A Gladiator Mind

With his galvanizing screen presence, charismatic gruff and evergreen looks, he is Hollywood’s leading man whose electric performances well overshadow his bad boy nature.

This Academy Award winner is openly indifferent to Hollywood but also renowned for his romantic exploits, awards show blowups and elusive personality.

He also dabbled in the music industry— in the mid 1980s, he was a member of the band ‘Roman Antix’, later renamed 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.

Childhood

Russell Ira Crowe was born on April 7, 1964 in Wellington. When Crowe was four years old, his family moved to Sydney and there his parents pursued a career in set catering.

His views on his early acting days were: “I was never a child star – I was a child extra. My parents were location caterers, so I was the annoying little kid on the set.”

 Crowe was educated at Sydney Boys High School. When he was 14, his family moved back to New Zealand where he attended Auckland Grammar School.  

He went on to continue his secondary education at Mount Roskill Grammar School, which he left at the age 16 to pursue his ambitions and childhood dreams of becoming an actor.

Career

Fancying himself as a bit of a musician, 16-year-old Crowe reinvented himself as ‘Russ Le Roc’, forming a rock group called Roman Antix in his spare time. ‘I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando’ was the title of the 1980 single Russ Le Roc recorded as a solo artist.

He returned to Australia in the early 1980s to pursue his acting career, winning a role in a production of the musical Grease in 1983.

His other early films included The Crossing (1990), which marked his first leading role.

His breakthrough roles showcased two very different sides of Crowe—in 1992’s ‘Proof’, he played a gentle, gullible dishwasher, earning an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Supporting Actor; he won the Best Actor statue the next year, for his turn as a brutal Nazi skinhead in the controversial film Romper Stomper.

Though many insiders pegged him as the “one to watch,” no one in America really paid attention to Crowe until his movie ‘LA Confidential’, the highly acclaimed 1997 neo-noir film came out.

Crowe’s simmering performance earned him rave reviews and a certain measure of recognition among American moviegoers.

As a break away from playing the tough men, Crowe was signed to play a sheriff in the Disney film ‘Mystery, Alaska’ in 1999, learning to ice skate especially for the part. 

In 2000, Crowe vaulted to A-list Hollywood stardom with his charismatic performance as a Roman general-turned-vengeful-slave in ‘Gladiator’.

Next year, Crowe starred in the biopic, ‘A Beautiful Mind’, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. 

Further recognition came for Crowe with ‘Good Year’ (2006), ‘American Gangster’ (2007), ‘Body of Lies’ (2008) and ‘State of Play’ (2009).

His latest high-profile roles include ‘Les Miserables’ (2012), ‘Man Of Steel’ (2013) and ‘Noah’ (2014).

Controversy

Between 1999 and 2005 Crowe was involved in four altercations which gave him a reputation for having a bad temper.

In 2005, Crowe was arrested and charged with second-degree assault by New York City police, after he threw a telephone at an employee of the Mercer Hotel.

Personal Life

Crowe began an on-again, off-again relationship with Australian singer Danielle Spencer in 1989. The couple reconciled in 2001 and got married two years later. They have two sons.

In 2012, it was reported that the couple had separated.

News broke in the spring of 2001 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had launched an investigation into a rumored plot to kidnap Crowe. He attended the January Golden Globes ceremony flanked by FBI agents in tuxedos, was guarded by Scotland Yard at the London premiere of Proof of Life in February, and reportedly increased his own personal security force as well.

Crowe has had a special love of horses and also has a fascination of old maps.