'They wanted Sean Penn or Robert De Niro'

Russell Crowe has said the studio behind ‘L.A. Confidential’ wanted to cast Sean Penn or Robert De Niro in his role. — Russell Crowe has said the studio behind “L.A. Confidential” wanted to cast Sean Penn or Robert De Niro in his role.Michael Kovac/Getty Images, Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images, Taylor Hill/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Russell Crowe has said that efforts were made to get him to drop out of “L.A. Confidential” (1997).
“The studio didn’t want me to be in that role,” he told Vanity Fair, seemingly referring to Warner Bros.
At the time, Crowe wasn’t an established name in America and the studio wanted a bigger star.

Russell Crowe has said that the studio behind “L.A. Confidential” stopped paying for his hotel and rental car to get him to drop out of the movie.

In the 1997 movie, which was released by Warner Bros., the “Pope’s Exorcist” actor portrayed Wendell “Bud” White, a violent LAPD officer out for revenge against corrupt officers in the force.

“A few days into the rehearsals, the studio stopped paying the bill at the hotel and they stopped paying for my rental car,” Crowe said in a video interview for Vanity Fair released on Saturday.

“The studio didn’t want me to be in that role. They wanted, I think, Sean Penn and Robert De Niro in the film, or something.”

Russell Crowe as Bud White and Guy Pearce as Ed Exley in "L.A. Confidential" (1997). — Russell Crowe as Bud White and Guy Pearce as Ed Exley in “L.A. Confidential” (1997).Warner Bros. Entertainment

Crowe said that he was undeterred by the studio’s to get him to drop out and kept turning up to set until they eventually accepted that he wasn’t going anywhere.

“There was probably a four or five-day period there where I was leaving the hotel of a morning by going down the back stairs because I knew the manager of the hotel was waiting for me in the foyer to ask when the bill was going to be paid,” he recalled.

“If I paused and said, ‘I’m not turning up to work,’ they just would have taken that opening to get me out of the movie,” the actor said.

A representative for Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The film, which is based on James Ellroy’s 1990 novel of the same name, follows an investigation into a series of homicides in 1950s LA and also stars Kevin Spacey, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, and James Cromwell.

Crowe’s comments come as Ellroy condemned the film as “turkey of the highest form” at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Speaking about the adaptation of the third book in his “L.A. Quartet” series, he said: “The director died, so now I can disparage the movie,” adding that he thinks Crowe and Basinger’s performances were “impotent.”