Notably, Warner Bros. deliberately stopped playing for Crowe’s hotel, and they took away his transportation. It seems that Warner, by depriving him of these utilities, would force him to miss work. If he missed work, then Warner would have every right to fire him. He said:

“When I flew to L.A., I moved into this hotel and we began rehearsals. A few days into the rehearsals, the studio stopped paying the bill at the hotel, and they stopped paying for my rental car. The studio didn’t want me to be in that role. They wanted, I think, Sean Penn and Robert De Niro in the film or something. Things that they could quantify and understand.”

Luckily, Crowe was sneaky, and knew how to deal with a watchful manager. Not only would he be fired if he missed work, but it’s likely if Warner received an angry phone call from Crowe’s hotel, they would happily take that as a sign that Crowe was unreliable and fire him for that, too. It was truly a test of Crowe’s cunning. He continued: 

“There was probably a four- or five-day period there where I was leaving the hotel of a morning by going down the back stairs because I knew the manager of the hotel was waiting for me in the foyer to ask when the bill was going to be paid. If I paused and said, ‘I’m not turning up to work,’ they would have taken that opening to get me out of the movie.”

During production, no one believed that “L.A. Confidential” would succeed. It wasn’t until a producer personally carried a 35mm print to Cannes for official competition that the industry began to take the film seriously. 

“L.A. Confidential” was nominated for nine Academy Awards.