Al-Qaida wanted to kidnap me, says Crowe

IT SOUNDS like a bizarre film script he turned down, but actor Russell Crowe has revealed how Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network wanted to kidnap him as part of a “cultural destabilisation plot”.

In an interview published in the March edition of Australia's GQ magazine, Crowe said FBI agents told him of the threat in 2001, in the months before he won a best actor Oscar for his role as Maximus in Gladiator.

"That was the first (time) I'd ever heard the phrase 'al-Qaida'," Crowe said. "It was about and here's another little touch of irony taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as sort of a cultural destabilisation plot," he said.

Crowe was born in New Zealand, but grew up in Australia where he lives on a ranch in eastern part of the country.

The actor said he was shadowed by FBI agents after the threat and hired private security guards.

He said police officers in dinner jackets guarded him when he was promoting his film Proof of Life in London in February 2001.

Agents also guarded Crowe during the filming of A Beautiful Mind in 2001 and Master and Commander a year later.

Undercover officers were also deployed at the Bafta awards ceremony in London and the Golden Globes in the US, he said.

The 40-year-old actor said he had not heard of bin Laden's al-Qaida network when he was told about the plot.

"That was the first conversation in my life that I'd ever heard the phrase al-Qaida. And it was something to do with some recording picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in either Libya or Algiers."

The FBI told him the terrorists were planning to kidnap high-profile actors.

It was not clear if there were other targets. Crowe said he also employed his own private security guards.

However, he was unconvinced about the level of danger he was in.

"I never fully understood what the f**k was going on," he said.