Mr. Showbiz
May 19, 2000
"What we do in life echoes in eternity," Russell Crowe, as General Maximus, says while admonishing his battle-ready troops in Gladiator. And what we do at the box office echoes in our paychecks.
Agents for the hunky star are now asking $15 million for his acting services, thanks to the smash success of the Roman epic Gladiator, which is expected to pass the $100 million mark this weekend.
That's more than double what the 36-year-old actor pocketed for his current film, Proof of Life, and, reportedly, is the same career-high fee that Meg Ryan is netting for the hostage drama now filming in Ecuador.
Besides rising in the pay ranks, Crowe is being offered the cream of the crop of film roles. Can't get Tom Cruise? Ask Crowe: Variety reports that Universal and Imagine are courting Crowe to star for director Ron Howard in A Beautiful Mind, which was originally out to fellow Oscar nominee Cruise.
Mind is the Oscar-baiting tale about Nobel Prize-winning genius John Forbes Nash Jr., who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
Crowe, as many have said, is a welcome throwback to the manly leading men of yesteryear, such as Robert Mitchum and Burt Lancaster. Fittingly, the New Zealand-born, Aussie-raised actor is now being wooed to lead two old-time genre pics, the gangster story 33 Liberty Street, for Warner Bros., and North of Cheyenne, a romance-western for Paramount, based on the Thomas Hardy novel Far From the Madding Crowd.
Since gaining fame down under with award-winning turns in films like Romper Stomper, Crowe made Hollywood sit up and pay attention with his turns in L.A. Confidential and The Insider. He was nominated as Best Actor for the latter but lost out to his Confidential co-star Kevin Spacey, who nabbed the gold man for American Beauty.
But all those critical accolades are nothing compared to his starmaking role in Gladiator, in which the actor, who appeared to be the gloomiest man in Hollywood at this year's Oscars, had the chance to emote up a storm � and, of course, to kick ass in an immensely crowd-pleasing fashion.
After wrapping Proof, Crowe has committed to star in Flora Plum for director Jodie Foster.
New fans can also look for Crowe to hit a music hall near them soon: The actor is bringing his band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts � in which he plays guitar and sings � to a stateside tour. Only Austin, Texas, dates have been confirmed so far.