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‘Me and Tom Cruise get on like a house on fire’

Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy with Ryan Gosling as Holland March in new buddy action movie The Nice Guys
Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy with Ryan Gosling as Holland March in new buddy action movie The Nice Guys

Russell Crowe has a reputation for being tricky in interviews, but the actor appears in good spirits today.

He’s just arrived from Cannes, where he’s been busy promoting his latest movie, The Nice Guys.

Crowe, 52, looks well, dressed in a blue polo shirt and grey suit, and noticeably slimmer than the rotund physique he sports in The Nice Guys, a buddy action movie set in Seventies Hollywood.

He plays hired enforcer Jackson Healy, opposite Ryan Gosling’s bumbling, and near-fraudulent, personal investigator Holland March.

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“We’ve talked in the past about working together, but we didn’t realise it would be with a 6ft-tall smoking bee in the back of the car,” Crowe notes with a laugh, referencing a particularly trippy scene from the film.

Directed by Shane Black (Iron Man 3) and produced by Joel Silver (The Matrix, Sherlock Holmes), who first worked together on Lethal Weapon back in the Eighties, the plot sees March and Healy become unlikely partners in their search for a missing girl.

Described as a ‘film noir with elements of comedy’, the movie makes the most of the period setting, with its loud palette, eclectic fashion and ultra-flashy settings, juxtaposed with the seedier side of retro Hollywood.

“Initially, I was kind of fearful of LA, and in that strange, youthful arrogance, the fear turns into a superiority complex,” admits Crowe, grinning beneath knowing blue eyes as he recalls his arrival in LA back in 1992.

“I was fond of making quotes about Los Angeles as being the last place on Earth I’d live, but in reality, as you get a little wiser I suppose, you look at that town and it’s kind of a beautiful place.

“I’m not just talking about the weather or its geographical location, but the City Of Angels opens its wings every single day for the dreamers and the gypsies – and everybody who has aspiration in our business. People go there and they create incredible lives for themselves, because there are so many like-minded people around.”

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Born in New Zealand, Crowe lived in Australia for 10 years from the age of four, in which time he appeared in a couple of TV series, before returning to his country of birth.

At 21, he moved back to Australia, and after stints in Neighbours and Living With The Law, was cast in 1990’s The Crossing, which earned him a Best Actor nod at the Australian Film Institute Awards. He didn’t win that year – but the following two years he did, for Proof and Romper Stomper Zealand”.

His Romper Stomper performance also caught the eye of Sharon Stone, who wanted him for her Western, 1995’s The Quick And The Dead.

By now, Crowe’s star was well and truly rising, and after a string of big-shot movies – Virtuosity alongside Denzel Washington; L.A. Confidential alongside Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce – he earned his first Academy Award nomination in 2000, for his portrayal of a tobacco company whistle-blower in The Insider.

Two years later, he was nominated again for his performance as Nobel Prize-winner John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, while he’d won the Best Actor the year before, for Gladiator.

“I shot that in 1999 and there is not a single day of the year where it won’t be on prime-time TV somewhere in the world,” he remarks of Ridley Scott’s historical epic.

Crowe tends to watch his movies at the premiere and, bar catching a snippet here and there, “I never watch them again”.

“My ex-wife said something funny one night when we were coming back from the opening night of [2007’s] 3:10 To Yuma,” he recalls, eyes gleaming with amusement. “She said, ‘It must be so hard watching yourself age on screen’. I was like, ‘Well thanks very much!’ I’d never thought of it from that perspective, but now I will for the rest of my days.”

In the 13 years since his last Oscar nomination, he’s appeared in Master And Commander, American Gangster, State Of Play, Les Miserables and Man Of Steel.

He’s also dabbled in directing, first with documentary and shorts, before making his feature film debut with 2014’s The Water Diviner. In the meantime, he’s filming The Mummy, which will see him star as Dr Henry Jekyll alongside Tom Cruise.

“Whatever people think of him, this is a guy who has a massive career in the cinema and he’s a very fine actor,” Crowe notes.

“At one point, we were really good friends, and it’s just the way this business goes, I hadn’t seen him for years. But we exchanged a couple of e-mails a few weeks ago and it’s the same bloke.

“We get on like a house on fire and we’ll do our very best to make something really special.”