Why did the FBI follow Russell Crowe? Was Russell Crowe kidnapped?

In 2005, Russell Crowe became a target of kidnap after it was revealed that al-Qaida terrorist leader, Osama Bin Laden has so much information about him and his whereabouts.

Therefore the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) gave him complete protection for four straight years. According to them, Crowe must have been involved in a terrorist plan by the terrorists, therefore, he needed as much safety as possible.

In an interview, Crowe shared that he was first approached about a plot in a few months before the 2001 Oscars.

“That was the first conversation in my life that I’d ever heard the phrase al-Qaida. And it was something to do with some recording picked by a French policewoman, I think, in either Libya or Algiers. It was about – and here’s another little touch of my irony – taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as a sort of cultural destabilization plan,” he said. Meanwhile, he is a New Zealand national who grew up in Australia.

When news about his kidnap plot came to light, the FBI insisted that the threat was genuine but his agency refused to reveal who made it possible and why Crowe was a target.

During his four years under heavy surveillance of the FBI, he was always escorted on sets with many undercover agents heavily on guard.