Russell Crowe will write, direct and star in a new biopic about celebrity chef Marco Pierre White. Pierre White, who is famed for his hot temper and once reduced a young Gordon Ramsay to tears while he worked in his kitchen, revealed the planned film in an interview.
“I have just signed the deal,” he told the Daily Mail. “Russell has written the script, Russell’s company is producing it, Russell is directing it and Russell is playing the third or fourth Marco.”
Pierre White went on to explain that several different actors will portray him in the film, which will dramatise his entire life story. “When they do a movie on your life, you don’t just have one Marco – I am nearly 60,” he said. “If there was anyone in Hollywood to play me, it would have to be Russell.” A biopic about the chef has been in development for several years, with Ridley Scott previously attached to direct. Pierre White said in 2017 that he had met with Michael Fassbender to talk about playing him, as he felt his performance as a volatile slave owner in 2013’s 12 Years a Slave made him the right fit.
“I thought I can really see him playing me because he’s got that intensity and he’s got that wildness in his eyes,” Pierre White told RTÉ Radio One. “I could see a little of myself within him when he was in 12 Years a Slave and he wanted a job done. If I think back to the Eighties my methods weren’t conventional but they got results.”
Pierre White was dubbed the enfant terrible of British restaurants in the Nineties when he became the head chef of London’s Harveys at the age of 24. He became the youngest chef to be awarded three Michelin stars, aged 32, in 1995.
