Crowe criticized Love in an Entertainment Weekly interview for not making it clear that he wasn't the father of the baby she miscarried last May. Says Love sadly: ''That really hurt my feelings. Here I am having a miscarriage with Jim's baby, and Russell's worried about his image.'' Even so, ''I want to be friends with him.'' She laughs. ''And I demand an apology!'' Crowe's response to the tabloid rumors hurt Love in ways that only teenage girls can understand. ''It made me feel like ugly Courtney,'' Love says. ''You know, Ben Affleck went on a talk show and said he made out with me at a party, and there's nothing further from the truth. Did I issue a press release saying we didn't f---? It's embarrassing that Russell was embarrassed.'' She pauses. ''Am I a sexual pariah?''
When she's walking a straight line, Love is, in fact, a highly seductive proposition. ''She's a hot mama and so charismatic,'' says Cameron Diaz, her ''Feeling Minnesota'' costar. ''I love her blatant honesty.'' Diaz hesitates. ''Sometimes I worry about her, because I feel like, in some ways, it's self- destructive.'' (''I know, I know,'' Love says. ''My shrink keeps telling me I should be honest, not candid.'') But it's hard to be just honest when you know being candid gets you so much extra mileage. ''Would Courtney be the engaging person she is if her nature was checked?'' director Baz Luhrmann asks, knowing the answer. He experienced Love's force of nature for better and for worse when he ''genuinely considered'' casting her in ''Moulin Rouge.'' (''She blew me away with her comic abilities and dangerous intelligence,'' Luhrmann recalls.) Months later, after Nicole Kidman got the part, the director needed Love's permission to do a cover version of Nirvana's iconic ''Smells Like Teen Spirit.'' Says Luhrmann: ''Without Courtney that sequence wouldn't be in the film. She set her personal disappointment aside. And that's a big expression of her integrity and character.''
Even after that, Love couldn't resist a little name-calling. While playing a concert in Luhrmann's native Australia, she referred to Kidman as an ''ice queen.'' Like so many others she has tweaked, Luhrmann brushed it off with the common refrain ''That's just Courtney.'' After the public dissing, Courtney being Courtney, she sent him a package of notes and photographs that she thought he could use as inspiration for his film. Whether you're in or out of her good graces, Love ''is not mean,'' says Carrie Fisher. ''A little self-absorbed, but what actor isn't? She's not intentionally a bitch. She'll react. She can be demanding. But that's still not mean.'' Fisher, who first met Love at an Oscar rehearsal, adds: ''She is superambitious, which could lead her anywhere -- including into trouble.''
(Additional reporting by Joshua Rich)
See Entertaiment Weekly's exclusive
Get more about Love's marriage to Kurt Cobain, her suit against Nirvana, her daughter Francis Bean, her former boyfriends, and her own childhood in the March 29, 2002 issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine
