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Arts and Entertainment

Russell Crowe Says Michael Jackson Used To Prank Call Him

michael-and-russell.jpg
Right: Michael Jackson in Tokyo, Japan in 2006. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images) Left: Russell Crowe in Madrid, Spain this week. (Photo by Eduardo Parra/Getty Images)
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Maybe it shouldn't be any surprise that a man who lived in a place called Neverland was so juvenile but Russell Crowe says for years he was on the receiving end of prank calls from the King of Pop.

Crowe put on the charm for The Guardian while giving an interview in anticipation of his directorial debut, The Water Diviner. He spoke to the British paper about the costs of fame and one of them was getting really silly prank calls from Michael Jackson:

The zenith of Crowe’s fame does sound a bit disturbing in other ways. For one thing, he found himself on the receiving end of repeated nuisance calls from, of all people, Michael Jackson. “For two or three fucking years,” he says. “I never met him, never shook his hand, but he found out the name I stayed in hotels under, so it didn’t matter where I was, he’d ring up do this kind of thing, like you did when you were 10, you know. ‘Is Mr Wall there? Is Mrs Wall there? Are there any Walls there? Then what’s holding the roof up? Ha ha.’ You’re supposed to grow out of doing that, right?”

This isn't the first time he's talked about those prank calls—CBS points out he spoke to The Sun.

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"He'd ring me and in a strong voice and say, 'There is an emergency and you need to leave the building,'" Crowe told The Sun. "I'd ask, 'Who is this?' And he'd say, 'Do not worry Russell, just kidding, this is Michael.'"

Two or three years of prank calls sounds obnoxious, but we'll give him a pass because he chose such a self-serious and surly phone-throwing target and he was charmingly bad at the pranks. Oh, Jacko.

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