Loveable Russell In No-man's Land
Sun Herald
Sunday June 12, 2005
YOU know, for all his brawling and temper tantrums, there is something so endearing about Russell Crowe's devotion to his wife that it's hard not to forgive him for allegedly throwing a faulty phone at a New York hotel clerk with "attitude".
With all the temptations of being a Hollywood star on the road, he wanted to reassure Danielle Spencer back at home in Woolloomooloo he was being a good boy."I'm trying to fill my basic obligations to my wife who needs to know that I'm, you know, at home, I'm in bed, I haven't had too much to drink and that, primely important, that I'm alone," he told New York late night chat show host David Letterman."These are questions that every wife has the right to have answered every night and that's my duty, and the time difference is really rough, David," he said in the interview aired across the US on Wednesday (US time), two days after the 4am incident at the swanky $4000-a-night Mercer Hotel in downtown Manhattan.So, OK, he shouldn't have thrown the phone. No excuses, even if he is entitled to expect some service for $4000 a night at the luxury boutique hotel that was reportedly his favourite not any more, ho ho. He would have been well-advised to read the fine print under Guest Services on the Mercer's website: "Cellular phones available". That would be the type that actually work in the US.But, just like the character Crowe, 41, played in Gladiator, who crawled half-dead for cinematic miles over fields and plains to get home, he was desperate to commune with his wife. That's why half the women on the planet fell in love with him as Maximus. We're all suckers for devoted husbands who care about "obligations" and "duties". Not that it will do Crowe much good in the short-term, as he navigates a serious legal problem in zero-tolerance New York. A sign of how far he's fallen is that after being claimed for years by Australia as one of our own, suddenly the Oscar-winner is being described by The Sydney Morning Herald as a New Zealander. The New Zealand Herald, meanwhile, ran a quote describing Crowe as "an unruly Australian and whatever".
© 2005 Sun Herald
