Russell Crowe Clashed With His ‘Eucalyptus’ Director When She Tried Casting Anna Torv in the Film

Actor Russell Crowe was supposed to team up alongside Last of Us star Anna Torv for Eucalyptus. But Crowe had a serious problem with how the film’s director planned to recruit Torv for the unmade feature.

Russell Crowe didn’t want to tell Anna Torv she’d be working with him in ‘Eucalyptus’

Eucalyptus was a movie that was surrounded by controversy when it was being developed. The Australian feature was supposed to star Crowe and Nicole Kidman. Fringe star Anna Torv was also initially recruited for the film. It was going to be directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, who offered Crowe the film on a whim.

“I don’t know if you ever knew the real story behind that. We didn’t have an audition, we met in a park,” Crowe once said on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (via Contact Music).

Moorhouse wanted Crowe to give Torv the news that she’d been hired for the film. But Crowe was against doing so.

“The director called me and she said, ‘You have to go meet Anna in the Botanic Gardens and you have to tell her she’s got the role.’ I’m like, ‘Why should I do that? That’s your gig, you’re the director.’ She was like, ‘I just need you to do that, create a bond of trust between the two of you,’” Crowe recalled.

The Gladiator star was about to follow through with the director’s request, but quickly changed his mind.

“So I went and we were sitting in the park and I had this sort of instinct: ‘I’m not gonna say that, it just doesn’t feel right that I should say that’. So we had a chat,” he said.

It turned out that Crowe’s instincts were right as Torv didn’t end up officially getting the part, anyway.

“I go back home to get a message from the director saying, ‘I’ve changed my mind, you have to call Anna and tell her she hasn’t got the role!’ Some sort of control issue. Five weeks later the director quits the part and I get the blame for it,” he said.

Russell Crowe once addressed the controversies surrounding ‘Eucalyptus’

Casting issues soon became the least of the film’s concerns. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, there were reports that both Crowe and Kidman were unsatisfied making the Australian epic. Additionally, there were also rumors that Crowe wasn’t a fan of the script. He allegedly clashed with Moorhouse about the picture’s development as well. The on-set scandals and feuds kept delaying the feature.

In e-mails Crowe sent to The Telegraph (via MovieWeb), the State of Play star gave his side of the story for the Eucalyptus debacle. He found accusations that he was the source of the film’s delay to be completely fabricated.

“Oh for goodness sake, what next? Perhaps I wanted to play Nicole’s role as well? Yes, that must be it; Crowe needed nicer skirts,” Crowe wrote.

He also shot back at reports claiming that he tried to change the script on Eucalyptus.

“If I’ve tried to change anything it has been the desire to change things – what could be the word – a reversionist? When I came on board to play a minor role, in a specified amount of weeks, it all seemed quite simple. However, from that seed strange growths appeared in the script,” Crowe explained.

Russell Crowe eventually left ‘Eucalyptus’ because of money

Crowe would eventually leave Eucalyptus, and the feature would never see the light of day. Among all the film’s troubles, the controversial actor asserted that it was his pay that might’ve pushed him out of the project.

“I just didn’t want to work on that movie in the type of environment that was being created because of the needs of the budget,” Crowe once said according to The Standard. “I do charity work, but I don’t do charity work for major studios.”