Russell Crowe Claims Michael Jackson Gleefully Prank-Called Him – for Years

Russell Crowe opened up to the Guardian about the strangest elements of fame in a new interview. Photo: Getty

Move over, Bart Simpson. Russell Crowe says there's a new king of the prank call – and he also happens to be the King of Pop.

In a new interview, the Oscar-winning actor, 50, claims Michael Jackson gleefully prank-called him – "for two or three f---ing years."

"I never met him, never shook his hand, but he found out the name I stayed in hotels under," Crowe told The Guardian while discussing the more bizarre aspects of fame.

"It didn't matter where I was," Crowe continued. "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.' "

Crowe, who directs and stars in The Water Diviner, out April 24, apparently was not amused.

"You're supposed to grow out of doing that, right?" he told The Guardian.

Although it's impossible to verify Crowe's claims nearly six years after Jackson's death, the pop icon made no secret of his determination never to grow up, naming his famed estate Neverland Ranch and obtaining an original 1911 copy of Peter Pan.

Crowe, meanwhile, says some of the crazier aspects of his fame – which once included being an al-Qaeda target – have waned in recent years, in part because he chooses to live in his homeland.

"There's an ease that I have living in Australia," he says. "The best things about Sydney are free: the sunshine's free and the harbor's free and the beach is free."

Life might be calmer now – but it's still probably best to avoid asking him if his refrigerator's running.