Russell Crowe

Russell Ira Crowe (born 7 April 1964) is an actor and film director. His work on screen has earned him various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a British Academy Film Award. Known for his intense performances, his films have grossed over $5.3 billion worldwide.

Crowe was born in New Zealand, moving to Australia at the age of four and residing there permanently by the age of 21. He began acting in Australia and had his break-out role in Romper Stomper (1992). He gained international recognition in the late 1990s for his starring roles in L.A. Confidential (1997) and The Insider (1999). Crowe gained wider stardom for playing the title role of Gladiator (2000), which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Further acclaim came for portraying real-life mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. in A Beautiful Mind (2001).

Other films he starred in include Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Cinderella Man (2005), 3:10 to Yuma (2007), American Gangster (2007), Robin Hood (2010), Les Misérables (2012), Man of Steel (2013), Noah (2014), The Nice Guys (2016) Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), and The Pope's Exorcist (2023). In 2014, he made his directorial debut with the drama The Water Diviner, in which he also starred. Aside from acting, Crowe has been the co-owner of the National Rugby League (NRL) team South Sydney Rabbitohs since 2006.

Crowe was born in Strathmore Park, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, on 7 April 1964, the son of film set caterers Jocelyn Yvonne (née Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe. John also managed a hotel. Jocelyn's father, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer who was awarded an MBE for filming footage of World War II as a member of the New Zealand Film Unit. Crowe is Māori and identifies with Ngāti Porou through a maternal great-great-grandmother. John's father, John Doubleday Crowe, was a Welshman from Wrexham, while another of Crowe's grandparents was Scottish. Crowe's other ancestry includes English, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish. He is a cousin of former New Zealand national cricket captains Martin and Jeff Crowe and the nephew of cricketer Dave Crowe.

At the age of four, Crowe moved to Australia with his family, settling in Sydney, where John and Jocelyn pursued their career in film set catering. Jocelyn's godfather was the producer of the Australian television series Spyforce, and Crowe was hired for a line of dialogue in one episode of the series at the age of five or six, opposite series star Jack Thompson. Later, in 1994, Thompson would play the supportive father of Crowe's gay character in the film The Sum of Us. Crowe also appeared briefly in the series The Young Doctors. In Australia, he was educated at Vaucluse Public School and Sydney Boys High School before moving back to New Zealand with his family in 1978. He continued his secondary education at a private Auckland school before leaving school at the age of 16 to pursue his acting ambitions.

Under guidance from his good friend Tom Sharplin, Crowe began his performing career as a musician in the early 1980s performing under the stage name "Russ Le Roq". He released several New Zealand singles, including "I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando", "Pier 13", and "Shattered Glass", none of which charted. He managed an Auckland music venue called "The Venue" in 1984. When he was 18, he was featured in A Very Special Person..., a promotional video for the theology/ministry course at Avondale University, a Seventh-day Adventist tertiary education provider in New South Wales, Australia.

In 1985, Crowe left New Zealand and returned to Australia when he was 21, intending to apply to the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He said, "I was working in a theatre show, and talked to a guy who was then the head of technical support at NIDA. I asked him what he thought about me spending three years at NIDA. He told me it'd be a waste of time. He said, 'You already do the things you go there to learn, and you've been doing it for most of your life, so there's nothing to teach you but bad habits.'" 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. He played the role of Eddie/Dr Scott. He repeated this performance in a further Australian production of the show, which also toured New Zealand. In 1987, Crowe spent six months busking when he could not find other work. In the 1988 Australian production of Blood Brothers, Crowe played the role of Mickey. He was also cast again by Daniel Abineri in the role of Johnny, in the stage musical Bad Boy Johnny and the Prophets of Doom in 1989.

After appearing in the TV series Neighbours and Living with the Law, Crowe was cast by Faith Martin in his first film, The Crossing (1990), a small-town love triangle directed by George Ogilvie. Before production started, a film-student protégé of Ogilvie, Steve Wallace, hired Crowe for the 1990 film Blood Oath (aka Prisoners of the Sun), which was released a month earlier than The Crossing, although actually filmed later. In 1992, Crowe starred in the first episode of the second series of Police Rescue. Also 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 and co-starring Jacqueline McKenzie. For the role, Crowe won an Australian Film Institute (AFI) award for Best Actor, following up from his Best Supporting Actor award for Proof in 1991. 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.