You may be a little surprised, but many celebrities enjoy playing bingo as much as do the rest of us, after all, why should they be different? Some celebrities have even been involved in the game professionally.
One, one-time professional bingo celebrity is Russell Crowe. Born in New Zealand in 1964 he broke into acting in the 1980s and was well known for his role in neighbours. He achieved considerable success in Australian movies before moving to Hollywood in the late 1990s where he became will known for many staring roles including achieving several Academy Awards for roles in such films as Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, and The Insider. More recently he has appeared in American Gangster, Body of Lies, Robin Hood, and The next three Days, He is currently filming The Man with the Iron Fists and in the pipeline is Superman: Man of Steel in which Crowe plays Superman’s real father.
Until recently Crowe has been rather quiet about his early career as a bingo caller. Perhaps he was so reluctant to talk about it because it was not a particularly successful career; in fact eventually he was fired from it. He was fired not so much because of his notoriously fiery nature (he once faces a charge of assault on an employee for attacking him with a telephone) but rather for some of his ruder bingo calls that did not go down too well with his bosses; in New Zealand they tend to be a little old fashioned when it comes to that sort of thing. However, he maintains that being fired was one of the best things that happened to him as it preceded his first big break; as a singer in the lead role of Bad Boy Johnny. However he only lasted six weeks before being fired from that too; the rest though is history.
Crowe has said that he loved his time as a bingo caller and tried to be the best bingo caller in the world. He still does enjoy the game as does his wife, the singer and actress Danielle Spencer.