Russell Crowe as a ten-year-old cricketer in Auckland, New Zealand
Gallery of Russell Crowe
Auckland, New Zealand
Russell Crowe in his childhood in Auckland, New Zealand
College/University
Career
Gallery of Russell Crowe
1986
New Zealand
Russell Crowe, performing in the band Roman Antix in New Zealand before coming back to Australia, aged 21.
Gallery of Russell Crowe
Music band Russ le Roq and The Romantics. From left to right: Graham Silcock, Russell Crowe, Ken Chung and Patrick Roxburgh.
Gallery of Russell Crowe
1990
Russell Crowe and Danielle Spencer in "The Crossing".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
1992
Russell Crowe and Daniel Pollock in "Romper Stomper".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
1993
Russell Crowe and Christianne Hirt in "For the Moment".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
1997
Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell and Guy Pearce in "L.A. Confidential'.
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2000
Russell Crowe in "Gladiator".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2000
Russell Crowe and Sven-Ole Thorsen in "Gladiator".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2000
Russell Crowe, Djimon Hounsou and Ralf Moeller in "Gladiator".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2001
Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2003
Russell Crowe in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2005
Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti in "Cinderella Man".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2008
Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in "Body of Lies".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2008
Russell Crowe in "Body of Lies".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2010
Russell Crowe, Alan Doyle, Kevin Durand and Scott Grimes in "Robin Hood".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2010
Russell Crowe in "Robin Hood".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2012
Russell Crowe in "Les Misérables".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2012
Russell Crowe in "Les Misérables".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2013
Russell Crowe in "Man of Steel".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2013
Russell Crowe and Allen Hughes in "Broken City".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2014
Russell Crowe in "Noah".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2014
Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly in "Noah".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2014
Russell Crowe in "Winter's Tale".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2014
Russell Crowe and Ryan Corr in "The Water Diviner".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2015
Russell Crowe and Kylie Rogers in "Fathers & Daughters".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2016
Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in "The Nice Guys".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2016
Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in "The Nice Guys".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2016
Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in "The Nice Guys".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2017
Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise in "The Mummy".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2017
Russell Crowe in "The Mummy".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2018
Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman in "Boy Erased".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2019
Russell Crowe in "True History of the Kelly Gang".
Gallery of Russell Crowe
2019
Russell Crowe in "The Loudest Voice".
Achievements
2010
Hollywood, California, United States
Russell Crowe holds his Hollywood Walk of Fame Star.
Membership
Awards
Academy Award
2001
Los Angeles, California, United States
Russell Crowe poses with his Oscar for best actor for his work in "Gladiator" at the 73rd annual Academy Awards on March 25, 2001.
BAFTA Awards
2002
22-24 Leicester Square, West End, London WC2H 7LQ, United Kingdom
Russell Crowe holds his BAFTA Award.
Golden Globe Awards
2002
Beverly Hills, California, United States
Russell Crowe, pictured at the 59th Annual Golden Globe Awards.
Walk of Fame
2010
Hollywood, California, United States
Russell Crowe poses with his star, the 2,404th, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, during a ceremony Monday in Hollywood. He was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 12, 2010.
Russell Crowe poses with his star, the 2,404th, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, during a ceremony Monday in Hollywood. He was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on April 12, 2010.
Edwin Flack Ave, Sydney Olympic Park NSW 2127, Australia
Russell Crowe watches on during the warm-up before the NRL Preliminary Final match between the Canterbury Bulldogs and the South Sydney Rabbitohs at ANZ Stadium on September 22, 2012 in Sydney, Australia.
(A mother tells her daughter a fable about the prince of t...)
A mother tells her daughter a fable about the prince of the brumbies, brumby being a term for the feral horses of Australia, who must find its place among its kind, while one man makes it his mission to capture it and tame it.
(When a virtual reality simulation, created, using the per...)
When a virtual reality simulation, created, using the personalities of multiple serial killers, manages to escape into the real world, an ex-cop is tasked with stopping its reign of terror.
(When an op goes wrong and FBI agent Zack's partner dies, ...)
When an op goes wrong and FBI agent Zack's partner dies, his search for the one responsible takes him to a yakuza in Japan. A mob boss wants revenge for his son's death and Zack's his target.
(Russell Crow stars with Salma Hayek in the passionate sto...)
Russell Crow stars with Salma Hayek in the passionate story of two lovers, swept up in an intense relationship, a man and a woman, who cannot live with - or without - each other in "Breaking Up".
(Alice hires a professional negotiator to obtain the relea...)
Alice hires a professional negotiator to obtain the release of her engineer husband, who has been kidnapped by anti-government guerrillas in South America.
(During the Napoleonic Wars, a brash British captain pushe...)
During the Napoleonic Wars, a brash British captain pushes his ship and crew to their limits in pursuit of a formidable French war vessel around South America.
(A small-time rancher agrees to hold a captured outlaw, wh...)
A small-time rancher agrees to hold a captured outlaw, who's awaiting a train to go to court in Yuma. A battle of wills ensues as the outlaw tries to psych out the rancher.
(When a congressional aide is killed, a Washington, D.C. j...)
When a congressional aide is killed, a Washington, D.C. journalist starts investigating the case, involving the Representative, his old college friend.
(In twelfth century England, Robin Longstride (Russell Cro...)
In twelfth century England, Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown, that will forever alter the balance of world power.
(In 19th-century France, Jean Valjean, who for decades has...)
In 19th-century France, Jean Valjean, who for decades has been hunted by the ruthless policeman Javert after breaking parole, agrees to care for a factory worker's daughter. The decision changes their lives forever.
(In a city, rife with injustice, ex-cop Billy Taggart seek...)
In a city, rife with injustice, ex-cop Billy Taggart seeks redemption and revenge after being double-crossed and then framed by its most powerful figure: Mayor Nicholas Hostetler.
(A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower a...)
A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.
Russell Crowe is a New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician. He gained prominence for his loyalty, intensity, as well as good looks. It was the role as the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the historical film "Gladiator" (2000), that brought him international attention and numerous prestigious awards and nominations.
Background
Ethnicity:
Crowe's paternal grandfather, John Doubleday Crowe, was from Wrexham, Wales, while one of Crowe's maternal great-great-grandmothers was Māori. Crowe also has English, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Scottish, Swedish, and Welsh ancestry.
Crowe was born on 7 April 1964, in the Wellington suburb of Strathmore Park, the son of Jocelyn Yvonne (née Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe, both of whom were film set caterers; his father also managed a hotel. Crowe's maternal grandfather, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer who was named an MBE for filming footage of World War II. He is a cousin of former New Zealand cricket captains Martin Crowe and Jeff Crowe, and nephew of cricketer Dave Crowe. Russell has built a cricket field named for his uncle.
When Crowe was four years old, his family moved to Sydney, Australia, where his parents pursued a career in set catering. The producer of the Australian TV series Spyforce was his mother's godfather, and Crowe (at age five or six) was hired for a line of dialogue in one episode, opposite series star Jack Thompson (in 1994 Thompson played the father of Crowe's character in The Sum of Us). Crowe also appeared briefly in the serial The Young Doctors.
Education
Crowe was educated at Vaucluse Public School but later moved to Sydney Boys High School. When he was 14, his family moved back to New Zealand where, along with his brother Terry, he attended Auckland Grammar School with cousins Martin Crowe and Jeff Crowe. He then continued his secondary education at Mount Roskill Grammar School, but he soon dropped out to pursue acting professionally. At 21, Crowe returned to Australia to study at National Institute of Dramatic Art but later dropped the idea.
After returning to New Zealand in the late 1970s, Crowe co-founded the rock band Roman Antix, serving as songwriter, guitarist, and lead singer; the group later re-formed as 30 Odd Foot of Grunts and released three full-length albums before disbanding in 2005. Some of the band’s members joined his newer venture, Russell Crowe & the Ordinary Fear of God. In the mid-1980s Crowe began performing in musicals, and from 1986 to 1988 he toured with The Rocky Horror Picture Show as the cross-dressing Dr. Frank N. Furter.
In 1990 Crowe started a film career, appearing in the war drama Prisoners of the Sun and The Crossing, a drama centered on a romantic triangle. In these early efforts, he displayed an innate ability to inhabit the characters he portrayed and for his next film, Proof (1991), received a best supporting actor award from the Australian Film Institute (AFI). Crowe’s career reached a turning point with Romper Stomper (1992), in which he played a menacing neo-Nazi. His performance earned him an AFI best actor award and attracted the attention of Hollywood. After starring as a gay man searching for love in The Sum of Us (1994), Crowe appeared in his first American film, the western The Quick and the Dead (1995). It had little success at the box office, however, as did a series of Hollywood films that followed.
Only with the role of Bud White, a brutish but vulnerable policeman, in the 1950s crime drama L.A. Confidential (1997) did Crowe’s gift for complex performance combine with a well-written storyline to help produce a commercial and critical hit. He acted in a number of films in the late 1990s, earning an Academy Award nomination for his role as tobacco-industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider (1999). Two years later he took the academy’s best actor award for his role as Maximus, a Roman general-turned-gladiator in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. His commanding performance, which blended scenes of yearning love with those of brutal physical violence, helped make the epic one of the highest-grossing films of 2000. He won a third nomination for the best actor award with his starring role in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the story of John Forbes Nash, a real-life Nobel Prize-winning mathematician suffering from schizophrenia.
Crowe also earned critical approval as Captain Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), a seafaring epic based on the fiction series by Patrick O’Brian. In Cinderella Man (2005) he played real-life boxer James J. Braddock, who staged a timely comeback to help his family out of financial hardship during the Great Depression. After portraying an outlaw in the western 3:10 to Yuma (2007), Crowe starred as an honest policeman working in a corrupt department who tries to bring a drug lord (played by Denzel Washington) to justice in American Gangster (2007). He subsequently appeared in the CIA thriller Body of Lies (2008) and State of Play (2009), in which he played an investigative reporter.
In 2010 Crowe portrayed the titular outlaw hero in the action drama Robin Hood—his fourth collaboration with Scott—and starred as a mild-mannered man attempting to free his wife from prison in the thriller The Next Three Days. In The Man with the Iron Fists (2012), a homage to kung fu movies, he played a roguish English soldier in feudal China, and in the musical Les Misérables (2012) he performed the role of the determined police inspector Javert. Crowe subsequently appeared as a corrupt New York City mayor in the crime drama Broken City (2013); as Superman’s father, Jor-El, in Man of Steel (2013); as a New York crime boss in the fantasy Winter’s Tale (2014); and as the titular biblical figure in Noah (2014). In 2016 Crowe and Ryan Gosling portrayed a pair of seedy private investigators looking into the death of a pornographic actress in the dark comedy The Nice Guys. The following year Crowe starred as Dr. Henry Jekyll in the action-horror film The Mummy.
Crowe moved into feature-film directing with The Water Diviner (2014), in which he starred as a father attempting to locate his sons, who he believes were killed in the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I. Crowe had previously co-directed the documentary Texas (2002), about 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.
Russell Crowe came to international attention for his role as the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 historical epic film Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, for which Crowe won an Academy Award for Best Actor, a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, an Empire Award for Best Actor and a London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and 10 further nominations for best actor. In 2001, Crowe's portrayal of mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John F. Nash in the biopic A Beautiful Mind brought him numerous awards, including a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.
Crowe's work has earned him several accolades during his career including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three consecutive Academy Award nominations (1999–2001), one Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, one BAFTA, and an Academy Award.
At the beginning of 2009, despite not having Australian citizenship, Crowe appeared in a series of special edition postage stamps called "Legends of the Screen", featuring Australian actors.
(The story of James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe), a suppose...)
2005
Religion
Crowe stated in November 2007 that he would like to be baptized as a Christian and felt that he had put it off for too long. "I do believe there are more important things than what is in the mind of a man", he said. "There is something much bigger that drives us all. I'm willing to take that leap of faith."
Politics
In 2012 Crowe put up a fight for President Barack Obama on Twitter. "Villagers, I don't endorse politicians. Not my thing. However, Obama is the light & the future. Keep going towards the light. Put America first."
Views
During location filming of Cinderella Man, Crowe made a donation to a Jewish elementary school whose library had been damaged as a result of arson. A note with an anti-Semitic message had been left at the scene. Crowe called school officials to express his concern and wanted his message relayed to the students. The school's building fund received donations from throughout Canada and the amount of Crowe's donation was not disclosed.
On another occasion, Crowe donated $200,000 to a struggling primary school near his home in rural Australia. The money went towards an $800,000 project to construct a swimming pool at the school. Crowe's sympathies were sparked when a pupil drowned at the nearby Coffs Harbour beach in 2001, and he believes the pool will help students become better swimmers and improve their knowledge of water safety. At the opening ceremony he dove into the pool fully clothed as soon as the venue was declared open.
Quotations:
"People accuse me of being arrogant all the time. I'm not arrogant, I'm focused."
"I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated."
"I'm destined to be attracted to those I cannot defeat."
"There's nothing like sitting back and talking to your cows."
"The important thing to me is that I'm not driven by people's praise and I'm not slowed down by people's criticism. I'm just trying to work at the highest level I can."
Personality
In June 2010, Crowe, who had started smoking when he was 10, announced he had quit for the sake of his two sons. In November 2010, Crowe told David Letterman that he had been smoking more than 60 cigarettes a day for 36 years of his life, and that he had fallen off the wagon the previous night and smoked heavily.
Interests
Politicians
Barack Obama
Sport & Clubs
cricket; New Zealand's rugby union team, the All Blacks; the rugby league football team the South Sydney Rabbitohs
Connections
Crowe began an on-again, off-again relationship with Australian singer Danielle Spencer in 1989, when they co-starred in the 1990 film The Crossing. In 2000, Crowe was romantically involved with his co-star Meg Ryan while on the set of their film Proof of Life. Crowe and Spencer reconciled in 2001, and married in April 2003 (on Crowe's 39th birthday), at his cattle property in Nana Glen, New South Wales. They have two sons: Charles Spencer Crowe (born 21 December 2003) and Tennyson Spencer Crowe (born 7 July 2006). In October 2012, it was reported that Crowe and Spencer had separated. The divorce was finalized in April 2018.
Father:
John Alexander "Alex" Crowe
John was a hotel manager and television set caterer but is mostly known as the father of this famed actor.
Mother:
Jocelyn Yvonne Crowe
Brother:
Terry
Terry is the only sibling to Russell. He has been married to Melissa Crowe since May 4, 2002. He lives in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia.
ex-spouse:
Danielle Spencer
(b. 16 May 1969)
Danielle Spencer is an Australian actress, singer and songwriter.
Son:
Charles Spencer Crowe
(b. December 21, 2003)
Son:
Tennyson Spencer Crowe
(b. July 7, 2006)
Tennyson is the second son to the Hollywood star and is also the spitting image of his father. He lives with his brother and Aussie songwriter mom Sydney (where Russell lived till their 2012 split).
Friend:
Lloyd Carr
(b. July 30, 1945)
Lloyd Henry Carr Jr. is a former American football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at the University of Michigan from 1995 through the 2007 season.
References
Russell Crowe: The Unauthorized Biography
The Australian-bred Crowe has attracted controversy with his high-profile love affairs and his all-around eccentricity. This biography traces his career from rock 'n' roller to Hollywood star.
2003
Russell Crowe: The Biography
This new biography includes interviews with the star himself, his family, co-stars and colleagues, and will reveal the real man behind the cool facade.
2001
Russell Crowe: A Life in Stories
In this innovative biography of one of Hollywood's most recently crowned kings, Gabor H. Wylie gives Russell Crowe fans what they've been longing for - the stories, that make up a lifetime, little anecdotal gems, strung together like pearls on a necklace.
2001
Russell Crowe: Maverick with a Heart
Russell Crowe has been compared to Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. He demonstrates a versatility as an actor rarely seen among today's generation of Hollywood stars. This biography reveals the larger-than-life personality, that fuels both the fiercely dedicated actor and the Australian bad boy - a personality, that has taken Russell Crowe from a one-time rock'n roll wannabe Down Under to his status today as a true Hollywood superstar.
2005
Russell Crowe: The Biography
In this work, journalist and celebrity biographer Martin Howden goes back to the times Russell worked as a busker, bartender, fruit picker, bingo-number caller and insurance salesman before hitting the big time, and explores the truth behind his reputation for having one of the most volatile temperaments in show business.