Becoming The Insider

Tim

e for a cigarette break, mate," says Russell Crowe, settling down with a pack of Benson & Hedges Milds to talk about his role in The Insider. Wait a minute. A cigarette break? Isn't Crowe playing Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco-industry executive who blew the whistle on his bosses, helped spark a billion-dollar court battle, and now teaches the evils of cigarettes to kids? Crowe smiles apologetically. "I love irony, lovey," he says in his Aussie accent and lights up another cigarette.

Fact is, Crowe has been smoking--and acting--since childhood. At age six he did his first TV gig. His parents, who migrated from New Zealand to Australia when he was four, catered TV and film sets in between running pubs, which is where he picked up smoking. In his 20s, he toured and sang (and smoked) with his own band, which still performs as 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. By 30, he had 10 films to his credit Down Under, most notably 1992's Romper Stomper, in which he played a psycho skinhead. Sharon Stone brought him to Hollywood for her 1995 western The Quick and the Dead. But it was his role as the pugilistic cop with a heart in the 1997 L.A. Confidential that finally ignited his career. Suddenly people were saying he was the next Brando. A-list directors started calling.

Michael Mann says he wanted Crowe to play the pudgy 53-year-old biochemist at the heart of The Insider--age didn't matter. At the time, Crowe was 34 and in fighting trim from playing ice hockey for the film Mystery, Alaska. But Mann had an inkling that Crowe could connect with the whistle blower Wigand at his most depressed and paranoid, when the tobacco industry was trying to smear him, when his marriage was failing, when he was drinking and eating too much. Crowe, without even meeting Wigand, nailed the part in a single reading, says Mann. "He was truly in the moment. In one line of dialogue, I saw Jeffrey Wigand there."

To prepare for the role, Crowe perfected his American accent, put on 50 lbs. and dyed his hair seven times; then, when he still didn't look old enough, he shaved his head for a wig. Getting inside Wigand's head was more difficult. The two men spent less than two days together in South Carolina, golfing and talking about Wigand's new passion--teaching kids about the addictive ways of tobacco. "He makes it very hard for you to like him. He just doesn't care that much," says Crowe, who feels no need to win friends either. "The thing that I went away with was this thought: that I will honor this man. I will try to convey what he went through."

By the time filming started, Crowe was Wigand, with folds of fat around his face. He even waddled like Wigand. Marie Brenner, the Vanity Fair writer whose article inspired The Insider, was astonished to see Wigand on the set one day. It was Crowe, of course. "I saw Wigand for two months in 1996, when he was shattered, frightened, in his darkest time," she recalls. "Yet this actor, after a day of golf, was able to intuit his throttled energy, his tension." Hollywood is equally impressed by the actor. Ridley Scott cast Crowe as the lead in next spring's Gladiator, and Taylor Hackford has just signed him to star opposite Meg Ryan in the romantic thriller Proof of Life.

Crowe still lives on a 560-acre farm in the bush seven hours north of Sydney. At 35 and single, he is content with himself. Except for one thing. He can't stop smoking. "It just proves how addictive nicotine is. I'm smart enough to acknowledge it but too stupid to stop." Working on The Insider has brought some enlightenment though. "If I've contributed in some way to the next generation of kids not becoming addicted to nicotine," he says, putting another one out, "well, that's fine by me, mate."