'I have a director's arrogance' Russell Crowe on his new career and being scared

RUSSELL CROWE speak about how he was driven to make The Water Diviner and how his sons and own anti-war beliefs shaped the World War I drama

By Stefan Kyriazis, Arts Editor

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Russell Crowe in The Water Diviner

Russell Crowe never strikes us as a man who suffers from a lack of confidence - in his own abilities or his ability to get his own way.

But the Aussie hard man reveals that the key to directing a film is "being scared."

The actor is making his directorial with his new film The Water Diviner.

In London with his co-star Olga Kurylenko to promote the WWI drama, he says that he was "getting on with his life" when he came across the original novel.

“When I read the Water Diviner I was having the same kind of visceral reaction that I would normally have acting in something,” he says.

“I believed that I was the only person that could tell this story the way it needed to be told.  

“That’s the real arrogance of a director!”

He also reveals that he had a prior close shave with directing ten years ago.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH OUR LIVE REVIEW OF THE WATER DIVINER

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Russell Crowe in the director's cap

“I put together a project I was going to direct in 2003 or 2004. It was too easy, it felt wrong,” he says.

“It was financed in one meeting, everyone was happy with whatever I wanted to do… I realized people were connected to it because I was a famous b******. 

“They didn’t have any belief that I would bring any particular truth to it as a director.”

Crowe says that he dismantled the whole project and walked away, before ruefully adding:

“However if I had known it would take ten years for me to get attached to my next project...” 

The Water Diviner Official Trailer #1 (2014) Russell Crowe Australian Epic Movie HD

The Water Diviner is an unflinching meditation on the cost of war, seen through the story of an Australian farmer who travels to Gallipoli in the aftermath of the First World War to search desperately for the bodies of his three fallen sons.

The 50-year-old admits that the story hits closer to home now that he is a father to two boys himself.

As anyone who is a parent knows, everything that happens in your life is seen through the prism of being a parent. 

“Reading the script affected me in a big way as the father of two boys.”

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But his scope and commitment to the project is bigger even than a parent’s desire to protect their child.

He also believes that his film is a resolutely anti-war piece.

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The Water Diviner is the story of a father's search for his three missing sons

Although the date of the landings, 25 April 1915, is commemorated as ANZAC day - the most importance remembrance day in Australia and New Zealand - Crowe is passionate in his hope that the film communicates the unimaginable losses and horrors suffered on both sides.

He finds it incredible that we still refer to the area and battle as Galipoli when the Turks actually call it Çanakkale.

One particular scene, set in No-Man’s-Land, is particularly harrowing and heartbreaking – and it’s clear that Crowe cannot find any justifications for such horrors.

“People say, ‘Surely there’s the right reasons for going to war?’ And my perspective is, ‘Surely there’s a better way of asking that question?’”

The Water Diviner is out now in cinemas. 

CLICK HERE TO WATCH OUR LIVE REVIEW OF THE WATER DIVINER

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