a harmonious atmosphere on the set and market the product relentlessly in the media. A jerk can make it to the highest rank only if he is as talented as Russell Crowe.

And from my upcoming review of "Cinderella Man" in the July 4th edition of The American Conservative (subscribe here):

That Crowe, a hard-drinking hothead who broke up Meg Ryan's marriage to Dennis Quaid, isn't anything like the saintly boxer James J. Braddock only adds to the power of his impersonation. We admire the high-testosterone man who could play the cad but instead chooses to be the dad more than the low testosterone fellow without that option.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer