Crowe ‘wants to throw Ridley Scott off film’

Hollywood insiders see the end of a beautiful relationship between the Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott, as rumours fly that Crowe wants the director to be fired from their forthcoming collaboration.

Scott turned Crowe into a major star by casting him in Gladiator, a role that won him the Best Actor Oscar. The New Zealander also earned critical acclaim in Scott's A Good Year and American Gangster. But it seems that the irascible Crowe may have had enough.

While spokespeople deny any discord between the two men, sources have told the New York Post that Crowe blames Scott for the critical drubbing of their last film together, Body of Lies, and wants him removed from Nottingham, the revisionist version of the Robin Hood story they are due do start shooting in March.

"Ridley is the only one who is willing to stand up to Russell and tell him he's too fat and that he can't show up four hours late to the set," one insider told the New York Post. "[Russell] wants someone he can control."

Crowe is notoriously hot-tempered, and faced criminal charges in 2005
after throwing a telephone at a concierge at the Mercer Hotel. He is now said to be pressuring George Freeman of William Morris, the agent who represents both Crowe and Scott, to get Scott replaced. A spokesman for Freeman said: "There is absolutely no truth to this."

Whatever his reputation, Crowe's name has come up as an alternative to John Travolta to play Bill Clinton, opposite Michael Sheen's Tony Blair in Peter Morgan's directorial debut, which is tentatively titled The Special Relationship.