text: Riled Robin: Russell Crowe storms out of Radio 4 interview after being accused of giving hero an Irish accent 
   
   
   
   It was the equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a bull. 
   
   Russell Crowe - already smarting over the critics' reaction to his portrayal of Robin Hood - stood accused of making the hero of Sherwood Forest sound a little Irish. 
   
   Interviewer Mark Lawson should have known what was coming. 
   
   There was a simmering denial, an expletive or two and a rather sudden end to the conversation. 
   
   SCROLL DOWN TO LISTEN TO AUDIO (WARNING: CONTAINS BAD LANGUAGE) 
   
   Gladiators, ready! Russell Crowe became riled when Mark Lawson queried his accent on Radio 4 arts show Front Row 
   
   
   
   Crowe, who has a prickly reputation, had been talking to Lawson about his new film Robin Hood for BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme. 
   
   Things went wrong when Lawson started dissecting Crowe's accent in the movie. 
   
   He suggested there were 'hints' of Irish in the supposedly English accent. 
   
   Outburst: Hollywood star Russell Crowe walked out on a BBC Radio 4 interview after being riled by accusations he had made Robin Hood sound Irish 
   
   The 46-year-old New Zealandborn star, who lives in Australia, was having none of it. 
   
   'You've got dead ears, mate,' he said ominously. 
   
   'You've seriously got dead ears if you think that's an Irish accent.' 
   
   HOW THE TESTY EXCHANGE UNFOLDED Mark Lawson: 'The accent that you've given him, there are hints to me of Irish, but what... were you thinking in those terms?' Russell Crowe: 'You've got dead ears mate, you've seriously got dead ears, if you think that's an Irish accent.' 
   
   Lawson: 'Hints of, I thought...' 
   
   Crowe (interrupting): 'B*******.' (Crowe then talks about his portrayal of Robin Hood before coming back to the accent issue) 
   
   Crowe: 'I'm a little dumbfounded you could possibly find any Irish in that character, that's kind of ridiculous anyway, but it's your show.' 
   
   Lawson: 'So you're... well, I am just asking... so you're going for northern English?' 
   
   Crowe: 'No, I was going for an Italian, yeah, missed it? (Laughs) F*** me! (The actor then refuses to answer a question about whether he had not wanted to deliver some of his most famous lines in Gladiator) 
   
   Crowe: 'I don't get the Irish thing by the way. I don't get it at all.' (He finishes the interview, waving his cigarette and walking out). Crowe went on to talk about the character but the accusation had clearly hit a raw nerve. 'I'm a little dumbfounded that you could possibly find any Irish in that character - that's kind of ridiculous, but it's your show,' he said. Lawson, who was interviewing Crowe at the Dorchester Hotel in London, did his best to smooth things over. But there was no turning back. 
   
   Crowe then refused to answer questions about whether he had not wanted to deliver some of his most famous lines in the blockbuster Gladiator. He is said to have then waved his cigarette and walked off. Voice coaches working on Robin Hood, which like Gladiator-was directed by Ridley Scott, have said they wanted their hero to have an accent closer to the natives of Rutland, which is south east of Nottingham in the East Midlands. But one critic has claimed Crowe's accent 'sounds like an Australian doing an impression of Jim Bowen off Bullseye', while another suggested he had 15 different accents. Last week, Crowe revealed how he had worked on his English accent by listening to tapes of Michael Parkinson. 
   
   'If you look at the early ballads about Robin Hood he's connected to Barnsdale and historians argue Yorkshire and Nottingham are the two places he could have come from,' he said. 
   
   'So yes, I listened to a lot of Parky - that was a great help.' Crowe's bad temper has led to a number of run-ins over the years. 
   
   In 2005, he was charged with second-degree assault after throwing a telephone at a worker at the Mercer Hotel in New York. ||||| Broadcast on: BBC Radio 4, 7:15pm Wednesday 12th May 2010 Duration: 30 minutes Available until: 12:00am Thursday 1st January 2099 Categories: Factual, 
   
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target: – He didn't throw anything, but Russell Crowe is making headlines again for his temper. The Robin Hood star walked out on a BBC interviewer who pushed him a bit too far with questions about the legendary outlaw's accent—and some stale gossip about Gladiator. "Front Row" host Mark Lawson said he detected some Irish in the accent the native New Zealander adopted for Robin Hood, and Crowe responded, "Bollocks," reports the Daily Mail. The interview proceeded, and Crowe eventually returned to the matter of the accent, saying, "I'm a little dumbfounded you could possibly find any Irish in that character—that's kind of ridiculous, but it's your show." He was a lot less forgiving when Lawson brought up a recent book that claims Crowe didn't want to do the climactic scene in Gladiator—the actor got up and left. Listen to the interview here; it gets contentious at around 5:50 and ends shortly after the 10-minute mark.