Come Friday and Russell Crowe teams up with Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys. The comic caper by Shane Black, set in the ’70s, has Crowe’s top cop Jackson Healy joining forces with private eye Holland March (Gosling) to investigate a fading pornstar’s mysterious death. A chat with the 52-year-old Oscar winner...
What convinced you to sign the film?
I really liked the balance between the two characters (Jackson and Holland) and the way they interact. And Ryan has a magnificent, innate sense of timing, so the two of us operated really well together. We made each other laugh every day.
How was it working with Ryan Gosling?
You don’t have to have a friendship with fellow actors to have chemistry. This kid is a genius and he’s a cineaste, I appreciate his preparedness to be adventurous, how many questions he asks and how hard he works.
Do you notice elements of yourself in him?
I do a little bit. That’s probably where we really connect. He loves cinema. He has a great deal of respect for it and knowledge of it. If you’re picking up any references in his performance, you can be sure that he intended them.
He’s a very serious insect. He comes to the set, he’s examined things, he’s thought about them. But none of this gets in the way of his sense of fun or his ability to play.
One of the key things about Ryan that’s naturally innate is that he’s a listener and an observer. They always make the best actors and always make the people you have the most fun with.
You’ve done a lot of period pieces that are set centuries ago. Is there a special kind of fun shooting a movie that takes place in the recent past?
I suppose it was interesting from the point of view that all the music (by David Buckley and John Ottman) was familiar to me. All the references were familiar to me. One of the cleverest things in the film is how Shane (Black, the film’s director) has reached back into history and picked this point in time where certain decisions were made that corrupted America’s future. From that serious point, he decides to make a comedy out of it.
The Nice Guys feels like a movie that could start a franchise, but you’ve never done a sequel. Would you consider it for this one?
We’ll see. I’ll tell you what I do know is that every time I’m in an interview situation and people start mentioning sequels, it never happens.
Fundamentally, are you a nice guy?
On what parameters are you making that judgement? We tend to as a society put that mantle on to people who ultimately disappoint us in very deep ways. I don’t place any importance at all on whether somebody’s nice or not. To me, if somebody is honest in their communication, that’s a lot easier to deal with than somebody who might be on the surface a nice person, but doesn’t really believe in anything they’re saying to you. I would prefer to be known as somebody who is upfront rather than nice.
Finally, are you ready to find love again in a new relationship?
There is a craving for some sort of intimacy in the future… and I’m not talking sexually... it is starting to grow inside me again (Crowe and singer Danielle Spencer divorced in 2012 after nine years of marriage). I really need that. I thought I could just tough it out and not worry too much. But you just want the feeling that you have someone you can make a plan with.
So would that mean you’re open to the idea of marriage?
Nothing that has happened to me has changed my belief in the beauty of marriage, but would I elect to do it again? I’m not sure. I have what I feel is an obligation to my kids (sons Charles, 12, and Tennyson, 9), to not confuse their lives too much. It’s already pretty tricky for them. There’s life itself, then there’s life as a famous person’s kid.
