Nearly two decades after he lobbed a handset at a hotel concierge, Russell Crowe has finally picked up the receiver on his most notorious role: “The Guy Who Couldn’t Get a Dial Tone”.
The 61-year-old Gladiator star has finally broken his silence about the infamous 2005 incident at New York’s Mercer Hotel, where he was arrested for assault after turning a desk phone into a projectile. His crime? A long-distance call to his then-wife Danielle Spencer that simply refused to connect. In hindsight, Crowe admits that hurling telecommunications equipment at hospitality staff was not the cleverest troubleshooting method.
“I am a fan of regret,” Crowe confessed to the Daily Telegraph, sounding less like Maximus and more like a TED Talk. “Regret is a great teacher.”
The Oscar winner has even revisited that dark dial-up chapter in his band The Gentlemen Barbers’ new music video Save Me. The clip features newspaper headlines and footage from the time, including Crowe’s very own perp walk in cuffs – arguably his least flattering red-carpet look.
Back in 2005, the actor was in New York promoting his boxing flick Cinderella Man, though it was his left arm’s throwing action, not his right jab, that landed him in hot water.
Today, Crowe insists he’s grown beyond the phone-flinging years. “Look man, at 61, I can forgive my bad days,” he said. “You’re not gonna find improvement by not being honest with yourself about who you are and what you did.” It’s the sort of wisdom you’d expect from a man who once taught us that “what we do in life echoes in eternity” … even if, in this case, what echoed was a startled concierge yelling “Duck!”
In Save Me, Crowe croons lines like: “I burned all of my friends like cheap sex and cigarettes in this hotel.” If that doesn’t scream “therapeutic songwriting”, nothing does.
Back then, Crowe was at the height of his career, fresh off Gladiator, Master and Commander and A Beautiful Mind. These days, he’s also the only Oscar winner who can tell you from experience that customer complaints are best logged with the front desk, not hurled at it.
So what’s the takeaway? According to Crowe, regret is the greatest teacher. According to the Mercer Hotel staff, it’s “don’t let actors near the landlines”.
Images: Wikimedia Commons, Instagram
