Russell Crowe, known for his difficult character and run-ins with the law, has revealed that he is a descendant of the last lord beheaded in the Tower of London. The Oscar winner, who recently starred in the mystical horror film The Vatican Exorcist, shared on social media the result of a genealogical study that found he is “directly” related to Simon Fraser, the 11th Lord Lovat, on his father’s side.
“He was quite the cad – they called him the Old Fox,” Russell Crowe wrote with faint admiration in a post describing the “sinister” Jacobite executed in 1747. According to legend, Simon Fraser was told before his execution that one of the stands erected for gawkers to watch the execution had collapsed, claiming the lives of a dozen people. Upon learning of this, the 11th Lord laughed and continued to do so even as the blade severed his neck. This is how the expression “laughing till you drop” originated.
