Russell Crowe back in New York court

Russell Crowe

NEW YORK - Actor Russell Crowe went back yesterday to the court where he pleaded guilty last year to hitting a hotel clerk with a telephone -- this time as an actor rather than the defendant.

The New Zealand native was at Manhattan Criminal Court filming the upcoming movie American Gangster.

Crowe, the star of such movies as A Beautiful Mind and Gladiator, hit a clerk with a telephone in June 2005 at a trendy SoHo hotel.

The Oscar-winning actor pleaded guilty to misdemeanour charges, and was fined US$160 in November and told to stay out of trouble and avoid arrest for a year.

Crowe plays a detective in American Gangster, which is about a drug lord who smuggles heroin into Harlem during the 1970s in the coffins of US soldiers returning from Vietnam.

- REUTERS