Russell Crowe has an "intimate friendship" with Kim Basinger.
The 52-year-old star and blonde beauty, 62, first met and struck up a bond on the set of hit thriller ‘L.A. Confidential’ in 1997 and, although they were hard at work, they still couldn’t help wreaking havoc in between takes because they get on so well.
He said: "It was great seeing Kim again, we were talking and we realised we hadn’t been in the same room together in over a decade. I mean, it’s a very different cinematic relationship. Compared to what we did before. Because we had so many hours together on ‘L.A. Confidential’ and we had a real intimate friendship, it was great, and that still remains.
Crowe went on to star in the global hit movie ‘Gladiator’ in 2000 and Basinger starred as Stephanie in ‘8 Mile’ alongside rapper Eminem in 2004.
And despite the fact their paths never crossed after ‘L.A. Confidential’, no matter how many years passed between them, Crowe believe the pair are still very much "connected".
Speaking at a press day in London for the ‘The Nice Guys’ on Thursday (19.05.16) ahead of the European premiere, he said: "That’s the funny thing about this business. You go through cycles where you can not see each other for years and years and years but if you have connected you will still connect the next time you see each other."
Meanwhile, Crowe plays a detective alongside Ryan Gosling in the Shane Black-directed movie and said the filmmaker was experienced enough to "trust" the actors to improvise jokes on set.
He said: "The cool thing about working with Shane at this point in his life, when he’s had the ups and downs and the slings and arrows, is that he’s at a point in his life when he really does understand you’ve got to trust who you hire, but we’re both very respectful of the script and we’ll do it the way it reads but then we also bring ideas every day and what about his and what bout that, and Shane trusted we would work in the spirit of what he intended, That we would n’t be doing another movie. There’s a lot, on a daily basis, some of it is discussed, some of it isn’t."