When a modern icon like Steve Irwin dies, it's only natural for moviemakers to want to crystallise his life in the form of a loving motion picture, but Russell Crowe won't be having anything to do with it if it happens.
There had been rumours that Russell Crowe wanted to commemorate the memory of his friend Steve Irwin by starring as him in the movie of his life, but Russell Crowe has shot these claims down. Ostensibly, this is because Russell Crowe likened the possibility of appearing in this film to dancing on Steve Irwin's grave, although the real reason why Crowe doesn't want to do a Steve Irwin movie might be because no movie studio has accepted Russell's proposed script ending, since it involves Steve irwin killing the stingray by hurling a hotel telephone at it.
The world seems to be a slightly duller place to live in now that Steve Irwin has been killed by a stingray. For some reason the knowledge that there's not a mental blonde man running around the Australian countryside grabbing angry poisonous snakes by the tail and waggling them around any more is profoundly upsetting. So maybe it is a bit too soon to start thinking about making a Steve Irwin film just yet.
That's not what In Touch magazine thought, though, when it recently ran a story saying how much Russell Crowe – the star of Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind and throwing a telephone at a scared hotel worker – wanted to get involved with a movie about Steve Irwin, since Russell Crowe and Steve Irwin were apparently good friends, and Irwin reportedly once named Crowe as the ideal star to play him in a biopic of his life. However, Russell Crowe – most recently in the news for smoking a fag on a stage in New Zealand – has gone on TV show Extra to to these rumours to bed:
"It's appalling to me. [It] offends me very deeply, so awful that I have to deal with millions of people thinking I would dance on my friend's grave."
On one hand it's good to see that Russell Crowe has enough common sense to realise that a Steve Irwin movie would be in especially bad taste so soon after his death. On the other hand, are you really saying that you'd turn down the chance to see Russell Crowe – the man who once said "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next" – running around Australia in a blonde mullet wig screaming "Crikey! This one keeps trying to bite me flipping arm off!" at a rubber snake all the time?
Read more:
Crowe 'appalled' by reports he will play Croc-Hunter – New Zealand Herald
[story by Stuart Heritage]
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