Russell Crowe was arrested in New York for allegedly throwing a telephone at a hotel employee early Monday morning, according to a police report obtained by CNN.
Authorities say the New Zealand-born actor, 41, was upset that he could not place a call to Australia on his phone at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo. (via Martinis, Persistence, and a Smile)
I did a little searching if I could find any more details, but couldn’t. I’ve never actually seen anyone throw a phone at anyone, so I was curious about the details.
I made up two possible scenarios:
Russell calls room service and an attendant, a young Indian-born man, come to his room. Russell starts screaming about the phone not working right. The attendant says he’ll speak to management right away and Russell rips the phone from the wall and says, "here’s your fucking phone!" and throws it at his head.
OR
Russell goes to the front desk, a scowl on his face, upset that Cinderella Man isn’t doing very well at the box office. The attractive girl at the desk, a NYU film student from New Jersey, is excited to meet the actor.
"Can I help you, Mr. Crowe?" she asks.
"What the fuck is wrong with this hotel!" he screams.
He reaches behind the desk and lifts up the telephone to show it to her.
"Do you know what this is?!"
"A telephone?"
"That’s fucking right!"
And then he throws it at her head.
UPDATE: It’s now later in the day and more information is out. The clerk was a male. Robin Baum, Crowe’s publicist, spins it like this:
"Frustrated by a clerk’s unwillingness to help him put through a phone call to his family in Australia, Russell Crowe was involved in a minor altercation at the Mercer Hotel earlier this morning… After asking the front desk several times to replace a faulty phone in his room — and getting only attitude from the clerk on duty — Crowe brought the phone down to the front desk in an effort to address the situation in person. Words were exchanged, and Crowe wound up throwing the phone against the wall. He regrets that he lost his temper, but at no time did he assault anyone or touch any hotel employee."
Ok, now it’s been cleared up. He only threw the phone against the wall, something we all do at a Holiday Inn every once in a while.
