Not being able to get an international line can be annoying for anyone. But when it’s 4am and the person with the hotel telephone in his hand is Russell Crowe, it’s probably time to duck.
The 41-year-old actor was arrested and charged with assault early on Monday morning after allegedly throwing a telephone at a hotel employee.
Crowe, who has a reputation for hell-raising, appeared in a Manhattan criminal court on Monday night after the incident at the Mercer Street Hotel in the SoHo district of New York.
He was arraigned on charges of second-degree assault and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon — the telephone — by Judge Martin Murphy, who ordered him to return to court on September 14. If convicted, the Oscar winning star could face up to four years in prison.
According to the complaint made against the actor, Crowe allegedly threw the phone at the hotel’s concierge, ”hitting him in the face and causing a laceration and substantial pain”.
”This arose because he was trying to get his wife on the phone in Australia,” his lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, told reporters earlier outside the police precinct where Crowe was charged. ”He was in his room. He couldn’t get a line and there was a disagreement.”
Police said the alleged confrontation took place at the front desk.
The prosecution told the judge that Crowe admitted to a police officer that he picked up the phone and threw it because he was angry.
Crowe’s publicist, Robin Baum, told the US television show Extra: ”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.”
Earlier police said the victim was taken to St Vincent hospital, while Crowe, pictured wearing handcuffs and a jacket with a bulldog on it, was taken to a police station and charged with assault.
It is not the first time that Crowe, who won an Oscar for his role in Gladiator in 2000, has been involved in an off-screen skirmish, though it was thought that fatherhood had mellowed him.
At the Baftas in February 2002 he pinned the show’s television producer against a wall and subjected him to a barrage of abuse after a poem recital intended as part of his acceptance speech was cut.
Last year Crowe started a fight with Mark ”Spud” Carroll, a former rugby league star turned minder, in Toronto during the shooting of his latest film Cinderella Man.
Carroll denied reports that Crowe had bitten his ear, saying: ”He did take a nip at my chest – I was trying to smother him at the time so I can understand the move.” – Guardian Unlimited Â