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Crowe to nest in UK

Flying in ... Russell Crowe

Published: 07 Jul 2008

RUSSELL CROWE is set to move to London and live in the lap of luxury for the next six months.

The Gladiator star has rented a huge house in swanky Mayfair for a "bargain" £20k-a-month.

The gaff, on three floors with its own swimming pool, has enough room for a Roman army. A source said: "Russell is coming over to Britain filming and wanted somewhere comfortable for his family.

"The house became available after a celebrity couple pulled out of renting it."

The Oscar winner will film Nottingham, a love story based on the Robin Hood tale, with SIENNA MILLER as Maid Marion.

'I'M WILLING TO TAKE THAT LEAP OF FAITH'

Washington's co-star in American Gangster, Russell Crowe, is not one that would likely end up on an Entertainment Weekly list of the deeply religious in Hollywood. Instead, he has the reputation of being a brilliant-albeit moody and short-tempered-actor who doesn't suffer fools gladly. Nevertheless, he is a far more complex individual than the subjects of some of the pugnacious stories that end up on the gossip pages. When not working on a movie set, he is a devoted musician who has been playing in his band for more than 20 years, as well as a rancher who tends to several hundred Black Angus cattle. As a world-famous actor with a young family, he prefers his Australian acreage in Coffs Harbour to the bright lights of Hollywood.

Crowe has a formidable intellect, a puritanical intensity toward his craft, and a probing spiritual curiosity. "Growing up, we always had this odd relationship with the church," he confessed [ed note: this link takes you to Murph's webpage of a transcript of the Interview mag article - cool!] to actor Paul Giamatti a few years ago in Interview magazine. "Though we didn't really go as a family, my mother was totally fine with the idea of me going to church on my own, so I'd go and have a look at a Catholic service or a Presbyterian service or an Anglican service. I went to a temple. The Bahá'i faith is something I looked at as well. Although I wasn't brought up in a religious household, I'm a very inquisitive person about it, and, just the same as with my acting, I've taken things from various sources that mean something to me."

Crowe went on to say, "Finding a way of discussing what's going on inside you is healthy, as is finding a way to forgive yourself for stupid [stuff] you do-and a way to acknowledge that you've done something stupid. If religion means anything to me, it's about that."

Last December, Crowe surprised observers with comments he made in Men's Journal about a chapel he had built on his 1,400-acre Australian ranch north of Sydney. In an occasionally testy and contentious exchange with interviewer Allison Glock, Crowe was asked, "What is the most extravagant thing you've bought for yourself?"

Crowe responded, "Building the chapel on the farm where we got married."

He was referring to a magnificent $400,000 dome sanctuary inspired by the kind of European skylines found in Paris and Rome. "I needed to convince Danielle [Spencer] we didn't have to travel to Rome to get married like she'd always dreamed of, because I saw all the paperwork involved. So I had to manage that disappointment. I built her a Byzantine chapel of her own. It is consecrated and everything."

Turns out that the dome was actually an addition to a small, rough-hewn chapel that Crowe had earlier built for personal reflection and contemplation. "In the long term," Crowe said, "it isn't really extravagant at all. Because we don't have to travel to Rome to see where we got married. And we use it all the time."

Crowe told Glock that, in addition to being the place where he married Danielle, the chapel was where his firstborn son Charlie was baptized-something Crowe never experienced at a young age. He then reported that when his second son Tennyson is baptized, "I will too."

Glock was startled. "You plan to get baptized now, at 43?" she asked.

"I'd like to do it this year," Crowe responded. "My mom and dad decided to let my brother and me make our own decisions about God when we got to the right age. I started thinking recently, If I believe it is important to baptize my kids, why not me?"

During the ritual of baptism, those participating are told that it is an " outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," which sounds remarkably similar to the kind of thing Crowe longs to signify.

"I do believe there are more important things than what is in the mind of a man," Crowe said. "There is something much bigger that drives us all. I'm willing to take that leap of faith."

Somehow you get the feeling that this was the kind of thing that was racing through Charlton Heston's mind and soul when he stood barefooted on the set of The Ten Commandments-looking to the heavens for contentment and happiness in the midst of his commission.

Steve Beard is the editor of Good News magazine and the creator of www.thunderstruck.org-a website devoted to faith and pop culture.