Word: tobacco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Jeffrey Wigand, played by Russell Crowe: Former research head at Brown and Williamson tobacco, and key witness in a $200 billion tobacco lawsuit...
Time for a cigarette break, mate," says Russell Crowe, settling down with a pack of Benson & Hedges Milds to talk about his role in The Insider. Wait a minute. A cigarette break? Isn't Crowe playing Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco-industry executive who blew the whistle on his bosses, helped spark a billion-dollar court battle, and now teaches the evils of cigarettes to kids? Crowe smiles apologetically. "I love irony, lovey," he says in his Aussie accent and lights up another cigarette...
...heart of The Insider--age didn't matter. At the time, Crowe was 34 and in fighting trim from playing ice hockey for the film Mystery, Alaska. But Mann had an inkling that Crowe could connect with the whistle blower Wigand at his most depressed and paranoid, when the tobacco industry was trying to smear him, when his marriage was failing, when he was drinking and eating too much. Crowe, without even meeting Wigand, nailed the part in a single reading, says Mann. "He was truly in the moment. In one line of dialogue, I saw Jeffrey Wigand there...
...still didn't look old enough, he shaved his head for a wig. Getting inside Wigand's head was more difficult. The two men spent less than two days together in South Carolina, golfing and talking about Wigand's new passion--teaching kids about the addictive ways of tobacco. "He makes it very hard for you to like him. He just doesn't care that much," says Crowe, who feels no need to win friends either. "The thing that I went away with was this thought: that I will honor this man. I will try to convey what he went...
...Insider (Why not call it Smoke?) has Al Pacino (as 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman) pointing and shouting like an aging mafioso. But Pacino is one of the good guys. The real gangsters are tobacco barons in Louisville, Ky., and network lawyers in New York City. They speak in genial or condoling tones; they have only the best interests of their corporations at heart and truly hope you see it their way. Otherwise they'll crush you. Brown & Williamson CEO Thomas Sandefur (played by Michael Gambon) has a manner as smooth as the draw of a Kool menthol into...