New Book Bares Russell Crowe's Crazy Side

With Russell Crowe's latest film on the horizon, a new book about DreamWorks is perfectly timed to take advantage of curiosity about the famously short-tempered actor. Some juicy details from Nicole LaPorte's The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company called DreamWorks, courtesy of Gawker:

• Crow began a 3am phone call with a Gladiator producer by barking: "You motherf---er. I will kill you with my bare hands."

• While filming the swords-and-sandals epic, "Crowe was a puffy pain," LaPorte writes. "After challenging members of the crew to a foot race, and losing, he would mutter for days, 'I would have won, but I can't run in the sand in sandals.'"
• The star objected to the climactic identity-revealing scene, but agreed to film it. Afterward, in the face of unanimous praise, he said: "It was shit. But I'm the greatest actor in the world and I can make even shit sound good."

For more fun with the world's most famous telephone shot-putter, click here. (More Russell Crowe stories.)