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Russell Crowe is in hiding before shooting Robin Hood

By Charles Miranda

May 02, 2009 12:00am

RUSSELL Crowe is in London and he is hiding. It's not the paparazzi that has the actor ducking for cover or the fans scrutinising his every move.

Sir Ridley Scott is on the prowl for his movie partner on the eve of filming their highly anticipated epic about Robin Hood.

"That raspy old bastard, I'm staying away from him at the moment because in the last few days before filming someone always gets shot," Crowe says as he looks about the room, as if expecting the award-winning British director to leap out at him.

Crowe is joking but it says something of the relationship between the two men, which spans five movies in 10 years and is to lead to their biggest adventure yet.

Scott, 71, was known as the director who never liked to work with an actor more than once. In Crowe, he saw something that led to the men becoming professional friends and collaborating on blockbusters including Gladiator - for which Crowe receved a Best Actor Oscar - Body Of Lies and American Gangster.

Perhaps it is because the adjectives used to describe the men are always so similar - demanding, difficult, perfectionist - or their tied quest to create something different through mutual admiration and respect for each others' roles.

The bond has led to filming of the controversial $130 million epic Robin Hood to begin this week, with a top cast, including Cate Blanchett, William Hurt, Vanessa Redgrave, Mark Strong and Oscar Isaac among others.

"My thing with Ridley is what happens on a set," Crowe told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

"When we're on the set together, he and I begin to see the world in the same way and it's just a really enjoyable experience.

"I have a lot of responsibility when I work with him, I have a lot of creative space when I work with him and there's nobody that I've experienced who creates a world, a complete world, better than Ridley Scott.

"That's what I enjoy. There's a certain part of me that was a theatre actor, (who) appreciates being on a Ridley Scott set because I am a time traveller and I can live in a different world and that's a great privilege and I really enjoy it. He is a master of cinema and I'm lucky to know him professionally in the way that I do."

The movie was to have been shot last year but both men disliked the script and ordered it to be rewritten.

"It was a bad script, it wasn't right, I didn't like it. I don't want to start doing a bad script now," Ridley would say.

Then the leading lady, Sienna Miller, was replaced with Blanchett when it was believed she wouldn't be convincing opposite Crowe.

Filming in Sherwood Forest was banned due to its historic fragility, with crews forced to seek other locations, including Sussex and Wales, for 100 horses and 600-plus film crew.

It was rumoured Crowe was too fat for the character after putting on weight for roles including political thriller State Of Play.

No one was sure what his character was, including Crowe, who had been told he would play Robin Hood and the Sheriff.

Crowe and Scott persevered.

Crowe read up to 30 books on the historical Robin Hood figure to take on his persona, shed several kilos and became a marksman with a bow and arrow having practised for months on his farm in Nana Glen, in northern NSW.

"After I did Gladiator with him, he basically wanted me to do everything with him, which was unusual because he would say, 'You know, I don't work with the same actor more than once, I don't really like actors'.

"I go, 'Well I have noticed'. But I didn't for a number of years, then our schedules got further and further and further apart. Then we had a little, what I call unfortunate, situation called Kingdom Of Heaven where we developed it together for a long time then he got green-lit as I was in deep preparation for a movie with Ron Howard so I couldn't do it.

"I said, 'Wait and I will do it with you after this' and he said, 'Well I'm not going to wait because I want the sands to look a certain way and I want the sun to come from a certain direction and I need to shoot within these months'.

"It occurred to me if we keep doing this, and our schedules keep getting that distance . . . we would never do anything together."

Their schedules did catch up and for the next 91 days of filming they will again enjoy symbiosis.

"We are back in the same type time frame. When he's ready to go, I'm available," he says. "Am I ready (for Robin Hood)? Yep, absolutely."