The owner thought it was a hoax at first, but now says she is incredibly grateful the actor “thought about our little bookshop”.
Bookshop boss Leanne Fridd launched crowdfunding as a “last resort” to save her struggling business and within hours got an “insane” surprise donation – from actor Russell Crowe.
Leanne runs Bookbugs and Dragon Tales bookshop in the Norfolk city of Norwich and had resigned herself to having to close it down at the end of the year after the COVID pandemic and recent cost-of-living challenges had made times hard.
As a last-ditch attempt to keep her beloved business alive, she launched the fundraiser with the aim of pulling in £15,000.
Just five hours later, the Gladiator actor’s name popped up. He had made a surprise donation of £5,000 – a third of their final total.
She told Sky News: “We had all gone to bed when I saw it. Of course, at first, we thought it was a hoax, but then we thought ‘Well that’s a very expensive hoax’!”
A former acting lecturer, Leanne’s wide circle of friends included someone who had a connection to Crowe, and they suspect he spotted the crowd funder via their Twitter page.
“My daughter and I were just squealing! It was insane.”
Leanne, whose husband Dan, 47, works at Edelweiss, a company that provides support to independent bookshops and publishers, added she has “cried at every single donation from one pound to the £5,000 because we know people are struggling, and we’re struggling a bit as well”.
She said someone else whose house had burnt down six months ago had donated £100.
“She was homeless and yet she donated £100. It’s those things that are just mind-blowing.
“When the pandemic hit, we used all of our reserves to kind of keep going and trying to do what we could to support families, but unfortunately we borrowed a lot of money when we opened, so we’ve had to jump over hurdle after hurdle.”
Ms Fridd admitted while the £15,000 will not sort all the shop’s financial woes “it will allow us to pay an extra member of staff, but mostly it will just mean that there is a little bit extra going in each month, so I am not scrabbling around worrying ‘am I going to be able to pay this bill?'”.
She said it would also give the shop “time to breathe and explore and do things that we really believe in”, including giving books to children who would not otherwise have access through its Dorothy Amery Readers Awards program and running outreach sessions in rural communities.
The ‘magic’ of bookshops
“When we opened the shop, I don’t think I fully appreciated how much of a part of people’s lives we’d become. You are people’s agony aunt, their shoulder to cry on, their support.
“People come into bookshops often looking for help, looking for answers.
“We have so many different conversations – we can go from someone who’s been dealing with grief to someone who’s having a joyous event, we can celebrate kids who’ve won a reading competition, and we really feel part of the community.
“This shows the magic of bookshops and how good and kind people are. It’s not all bleak out there, we need to remember that, especially at the moment.”
Russell Crowe’s representatives have been contacted for a comment.
Leanne said she had been able, through her friend network, to get a message of thanks to the actor.