ROME – Russell Crowe arrives at the Auditorium della Conciliazione in Rome and like a wave it overwhelms everything. A stone’s throw from St. Peter’s, where one of his was scheduled for this afternoon master class, hundreds await him under the scorching sun. As he arrives from the crowd someone shouts “Maximum”, iinvoking the name of the character from ‘Gladiator’ which made him famous and which earned him the Oscar for best leading actor. He doesn’t deny himself and approaches fans to sign autographs and take selfies. His entrance into the room is that of a leader, with a liberating scream that surprises everyone and warms the audience. From there the rules jump, Crowe immediately makes it clear: no clips to comment on or fixed screens, it will be a free conversation with the young film students who flocked to the appointment, organized by ‘Alice in the city‘, to meet him.
The actor then steps off the stage and starts walking through the audience and telling his story. He made his debut at the age of 6 in New Zealand, where he was born, on the set of a film in which the mother was in charge of the catering, to replace a sick child. But his career didn’t start there. THEhe first feature film arrived at the age of 25, in the midst of over two thousand live performances, as an actor but not only. At 14 starts playing in a band. Music is the other passion in his life “which, however, doesn’t allow me to pay the bills, but whoever says you can only do one thing in life is wrong”. And in fact Crowe has never stopped playing, quite the contrary he has his own group and is also the composer of a song featured in the soundtrack of the film ‘Poker Face’, which he lets the audience listen to on his mobile phone. The film, which sees him directing for the second time, will be presented tomorrow at the Rome Film Fest.
Going back in time Crowe then remembers when, in addition to acting, he was a bartender (“My cocktails were fucking good”) and a DJ, and sometimes all in the same night (“I was obsessed with performances”). Drama school? No, that has never been in his past. Just a lot of passion and desire to do, “because fate doesn’t come knocking on your door if you’re sitting on the sofa”. You have to believe in your dreams. “And you are lucky to have them, a lot of people don’t know what they want to do in life. So you have to follow your dreams”, he says, addressing the film students, looking them in the eyes, as he passes between the seats in the room, handing them the microphone to allow them to ask questions.
An hour and a half of question and answer follows in which the actor takes the audience to the set of ‘Gladiator’, ‘Cinderella Man’ (“The most difficult film, thirty-six days of shooting in the fake rain, in the cold”) e ‘Les Miserables’ (“A beautiful experience on the set, a bad job of post-production. At the preview in New York I left after half an hour. I didn’t like the work they did on my character. I suck in this movie.” The actor then took his leave to thunderous applause from the audience, after receiving the Special Award celebrating 20 years of ‘Alice nella Città’, autonomous and parallel section of the Rome Film Fest. Only yesterday he held another important recognition in his hands, that of ambassador of Rome in the worlddelivered to him in the Campidoglio by the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri.
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In Rome, fans go crazy for Russell Crowe, the actor for young people: “Believe in your dreams”