Lots to crowe about…

But it is with The Insider, as Jeffrey Wigand, the big tobacco whistle-blower, a role which got him an Oscar nomination, that Crowe came of age. When director Michael Mann approached him first with the idea of playing a flabby middle-aged scientist, Crowe told him that there were many 50-year-old actors who fit the bill. "And he just put his hand on my chest and said `I am not talking to you because of your age, I’m talking to you because of what you have in here’, and I thought that was pretty damn cool," the actor recollects.

But then he got so much into that role, that when Ridley Scott approached him for Gladiator on the sets of The Insider, he actually hesitated to take up the role. However, once he agreed to play the role of Maximus, Crowe had his work cut out for him. First, he had to lose those 38 pounds of flab he put on to look the part of Wigand. But Crowe managed, as he is obsessed about physically inhabiting his characters. He went on a week-long motorcycle ride across Australia leading 10 men to get to know the character of Maximus better. Says Connie Nielson who played Lucilla, his duplicitous love interest in the movie, "He changes even the way he walks. I saw The Insider after we finished the shoot, and I was shocked".

But it was worth it, the actor insists. "All the hard work, late nights, heavy weeks and no rest between fight sequences… When I saw the film, all of that meant nothing. I’ve never had that much fun watching a movie I’m in." For someone who started acting at the age of six and at 39 has more than 20 movies to his credit, each of them with much appreciated roles, that is saying a lot.

Crowe, born on April 7, 1964 in New Zealand become an Australian at the age of four. His parents were set caterers which became an ideal setting for little Russel to develop a love for acting. After doing bit parts in a number of child extra roles, he formed his own rock band at the age of 16 with the money saved from his jobs as a waiter and bartender among other things. His band was called Roman Antix and he went by the name of Russ Le Rock. The band was eventually renamed 30 Odd Foot of Grunts and Crowe still plays for it when he can. He even recorded a single, I want to be like Marlon Brando in 1980.

He toured Australia and New Zealand with a theatre company and logged in 416 performances of the TV series, Rocky Horror Show. By 19, he was acting in musicals. He won the Australian Film Institute’s Best Supporting Actor prize for Proof in 1992. And then came Romper Stomper which won him AFI’s Best Actor Award (1993). This also helped open doors to Hollywood through Sharon Stone, who brought him in to star opposite her in The Quick and the Dead. Stone says that she saw in Crowe an old-fashioned macho quality that is rare among the more refined actors of his generation. "He has a grit and luminosity at the same time".

Crowe claims that his bad boy image was cultivated by the press and explains his alterable temperament in terms of work ethic. "I’m work obsessed. If people take the job seriously, then there is no problem. And I mean taking the job seriously, not taking myself seriously. It’s not arrogance, it’s honesty."

He is also honest about his preference to the Australian backwoods over the bright lights of Los Angeles. He is passionate about his 560-acre cattle farm seven hours north of Sydney, where he lives with his parents, his brother Terry and a pack of dogs, horses and cows. In one interview, when asked about being heart broken, he admitted that the death of a cow "really knocked me out".

Crowe’s honesty is refreshing and he prefers the same from those around him. He says, "In Australia, your mates are your mates and folks who hate your guts don’t change their minds." But for all his honesty, there is precious little known about his romantic life. Lately, however, he has been seen around Meg Ryan, and is even supposed to have taken her to his farm to meet his parents.