April 18, 2001: Snapshot

Star Struck

By Denise Applewhite

Both gown and town were abuzz when acclaimed director Ron Howard, left, and recent Oscar-winner Russell Crowe, right, arrived in the courtyard between Henry and 1901 Halls to begin filming A Beautiful Mind. Based on the book by Sylvia Nasar, the film tells the story of mathematician John Nash *50, who battled schizophrenia for years but won the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for his Ph.D. thesis on game theory. On the first day of movie-making, March 27, the scene was set at a 1947 garden party welcoming Princeton’s incoming graduate students. The stars were generally forgiving of the rabid local interest, signing autographs, although one student provoked a less-than-gentlemanly response from Crowe as she snapped a sly photo from her dorm room.