Russell Crowe, the actor with a combustible mix of temper, bad-boy image and a new film to promote, was arrested in a SoHo hotel yesterday morning after striking a desk clerk with a telephone because he could not get a call through to his wife in Australia, the police said.

The attack occurred shortly after 4 a.m. in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel, the police said. Mr. Crowe was staying in a $3,000-a-night suite, and, unable to place a call to his wife, went to the lobby and threw the telephone at an employee behind the desk, cutting him below the right eye, the police said.

The police were called, statements were taken, handcuffs were closed upon celebrity wrists, and a media frenzy washed into Lower Manhattan, with reporters on the street and hovering in helicopters outside the hotel and the First Precinct station house until Mr. Crowe's court appearance at noon.

The injured employee was identified as Nestor Estrada, 28, who lives in a building with a broken buzzer and peeling paint on Metropolitan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The cut under his eye did not require stitches, said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman. The police arrived at the hotel at 4:21 a.m. and found Mr. Crowe, 41, both sober and cooperative, Mr. Browne said. He was taken the short distance to the station house in TriBeCa and placed in a holding cell at 5:09 a.m., the police said. He was the precinct's sole prisoner.