Interesting facts about Russell Crowe

russell crowe

Russell Crowe is New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician.

His full name is Russell Ira Crowe.

He was born on 7 April 1964 in Wellington, New Zealand.

His father, John Alexander Crowe was film set cater and managed a hotel and his mother, Jocelyn Yvonne (née Wemyss) was also film set cater.

Russell an older brother named Terry.

Crowe’s ancestry includes English, German, Irish, Maori, Italian, Norwegian, Scottish, Swedish and Welsh.

When Crowe was four years old, his family moved to Sydney, Australia, where his parents pursued a career in set catering.

He made his acting debut at age six on Australian television in the wartime spy adventure series Spyforce. It was the first of his many small parts as a child actor.

Crowe dropped out of high school to pursue acting and music career.

russell crowe young

After returning to New Zealand in the late 1970s, Crowe cofounded 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 1980s he returned to Australia to pursue his acting career.

From 1986 to 1988, he was given his first professional role by director Daniel Abineri, in a New Zealand production of The Rocky Horror Show.

In 1990 Crowe started a film career, appearing in the war drama Blood Oath (aka Prisoners of the Sun) and The Crossing, a drama centred on a romantic triangle.

prisoners of the sun

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).

In 1992, Crowe starred in Romper Stomper, an Australian film which followed the exploits and downfall of a racist skinhead group in blue-collar suburban Melbourne, directed by Geoffrey Wright. For the role, Crowe won an Australian Film Institute (AFI) award for Best Actor.

romper stomper

After initial success in Australia, Crowe starred in a Canadian production in 1993, For the Moment.

His next role was as a gay plumber living with his widowed father in The Sum of Us (1994).

He co-starred with Denzel Washington in Virtuosity and with Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead in 1995.

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 story line to help produce a commercial and critical hit.

l.a. confidential

Crowe appeared as the tobacco firm whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand in the 1999 film The Insider, for which he received five awards as best actor and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

He achieved even more success and awards for his performances in Gladiator (2000). His commanding performance, as Maximus, a Roman general-turned-gladiator earned him 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.

gladiator

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 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 2005, he re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for Cinderella Man. 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.

In 2006, he re-teamed with Gladiator director Ridley Scott for the comedy drama film A Good Year.

Than he played an outlaw in the western 3:10 to Yuma (2007).

Crowe re-teamed again with director Ridley Scott for American Gangster (2007) co-starring once more with Denzel Washington and the CIA thriller Body of Lies (2008).

Than he appered in the political thriller film 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 fifth collaboration with Ridley Scott.

robin hood

Crowe starred in the 2010 Paul Haggis film The Next Three Days, an adaptation of the 2008 French film Pour Elle.

In The Man with the Iron Fists (2012), an 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’s next major roles came in 2013 with the winter release of Broken City, in which he portrayed a mayor up for reelection. Also in 2013 Crowe portrayed Superman’s biological father, Jor-El, in the Christopher Nolan produced Superman film, Man of Steel.

In June 2013, Crowe signed to make his directional debut with an historical drama film The Water Diviner, which he also starred in.

the water diviner

In 2014, he played a gangster in the film adaptation of Mark Helprin’s 1983 novel Winter’s Tale, and the title role in the Darren Arnofsky film Noah.

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.

In 2017 Crowe starred as Dr. Henry Jekyll in the action horror film The Mummy.

Crowe’s work has earned him several accolades during his career and 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.

Crowe was awarded the (Australian) Centenary Medal in 2001 for “service to Australian society and Australian film production.”

Russell Crowe has an estimated net worth of $95 million.

russell-crowe-2

Crowe got married to Australian singer Danielle Spencer in 2003, after having an on and off relationship with her since 1989. The couple has two sons together: Charles Spencer Crowe (born 2003) and Tennyson Spencer Crowe (born 2006). In 2012, it was reported that Crowe and Spencer had separated.

Crowe resides in Australia. In 2011, Crowe and his family moved to a house in Sydney’s Rose Bay.

Crowe is the co-owner of the South Sydney Rabbitohs, an Australian National Rugby League team.

south sydney rabbitohs

He lost his front tooth playing rugby when he was ten. Never got it fixed until, at the insistence of the director for The Crossing (1990), who paid for it out of his own pocket.

In the 1980s, Crowe, going under the name of “Russ le Roq”, recorded a song titled “I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando”.

After filming Gladiator, he and some friends took a 6,500-kilometer (4,000-mile) motorcycle trip around Australia.

He took violin lessons in preparing for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) because his character, Jack Aubrey, played the violin several times during the movie.

Crowe dislocated his shoulder while training for his upcoming boxing movie, Cinderella Man (2005). The injury delayed filming for two months.

He gained 29 kilograms (63 pounds) for his role in Body of Lies (2008).

On 9 March 2005, Crowe revealed to GQ magazine that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents had approached him prior to the 73rd Academy Awards in March 2001, and told him that the terrorist group al-Qaeda wanted to kidnap him. Crowe told the magazine that it was the first time he had ever heard of al-Qaeda.

In 2015 it was reported that Crowe had applied for Australian citizenship in 2006 and again in 2013
but was rejected because he failed to fulfill the residency requirements. However, Australia’s Immigration Department said it had no record of any such application by Crowe.