There are stories of Hollywood that escape from the movies, and the one in which the actors starred George Clooney y Russell Crowe It was one of the most curious that occurred in the early 2000s, especially if we take into account that they have never agreed on the distribution of a project.
Both had a peculiar war of statements that occurred after Crowe won the Oscar for ‘Gladiator’ and that also had a strange way of ending, and in the most unexpected way, when they were both nominated for the 2006 Golden Globes.
The unexpected ‘war’ between Russell Crowe and George Clooney
To know what happened we have to go back to the 2000s. After winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as Máximo Décimo Meridio in ‘Gladiator’, Russell Crowe He was going through one of his best moments and that is how he appeared in the media as a figure of great interest in Hollywood. At that point, the actor gave an interview to GQ magazine where he made some surprising statements in which he denounced the “commercialism” with which some of his colleagues had sold themselves, expressly citing George Clooney next to Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro.
He accused them of lending their image to advertising abroad. “I do not use my fame to sell suits in Spain. For me it is sacrilege; it is a total contradiction with the contract you have with your audience,” he stated, saying that they could put their physical integrity at risk just for extra money.
This caught Clooney by surprise, who chose to respond sarcastically in another interview: “Russell called us ‘sellouts’ and the funny thing is that he did it while promoting a movie for which he was paid 20 million dollars,” he spoke.
However, what hurt his partner was when he made fun of the music band he has, ’30 Odd Foot of Grunts’, by stating that he and the others he mentioned as ‘sellouts’ were also going to form their own group and call it ‘Grunting for 30 Feet’. This did not sit well with the protagonist of ‘Gladiator’, who declared: “Who the hell does this guy think he is?”
The curious reconciliation at the 2006 Golden Globes
After this ‘encounter’ between the two, which had been based on statements in the media, reconciliation occurred 20 years ago, shortly before the 2006 Golden Globes Gala. It was the one who started the whole fuss, Russell Crowe who took the first step by sending a package as a gift to his partner.
And they were both going to see each other at the awards gala, as they were both nominated, in Clooney’s case for best supporting actor for ‘Syriana’ and in Crowe’s for best drama actor for ‘Cinderella Man’, and to reach an understanding when they crossed paths, the latter had sent him a book and a record.
It was specifically a book of poems written by his own hand, and an album by his band, the one that George Clooney had ironically mocked, all with a note: “I heard we had a fight, but I never said that about you, George. I really respect you.” A detail that the recipient himself told years later, along with the statements: “He said that he had been misquoted, and I thought: ‘Of course, they misquoted Russell, they misquoted me, they misquoted all the journalists in the world at the same time.'”
