About Russell Crowe
Russell Ira Crowe is an actor. He was born in New Zealand, spending 10 years of his childhood in Australia and residing there permanently by age 21. His work on screen has earned him various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a British Academy Film Award.
Crowe began acting in Australia and had his breakout role in the drama Romper Stomper . He gained international recognition for his starring roles as a police detective in the thriller L.A. Confidential and Jeffrey Wigand in the drama The Insider . Crowe gained wider stardom for playing the title role in the period film Gladiator , winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. Further acclaim came for portraying mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. in the biopic A Beautiful Mind . He then starred in the war film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World , the sports drama Cinderella Man , the Western 3:10 to Yuma , the crime drama American Gangster , the thriller State of Play , and the action film Robin Hood .
Crowe has since appeared as Javert in the musical Les Misérables , Jor-El in the superhero film Man of Steel , Noah in the biblical drama Noah , and Zeus in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thor: Love and Thunder . In 2014, he made his directorial debut with the drama The Water Diviner, in which he also starred. He has been the co-owner of the National Rugby League 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 and John Alexander Crowe. His father also managed a hotel. His maternal grandfather, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer who was appointed 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 one of his maternal great-great-grandmothers. His paternal grandfather, John Doubleday Crowe, was a Welsh man from Wrexham, while another of his grandparents was Scottish. His 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. Through his paternal grandmother, he is a direct descendant of Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, the last man to be beheaded in Britain.
When Crowe was four years old, his family moved to Australia and settled in Sydney, where his parents pursued their career in film set catering. His mother's godfather was the producer of the Australian TV series Spyforce, and Crowe was hired for a line of dialogue in one episode of the series at age five or six, opposite series star Jack Thompson. Later, in 1994, Thompson would play the supportive father of Crowe's gay character in The Sum of Us. Crowe also appeared briefly in the serial The Young Doctors. In Australia, he was educated at Vaucluse Public School and Sydney Boys High School, before his family moved back to New Zealand in 1978 when he was 14. He continued his secondary education at Auckland Grammar School, with his cousins and brother Terry, and Mount Roskill Grammar 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.
Map & Directions To Venue
