Russell Crowe Tweets Sweet Remembrance of Sinead O’Connor

Russell Crowe has joined those publicly paying homage to Sinead O’Connor following the news the Irish singer died Wednesday at the age of 56.

The Oscar winner posted a string of tweets about a chance encounter with the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer in 2022 while he was working on The Pope’s Exorcist in Ireland.

“Last year, working in Ireland, having a pint in the cold outside a Dalkey pub with some new friends, a woman with purpose strode past us. Puffy parka zipped to the nape and her bowed head covered in a scarf,” the Australian actor wrote. “One of my new friends muttered an exclamation, jumped up and pursued the woman. Thirty meters down the road the friend and the woman embraced and he waived me over. There under streetlights with mist on my breath, I met Sinéad. She looked in my eyes, and uttered with disarming softness ‘Oh, it’s you Russell.’”

The encounter didn’t end there. “She came with us back to the table and sat in the cold and ordered a hot tea. In a conversation without fences we roamed through the recent Dublin heatwave, local politics, American politics, the ongoing fight for indigenous recognition in many places, but particularly in Australia, her warm memory of New Zealand, faith, music, movies and her brother the writer. I had the opportunity to tell her she was a hero of mine.”

Crowe continued his fond remembrance of the singer. “When her second cup was taking on the night air, she rose, embraced us all and strode away into the fog-dimmed streetlights. We sat there the four of us and variously expressed the same thing. What an amazing woman. Peace be with your courageous heart Sinéad.”

While Crowe is best known as an actor, he’s also been making music since the ‘80s when he recorded the song “I Want to Be Like Marlon Brando” under the name of Russ Le Roq. He later went on to form the bands Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts and Garden Party.