How Russell snared Cate for ‘Robin Hood’ role

Melbourne: Russell Crowe managed to hook Cate Blanchett for his next movie in front of a 1000 people. He and filmmaker Ridley Scott were in the final stages of casting and preparation for the planned 155-million-dollar adventure Robin Hood, and still on the lookout for someone to play the leading lady, Maid Marion.

Crowe made the offer to Blanchett during a ceremony last year for the 2009 Australian Legends Awards when he was asked to give a speech. "I just asked her in front of 1000 people," The Daily Telegraph quoted Crowe as saying. "We were on stage and I’m looking at Cate. I knew her for a handshake and all that, right, but I’d never worked with her or ever had a long and deep conversation with her," Crowe recalls. "But I’m looking at this exquisite beauty sitting next to me on stage and they gave me the microphone and I immediately turned to the audience and said, "Don’t you think it’s time me and Cate made a movie together?’ And the response was gigantic. "So when I called her the next day she knew what I was already talking about," he adds. Blanchett agreed but she was cautious of the actor’s reputation as a mid-shoot script rewriter. "We started talking about it and she said, ``If I read a script, are you promising me that’s the script that you are going to make?" "I’m like, ``This is Ridley Scott, that isn’t going to happen, but what I can promise you is you are going to work with a great filmmaker who is in love with actors," Crowe says. The latest take on the poor’s hero with his band of merry men takes a slightly different turn in this movie. It tells how Robin was abandoned as a boy, grew up in the English Army as an archer and travelled the world on King Richard the Lionheart`s crusades before he returns to a broken nation. "Do I think Cate Blanchett is the single most spectacular creature that ever walked the planet? Yeah I do," he says. "She is absolutely fantastic, an incredible partner in crime on the film set, she just gets it. "She also gets when Ridley and I are having a few conversations about something we are working towards a solution, not f---ing around with ego bulls--- as you may read in 1000 newspaper articles. "We just work something, man, we just work it and work it until we find a solution,” he adds. ANI