Russell Crowe has blasted journalists for "trivialising" news.

The New Zealand born actor plays an investigative reporter for his latest role in "State Of Play" and says he has serious grievances about the way news is now reported.

He said: "There is a crisis in serious journalism and it's been created by journalists. We've been trivialising news for at least a couple of decades. The desire for new information, which we could use in a very healthy way, has been replaced by supplying trivia."

Russell, 45, replaced Brad Pitt as main character Cal McAffrey in "State of Play" and said his being asked to take the part came as a shock.

He added: "I was not predisposed to do this film at all, I was back in Australia, looking forward to a very long summer at home and I got a call from the studio. They said Brad Pitt had gone and would I please look at this project."

The film's director, Kevin Macdonald has said he felt Russell was a better choice for the film, but admits he can be difficult to work with.

Kevin said: "Russell is highly opinionated. He is very smart, and he has his own ideas a lot of the time about how his character should be. Sometimes that would be great.

"It's collaboration with Russell. He has ideas about how he's going to do it, and it's hard sometimes to get him off that. He can be tough."

(China Daily/Agencies, April 14, 2009)