Russell Crowe was targeted by al-Qaeda

Mar 09, 2005 by Ian Evans

Russell Crowe has told GQ magazine that the FBI warned him that he was targeted by al-Qaeda terrorists in a kidnapping plot aimed at “cultural-destabilization.”

Crowe told the magazine that he was approached by the FBI in early 2001 and that “was the first conversation in my life that I’d ever heard the phrase al-Qaeda. And it was something to do with some recording picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in either Libya or Algiers.”

“I don’t think that I was the only person. But it was about — and here’s another little touch of irony — it was about taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as a sort of cultural-destabilization plan,” said the New Zealand-born Oscar®-winner.

Agents were with Crowe during the filming of A Beautiful Mind and part of Master and Commander. They also escorted him to the 2001 Golden Globe and Academy Award ceremonies.