Crowe, Roberts Go Back to Work

ByABC News
March 28, 2001, 2:13 PM

March 28 -- "Suddenly, going to work tomorrow doesn't seem like such a good idea," said surprised Best Director Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh on Sunday night after collecting his trophy for Traffic.

But back to work it was for all the new Oscar winners; after all, there's a strike a-brewing, and top talents like Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts, and Benicio Del Toro are all booked.

Soderbergh was headed back to the set of Ocean's Eleven, where he reteams with Julia Roberts, whom he directed to her first Oscar in Erin Brockovich.

A still-flustered Roberts said backstage at the Oscars, "I won't have a proper thought for, I'd say, six to 10 days, which is unfortunate because I start a movie in three, but it's with Steven Soderbergh, so I think he'll understand. I don't think he'll be making sense for a good four to five days [himself]."

Crowe Checks Into Princeton, Del Toro's in PortlandBest Actor winner Crowe reported to Princeton University on Tuesday to begin filming his new movie, A Beautiful Mind, for director Ron Howard; he'll play a schizophrenic math genius. One of his rivals for the Oscar this year, Ed Harris, co-stars in the film.

Unbelievably, Best Supporting Actor winner Benicio Del Toro said he almost skipped the ceremony because he was on location in Portland, Ore., filming the thriller The Hunted with Tommy Lee Jones. As for his high-profile, Oscar-winner-packed project The Assumption of a Virgin, with director Walter Salles, Geoffrey Rush, and Juliette Binoche, Del Toro told reporters that that will have to wait until after any possible strikes.

Now that she's won an Oscar, Pollock's Marcia Gay Harden is finding more people interested in her next projects, which include a CBS TV series with Richard Dreyfuss; "I play a pop-culture history professor," she says. Already in the can is the movie Gaudi Afternoon, of which Harden says, "I play a very alternative San Francisco character with Judi Davis, Juliette Lewis, and Lili Taylor. It's a romp it takes place in and around the Gaudi buildings in Barcelona [Spain]."