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Russell Crowe recently revealed he's related to Britain's last man beheaded.
The ancestor that faced the guillotine was Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, who was executed in the Tower of London, Deadline reports. He's connected by his father's mother.
Russell Crowe's connection to the last beheaded man in the Tower of London
A post on X starts with the Gladiator star writing, “I've been on the hunt to track down my Italian forebears for quite some time. Folkloric family tales and misspellings had seen me travel on a number of wrong tracks.”
Crowe has been studying his family's history and was surprised to learn of this connection.
“Look him up. He's quite the character. The Old Fox they used to call him,” the actor said.
He continued, “Seems his Machiavellian ways caught up to him at the age of 80, & he has a claim to infamy as the last man to have the head chopped off his living body in the Tower of London.”
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I’ve been on the hunt to track down my Italian forebears for quite some time. Folkloric family tales and misspelling had seen me travel on a number of wrong tracks.
Turns out my great great great grandfather, on my mother’s side, who travelled to NZ in 1864 was …
— Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) January 3, 2024
Beyond that, his ancestor may have helped with a common phrase we've all heard before.
“His death even coined a phrase,” Crowe wrote.
“Apparently, they set up temporary stands for the gentry to watch him die,” he continued. “One of these stands collapsed which resulted in the death of 9 onlookers. Being told this just before he was put to death made him laugh. He was still laughing when the blades struck his neck, thereby laughing his head off.”
He concluded his post by saying, “Fascinating.”
Russell Crowe also stated that he had Norwegian, Scottish, and Italian connections.
