Born: April 7, 1964 - Wellington, North Island, New Zealand 
Though perhaps best-known internationally
for playing tough-guy roles in Romper Stomper (1993), L.A. Confidential
(1997), and Gladiator (2000), New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe has
proven himself equally capable of playing gentler roles in films such
as Proof (1991) and The Sum of Us (1992). No matter what kind of characters
he plays, Crowe's weather-beaten handsomeness and gruff charisma combine
to make him constantly watchable: his one-time Hollywood mentor Sharon
Stone has called him "the sexiest guy working in movies today."
Born in Auckland, New Zealand, on April 7, 1964,
Crowe was raised in Australia from the age of four. His parents made their
living by catering movie shoots, and often brought Crowe with them to
work; it was while hanging around the various sets that he developed a
passion for acting. After making his professional debut in an episode
of the television series Spyforce when he was six, Crowe took a 12-year
break from professional acting, netting his next gig when he was 18. In
film, he had his first major roles in such dramas as The Crossing (1990)
and Jocelyn Moorhouse's widely praised Proof (1991) (for which he won
an Australian Film Institute award). He then went on to gain international
recognition for his intense, multi-layered portrayal of a Melbourne skinhead
in Geoffrey Wright's controversial Romper Stomper (1992), winning another
AFI award, as well as an Australian Film Critics award.
It was Sharon Stone who helped bring Crowe to Hollywood
to play a gunfighter-turned-preacher opposite her in Sam Raimi's The Quick
and the Dead (1995). Though the film was not a huge box-office success,
it did open Hollywood doors for Crowe, who subsequently split his time
between the U.S. and Australia. In 1997, the actor had his largest success
to date playing volatile cop Bud White in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential
(1997). Following the praise surrounding both the film and his performance
in it, Crowe found himself working steadily in Hollywood, starring in
two films released in 1999: Mystery, Alaska and The Insider. In the latter,
he gave an Oscar-nominated lead performance as Jeffrey Wigand, a real-life
tobacco industry employee whose personal life was dragged through the
mud when he chose to blow the whistle on his former company's questionable
business practices.
In 2000, however, Crowe finally crossed over into
the public's consciousness with, literally, a tour de force performance
in Ridley Scott's glossy Roman epic Gladiator. The Dreamworks/Universal
co-production was a major gamble from the outset, devoting more than 100
million dollars to an unfinished script (involving the efforts of at least
half a dozen writers), an untested star (stepping into a role originally
intended for Mel Gibson), and an all-but-dead genre (the sword-and-sandals
adventure). Thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign and mostly positive
notices, however, the public turned out in droves the first weekend of
the film's release, and kept coming back long into the summer for Gladiator's
potent blend of action, grandeur, and melodrama -- all anchored by Crowe's
passionate man-of-few-words performance.
Anticipation was high, then, for the actor's second
2000 showing, the hostage drama Proof of Life. Despite -- or perhaps because
of -- the widely publicized affair between Crowe and his co-star Meg Ryan,
the film failed to generate much heat during the holiday box-office season,
and attention turned once again to the actor's star-making role some six
months prior. In an Oscar year devoid of conventionally spectacular epics,
Gladiator netted 12 nominations in February 2001, including one for its
lead performer. While many wags viewed the film's eventual Best Picture
victory as a fluke, the same could not be said for Crowe's Best Actor
victory: nudging past such stiff competition as Tom Hanks and Ed Harris,
Crowe finally nabbed a statue, affirming for Hollywood the talent that
critics had first noticed almost ten years earlier.
Crowe's 2001 role as real-life Nobel Prize-winning
schizophrenic mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. brought the actor back
into the Oscar arena. Directed by Ron Howard and co-starring Jennifer
Connelly, A Beautiful Mind was criticized for omitting the more sordid
and unsightly details of Nash's troubled marriage and decent into mental
illness. Still, Crowe's sensitive portrayal, coupled with Howard's assured
direction, put the actor back on the mountain of fame that he had previously
conquered with Gladiator. A Beautiful Mind quickly vaulted past the 100-million-dollar
mark as it took home Golden Globes for Best Picture, Supporting Actress,
Screenplay, and Actor and racked up eight Oscar nominations, including
a Best Actor nod for Crowe.
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