Russell Crowe was already one of Hollywood’s biggest actors — the star of Gladiator — when something strange started happening to him in hotels.
His phone would ring. A voice would come on, sometimes deadly serious, sometimes warning him about some kind of emergency. And then the caller would drop the act entirely and start messing about.
According to Crowe, the caller was Michael Jackson.
And here is the strange part. They had never met. Not once. Crowe had no idea how Michael had even gotten hold of him.
Russell Crowe On Michael Jackson’s Prank Calls To Him | The Graham Norton Show – BBC
It was not a one-off either. Famous people often check into hotels under fake names so they cannot be found — and somehow Michael had worked out the alias Crowe used. So the calls followed him from hotel to hotel, city to city, for roughly two or three years.
One running joke involved asking for members of the “Wall” family — a completely made-up family — before delivering a deliberately childish punchline. The kind of prank call a ten-year-old makes to a stranger’s house, carried out across years by the biggest pop star on earth, on one of the most famous actors alive.
Crowe told the whole story on The Graham Norton Show, and part of what makes it so funny is how baffled he still sounds.
Magic Johnson on How ‘Prank Calls’ From Michael Jackson Led to a Lifelong Friendship (Exclusive)
This story has a lovely mirror image. When Michael rang basketball legend Magic Johnson to ask him to appear in the “Remember the Time” video in 1992, Magic assumed it was somebody pranking him—and hung up. Only later did he realize it was really Michael on the line. He ended up in the film.
So the King of Pop spent years making real prank calls, and when he finally made a genuine one, people assumed it was a joke.
The people around him have always said the same thing. Behind the enormous fame was a man who loved the simplest, silliest jokes — and could not resist a phone.