Russell Crowe, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Jennifer Connelly remember John Nash, inspiration for 'A Beautiful Mind'

On Saturday, Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash and his wife Alicia were killed in a car crash in New Jersey. Moments later, Russell Crowe, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Jennifer Connelly - who brought Nash’s inspiring story to the screen in A Beautiful Mind - sent their condolences to their family.

Nash, 86, and Alicia, 82, were in a taxi on the New Jersey Turnpike on Saturday when the driver lost control. Police believe that they were not wearing seatbelts at the time of the crash.

Nash was a brilliant mathematician who won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 for game theory. He struggled with paranoid schizophrenia and his long relationship with Alicia helped inspire director Howard and producer Grazer to turn his story into a film. The result was A Beautiful Mind, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar. The film won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for 2001. While Crowe lost the Best Actor Oscar, Connelly won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Alicia. It also won for Akiva Goldsman’s Adapted Screenplay.

“Their lives ended together in the same way that they lived,” Grazer said in a statement to Variety. “Theirs was a such a brilliant collaboration. Alicia was so powerful in enabling him to have his moments of triumph. His life was really hard. The beauty came from the power of their love to create those triumphs.”

Connolly sent a statement to JustJared, which reads, “This is a great loss. John and Alicia Nash were an inspiration and I have deep admiration for all that they accomplished in their lives. My thoughts are with their family.”

Crowe and Howard sent their condolences on Twitter.