Joe Rogan Experience #2191 - Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe joins Joe Rogan for a sprawling conversation spanning his unlikely path from New Zealand insurance clerk and nightclub DJ to global movie star. He shares harrowing and funny on-set stories, including being bitten in the neck by a tarantula on a 1990s film and running with blown hamstrings during Noah. A large stretch covers his deeply humane, regenerative cattle operation in the Australian bush and his philosophy on meat and animal care. They dig into boxing (Cinderella Man, lomachenko, Tyson vs. Paul), stem cell and peptide therapies for his many injuries, and close on social media, politics, free speech, and the state of America.

• Crowe endured nine takes with a live tarantula crawling into his mouth, was told its venom was milked when it wasn't, and broke out in a rash from venom-laced leg hairs.
  00:26:40
• He shredded both hamstrings at his son's school sports day, then taped his legs and flew to set to run to the ark in Noah without telling anyone.
  00:34:36
• The fight with Troy near the end of Cinderella Man is 100% real, two men genuinely beating each other in the ring with no choreography.
  01:19:11
• He subluxated his shoulder filming Cinderella Man, breaking the bone, and stepped back into the ring just 21 days after surgery.
  01:22:51
• A Vatican official privately opened the Sistine Chapel for his family and called him 'the eighth king of Rome' for what Gladiator did for Italy.
  01:37:23
• On a Vatican balcony the Swiss Guard band happened to be rehearsing Danny Boy, the song from his late father's funeral, a moment he calls near-miraculous.
  01:40:48
• Crowe says playing Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider opened his eyes to the idea that a corporation would have someone assassinated to protect its business.
  02:01:22
• He rehabilitated his chronic Achilles problems, present since 1998 across Gladiator and Cinderella Man, by playing tennis rather than rehab exercises.
  02:36:21

• Crowe did his first line of on-camera dialogue at age six in a scene with Australian actor Jack Thompson.
  00:09:01
• During a disorganized Guatemala shoot the crew lived on refried beans and rice for seven days, then likely ate monkeys and got sick.
  00:25:38
• He claims to be the only Academy Award-winning actor ever bitten in the neck by a tarantula.
  00:31:59
• He runs 220 Angus cattle, uses a single-laneway low-stress mustering system, and won't run it as a business because he won't risk 25,000 animals' welfare.
  00:52:59
• Cinderella Man trainer Angelo Dundee coached 15 world champions including Ali and Sugar Ray and nicknamed Crowe 'number 16'.
  01:16:32
• Crowe read the A Beautiful Mind script in one sitting in Austin and jumped into a pool at 4am deciding he absolutely had to do it.
  01:33:15
• A NIDA technical director talked him out of drama school, saying he'd only pick up bad habits since he already did the work professionally.
  01:58:16
• Joe says a stem cell treatment fully healed his torn rotator cuff, something his orthopedic surgeon had never seen before.
  02:23:13
• Crowe recounts how Roger Ailes told Rupert Murdoch that picking a political side captures 50% of the news audience, the origin of opinion-based news.
  02:54:40
• His father died in March 2021, but Crowe got a full COVID-lockdown year living with his parents on the farm beforehand.
  03:02:00

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