Crowe angry about reports he's to play Irwin

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(CNN) -- Actor Russell Crowe called reports that he may play "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin in a film biography of Irwin's life "appalling," he told CNN's "Showbiz Tonight."

"This is my friend," Crowe told "Showbiz Tonight" anchor A.J. Hammer during an interview for Crowe's new film, "A Good Year." "All right? He just died. We've dealt with his funeral, we've dealt with a memorial to him. You know?

"I'm not doing business over the grave of my friend. I find that appalling. But, you know, that's not just in the tabloid[s]. That's in The Guardian, its in The New York Times. Understand? Absolutely disgusting." (Watch Crowe react to the idea of doing an Irwin movie -- 2:21 )

Reports of Crowe portraying Irwin apparently originated with a story in the magazine InTouch Weekly, which was then picked up by the New Zealand Herald and made its way through the Internet. (CNN.com checked the Times' search engine and could not find a record of the story there.)

Crowe made a short tribute film broadcast at Irwin's memorial service September 20.

"We have lost a friend, a champion," he said in the tribute. "It will take some time to adjust to that."

"I'm filming this thing, you know, to a video camera, and I know it's being -- going to be watched by his family and by his kids, you know, trying to reach through that camera across those miles and tell his kids that the last possible thing that their dad would have ever wanted was to leave them. You know?" Crowe told Hammer of the emotions expressed in his video. "And that's what I would hope that my friends would take -- make the effort to say to my children if that should ever befall me."

Crowe also addressed the way he's been treated in the news media, particularly after a phone-throwing incident at a New York hotel last year. Crowe pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges for hitting a hotel clerk with a telephone and was fined $160.

"I don't think that there is such a thing as a fair shake in the media, the way it exists now," he told Hammer.

"I think -- I think it's rotten to the core. I think it's full of a whole bunch of people who write late into the night while drinking themselves into oblivion. And I think it's a very nasty situation that we've got ourselves in the world, where you cannot go to a news source and reliably be told the truth."

"Quite a few trees died to tell, you know, a larger tale. ... You know, I lost my temper, I apologized for it. You know? We can all move on now."

Crowe was also in the news for leaving a big-budget film scheduled to be directed by Baz Luhrmann ("Moulin Rouge!") and co-starring Nicole Kidman. The film was due to begin production this month, according to The Hollywood Reporter, but has now been pushed back to February.

"I just didn't want to work on that movie in the type of environment that was being created because of the needs of the budget," Crowe told reporters, according to Reuters. "I do charity work, but I don't do charity work for major studios."

Crowe has been replaced by Hugh Jackman. The film's studio, 20th Century Fox, had no immediate comment, according to the news agency.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Russell Crowe at the opening of his film "A Good Year" in early September.

Crowe angry about reports he's to play Irwin

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