Actors - Russell Crowe

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	Actors - Russell Crowe

Russell Ira Crowe (born April 7, 1964) is an Oscar-winning New Zealand-Australian film actor.

Early life and career

Crowe was born in Wellington, New Zealand, of Welsh, Scottish, Norwegian and Māori descent. When he was four years old, his family moved to Australia, where his parents pursued a career in filmset catering. His maternal grandfather, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer whom Crowe says produced the first film by New Zealander Geoff Murphy. The producer of the Australian TV series Spyforce was his mother's godfather, and Crowe at age five or six was hired for a line of dialogue in one episode, opposite series star Jack Thompson, whom years later played Crowe's father in The Sum of Us
.

Crowe attended Sydney Boys High School. When he was 14, his family moved back to New Zealand, where he attended the Auckland Grammar School. He did not complete secondary school, leaving early to help his family financially. Crowe returned to Australia at age 21, intending to apply to the National Institute of Dramatic Art. "I was working in a theater show, and talked to a guy who was then the head of technical support at NIDA," Crowe recalled. "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.'".

After appearing in the TV series Neighbours and Living with the Law, Crowe was cast in his first film, The Crossing (1990), a small-town love triangle directed by George Ogilvie. Before production started, a film-student protege of Ogilvie's, Steve Wallace, hired Crowe for the film "Blood Oath," a.k.a. "Prisoners of the Sun" (1990), which was released a month earlier, although actually filmed later.

Hollywood

After initial success in Australia, Crowe began acting in American films. A three-time Oscar nominee, he won the Academy Award as Best Actor in 2001 for Gladiator. Crowe wore his grandfather Stan Wemyss's Member of the Order of the British Empire medal to the ceremony.

Crowe received three consecutive best actor Oscar nominations for The Insider
, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind
. All three films were also nominated for best picture. Within the six year stretch from 1997-2003, he also starred in two other best picture nominees, LA Confidential and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
, though he was nominated for neither.

On March 9, 2005, Crowe revealed to GQ magazine that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had approached him prior to the 73rd Academy Awards on March 25, 2001 and told him that the Islamist 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 (the September 11 attacks took place later that year) and was quoted as saying:

:"You get this late-night call from the FBI when you arrive in Los Angeles, and they're, like, absolutely full-on. 'We’ve got to talk to you now before you do anything. We have to have a discussion with you, Mr. Crowe.'" Crowe recalled that "it was something to do with some recording picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in either Libya or Algiers...it was about taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as a sort of cultural-destabilization plan."

Crowe was guarded by Secret Service agents for the next few months, both while shooting films and at award ceremonies (Scotland Yard also guarded Crowe while he was promoting Proof of Life
in London in February 2001). Crowe said that he "never fully understood what the fuck was going on." The FBI confirmed Crowe's statement (which is uncharacteristic of the agency in that it usually does not comment to the media).

Temperament

Crowe has a reputation for bad temper and a predilection for brawling. He won the Best Actor in the 2002 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards for his portrayal of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind
. During the presentation for his award, he planned to read a piece of poetry called Sanctity by Patrick Kavanagh but was cut short to fit in the BBC's tape-delayed broadcast. At the awards after party, he accosted producer Malcolm Gerrie. Crowe later apologised for his actions, but many believe this incident was responsible for depriving Crowe of the Oscar for Best Actor that year. A Beautiful Mind won four of the eight awards for which it was nominated, with the lone and conspicuous exception being Crowe's nomination for Best Actor. During the filming of A Beautiful Mind on the campus of Princeton University, he made an obscene gesture to a Princeton student whom he spotted photographing him, which raised a media stir.

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Actors - Russell Crowe

Early life and career

Hollywood

Temperament

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