He's rude, anti-social and arrogant. And he's proud of it. Russell Crowe plays the archetypal Tinseltown misfit to perfection. But a revealing new biography on the Oscar-winning actor suggests the attitude is more than just an act.

When Russell Crowe boarded a plane to try his luck in America almost a decade ago, it is doubtful that he understood just how perfectly he had timed his move. Certainly Aussie actors were de rigueur in Tinseltown at the time and Crowe was a talented performer with an impressive body of work behind him; but it was more than just that. Hollywood needed a bad boy and Crowe fitted the bill perfectly.

Bad boys are as much a part of Hollywood as air kisses and plastic surgery painful but necessary.

They have a certain cachet, they thumb their noses at an industry that takes itself way too seriously, they refuse to play by the rules. And, most importantly, the fans-male and-female-love'em for it. After all, it's much more interesting to read about an actor disgracing himself in public, or running off with someone else's wife (Crowe has done both), than it is to know that Brad Pitt's idea of a great night is watching a video with Jen after a home cooked dinner of tofu and lentil burgers.

But Hollywood hadn't produced a genuine misfit since Bruce Willis's remaining hair started to turning grey. So Crowe's arrogant confidence and disdain for just about everything LA, must have seemed like a gust of fresh wind.

And he set the tone early, leaving his first Hollywood party within minutes of arriving. Hardly a good career move for a virtually unknown actor, given that the gathering had been organised to introduce him to a few industry movers and shakers. Crowe's comment on the incident: "It was a very short party. I split. Hollywood parties are not my vibe. I'm into the more traditional Australian party; beer in the bathtub and you have a good sing."

As his star rose,Crowe continued in much the same "up yours" vein as he had started. Apparently he delights in smoking at meetings, a sin in health-obsessed LA, and worse, blowing the smoke into the faces of highly placed movie moguls.

Undoubtedly he gets away with his behavior because he is, of course, a prodigiously talented actor, equally at ease playing foes on a Roman battlefield, romancing some of Hollywood's most glamorous women (on screen and off) or playing a homosexual plumber looking for Mr. Right. As long as fans are willing to pay to see him in droves, studio bosses are prepared to put up with his, at times, offensive behavior. "I'm still the same arsehole I always was," he has remarked. "I don't feel any pressure to live up to anybody. Except myself."

It would be easy to assume fame and fortune have turned Crowe's head. But he was a rude, arrogant, egocentric pain in the butt long before he leftAustralia for Hollywood. And that's just how his friends describe him.

Part of it, of course, is Crowe's uncompromising commitment to perfection in his work, which he expects to be matched by everyone around him. Coupled with his unshakable self-confidence, its easy to understand why some might find him arrogant. But a strong work ethic doesn't fully explain the man. There is something else going on behind those hooded eyes, a barely constrained anger. A surliness that is at once very attractive and a bit scary. It's that indefinable quality that sorts the real bad boys from the pretenders.

So how did "a lovely little boy" (as one primary-school teacher remembers him) turn into the surly, rude, eat-my-shorts adult Crowe? A new biography on the actor by British journalists Tim Ewbank and Stafford Hildred reveals that the bad-boy attitude first emerged in his early teens as Crowe battled to escape from the shadow of his famous cricketing cousins, New Zealand's legendary Jeff and Martin Crowe.

Crowe was born in Wellington in 1964, the second son of Alex and Jocelyn. When Russell was four, the family moved to Sydney where his parents ran a film-set catering business. But when Crowe was 14 they moved back, taking over the running of Auckland's Albion Pub.

Crowe and his brother Terry were enrolled at Auckland Grammar School where their older cousins Jeff and Martin were already sporting heroes whose fame had spread beyond the school boundaries. Russell, much to his chagrin, became known as the "cousin of the cricketing Crowes". How this must have grated on a self-assured, cocky teenager.

Before returning to New Zealand, Crowe had attended Sydney Boys High School where he was a tough and flamboyant rugby player. But once back in New Zealand, he was confronted by the overwhelming expectation that he would follow his cousins into the sporting arena. But Russell had different ideas. He began a life-long habit of doing exactly the opposite of what others expected.

He shunned sport and announced he was going to be a rock star, forming a band and teaching himself guitar. He immediately became known as the "singing cousin of cricketing Crowes". It was enough to give anyone a bad attitude.

He left Auckland Grammar the following year and transferred to Mount Roskill Grammar. But still, he couldn't completely shake off his famous name. It was here that the deliberately crated bad-boy persona really took shape. As one teacher recalls, Crowe was into "image making". "A lot of the prescribed arrogance was a part of the image he was into image projecting".

At 17, Crowe quit school and went to work for an insurance company. Not surprisingly, he soon discovered that the job didn't suit his personality and instead became a DJ at a local club. Still keen to pursue his singing career, when his was 18, in one last bid to distance himself from his cousins, he changed his name to Russ le Roq. In le Roq - all black clothes, studied sneer and attitude - Crowe had found his alter-ego. But, like Russell Crowe, Russ le Roq couldn't really sing, play music or write songs.

Remarkably, le Roq recorded three single, all of which were abysmal failures. "I actually have two or three of the worst recordings in the history of the New Zealand music industry," says Crowe. "They all went rocketing straight to the bottom of the charts. I've got that whole bottom end covered".

But what le Roq lacked in musical talent, he more than made up for in performance. One night a couple of stage show producers caught his act and, on the strength of it, offered Crowe a part in a production of the Rocky Horror Show. He was 19, and had to admit that the fame and fortune he craved was not likely to come through music. He took the offer and acting became an all-consuming passion.

Crowe's fascination with film had its beginnings in his parents' involvement in the film industry and the hours he spent as a child with his
grandfather, Stan Wemyss, hanging around the little film theatre, complete with basement studios, that Stan ran with his wife. Wemyss, whose MBE Crowe wore when he won the best actor Oscar earlier this year, was a television pioneer and renowned war cameraman.

Later, in Australia, young Russell was a wide-eyed fixture on the sets where his parents worked. He would later credit this early exposure for taking away any fear he might have had when he first started serious acting.

Crowe made his acting debut at age five on the TV series Spyforce where his parents were working. Little Russell was hanging around and was roped into a scene. His star quality must have been obvious even then, or perhaps it was just the conspicuous South Sydney Rabbitohs jumper he was wearing, but he caught the director's eye and was given a line of dialogue. According to his mother, the experience struck a chord and from then on he would always dress up, pretending to be a pirate or a soldier but, "whatever he was, he was always the leader".

Seven years later he made a brief appearance in an episode of The Young Doctors. But there is little to suggest that he was serious about acting until his late teens.

Still, from an early age. Crowe had a talent for mimicry and an ear for accents. He took wicked delight in apeing adults, an infuriating habit which caused his parents considerable embarrassment.

I was an annoying little bastard," Crowe once said. "I'd mimic (my parents") friends and my mum would say, don't worry about Russell, he's a bit mental."

His other great childhood pastime was rugby league. From the time he watched his first game when he was five, he became an ardent fan of the Rabbitohs and started to play the sport at primary school.

When he was 10 he had a front tooth knocked out during a match. Always obstinate he refused to have it replaced and it would be 15 years before he would bow to pressure to have it fixed.

At Sydney Boys High teachers recall him as full of energy and a bit cheeky. In a school league photo, where everyone is vying to look tough, Russell can be seen with a flower in his hand. One contemporary recalls him as a flamboyant character. He had that drifty flair about him. He had a way of doing things, over-dramatising things a little bit."

By all reports, Crowe's childhood was happy and overwhelmingly uneventful. He felt loved and nurtured and has often said that he would one day like to have a marriage just like his parents'. Despite the tough facade he is devoted to his family and, in 1994, when his parents struck financial difficulties, Crowe insisted they move to Australia. Until then, he had lived in a rented Sydney flat, but he now had the perfect excuse to buy a first home. He settled on a sprawling old farm near Coffs Harbour which he renovated and now shares with his parents and Terry. Crowe admits his dedication to his work has probably prevented him from settling down on the farm with a wife and kids, which he says he would love to do.

But once he had committed himself to acting, he pursued his career single-mindedly. Small stage roles led to modest TV appearances. He did a stint in Neighbours, appearing in four episodes in '87 but later claimed it was because he wanted to meet Kylie Minogue, "I was reading the script and I'm thinking, this is awful. Then I get to the last scene and I've got to punch Craig McLachlan, and Jason Donovan's trying to break up the fight, while Kylie is riding on my back trying to strangle. And I went, yes, I'll do it."

For a couple of years, Crowe suffered for his art. He lived in a rented room with a shared toilet. Rent was $50 a week and he lived on $3.50 a day, existing on a diet of cigarettes, fried rice and the generosity of friends. When times were desperate, he washed cars, worked asa waiter or resorted to busking. In typical fashion, he was too proud to accept the dole. But persistence paid off, and in '88 he was offered a part in the stage production of Blood Brothers. Word started to spread that Crowe was a promising young actor.

His real break came in '90 when the respected director George Ogilvie offered Crowe a role in his film The Crossing. It was to be a momentous decision for several reasons: it was Crowe's first starring role; he was to meet Danielle Spencer with whom he would have a five year relationship; and it was Ogilvie who finally convinced Crowe to replace the front tooth he had broken when he was 10.

Crowe has recalled the conversation with Ogilvie: "George was such an artist, such a gentle guy. I told him that I didn't want anything false going on here, (how) I went through my whole teenage years: how I failed these auditions; never got a TV commercial; that I didn't want to do anything false and how all the jobs I got were with this gap in my teeth. And George just said, "Well, I think it's good to grow out of that behaviour. Lets have two front teeth when we play Johnny Ryan, shall we?" So I got a new tooth."

The Crossing was also a career break for Danielle Spencer, who became Crowe's only long-term romantic relationship, to date. In a rare, unguarded moment, he once described himself as "the master of unrequited love". The relationship with Spencer ended seven years ago, by all accounts because Crowe wanted to settle down but she felt she wasn't ready. Spencer remains a close friend.

Of course, Crowe's most high-profile love affair has been with Meg Ryan. Brief but passionate, it apparently fizzled because Crowe refused to spend more time in LA. Not playing the Hollywood game may have worked for his career, but not his love life.

But Ewbank and Hildred write that according to friends, Crowe is showing signs of wanting to lose the bad-boy mantle. But there is no sign that he wants to compromise in his work. "You get accused of being arrogant by some because I seem to, in some people's viewpoints, expect success. But it doesn't surprise me when it comes, because I know how much work I put into it." As he said himself, still the same old arsehole, just a little more in touch with his feminine side these days perhaps.

(Transcription thanks to Anna)

A Very Sensitive Sexual Predator
The Russell Crowe Story: Part One
BY ANGELA MOLLARD
UK DAILY MAIL 24 NOV 2001

HE HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF SLEEPING HIS WAY THROUGH HOLLYWOOD. HE’S ALSO FAMOUS FOR DUMPING MEG RYAN. HERE, IN AN INTRIGUING NEW SERIES, WE REVEAL THE TRUTH ABOUT RUSSELL CROWE’S AFFAIRS – AND WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WITH THE ONE WOMAN HER TRULY LOVED.

Wherever he is in the world, Russell Crowe always flies home to Australia for Christmas. It’s a tradition for the Crowe family to spend December 25 quietly on their farm in the bush, seven hours north of Sydney, and then open their home to friends and relatives for a huge party from the 27th onwards.
Last Christmas was no different, except for just one break with tradition. Crowe’s parents, Alex and Jocelyn, who have spent their lives as hotel managers and caterers, had previously provided all the food themselves. This time, they hired an outside catering firm and a marquee, which prompted a flurry of speculation.

Was this really just a festive party or was a more notable event about to take place? Could it be a wedding between two of Hollywood’s most popular stars? Crowe’s romance with Meg Ryan had been the talk of the movie world since they’d met while making the film Proof of Life the previous summer. They’d grown close on location in Ecuador and were seen kissing and cuddling in public when the filming moved to London. Almost immediately, Meg announced the end of her ten-year marriage to actor Dennis Quaid.

The paparazzi gathered outside the Crowe farm, hoping for the first picture of the Gladiator star with Meg as his bride. But the sad irony – which the Mail can reveal for the first time – is that she had ditched him by telephone on Christmas Day. "Russell was having lunch with his family when the phone rang" says a close friend. "It was Meg ringing from Los Angeles."She told him there and then it was over. She said she just couldn’t handle the pressure any more. He was devastated and went straight to his room."

When the news of the break-up became public in the second week of January, media reports suggested that Crowe had been the one who had called it off. At 39, Meg was portrayed as the older, needy, single mother with a waning box office appeal, cast aside by a footloose, sexual buccaneer. The truth is that Russell, 37, was heartbroken. "He virtually didn’t leave his room for two days," says the close friend. "His mother was really worried. But by the time people started arriving for the annual party he had composed himself. He joined in the drinking, swimming and barbecues but Meg’s name was never mentioned."

And it was to former love, the woman he had once wanted to marry, that he turned for solace.

In a few weeks, Crowe will be back in the global spotlight with the release of his blockbuster A Beautiful Mind, in which he plays a mathematical genius whose life is shattered by mental illness. Already, he is being tipped for a second Oscar to add to his Best Actor award for Gladiator. It’s a typically challenging role for an actor who prides himself on his ability to transform his persona from film to film. To find the truth about his equally elusive character, I have spend months talking to Crowe’s closest friends, colleagues and former lovers. What they have told me reveals the startling complexity of a star whose off-screen seductions have won him his reputation as the "Antipodean love hound". But are such jibes accurate? Is Crowe, as his gallery of alleged conquests suggests, working his way through Hollywood’s beauties, or is there more to him than this cynical image suggests?

According to Meg Ryan, and many other women, he is capable of exceptional sensitivity and tenderness. They say that the attention-seeking romeo is, in reality, a hopeless romantic who yearns to raise a family of his own.

Russell Crowe’s undeniable sexual magnetism has seen him compared to Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty. Legendary Hollywood producer Lester Persky goes further, saying: "He’s a lady-killer in the tradition of Clark Gable."

Crowe, however, is not amused by the playboy stereotype. In one recent outburst, he raged about the public obsession with his love life and the wildly inaccurate stories that surround him. "How did this thirst for absolute rubbish happen?" he asked. "Apparently, I got married three times this year. I had half a dozen babies and every woman I talked to I impregnated. I must have the most fertile breath on Earth. "They all say I’m a bad boy, I’m a Lothario. But in reality, how the **** could I do my job if I was like that? It’s not possible."

The truth is that little more than a year ago, Crowe was courting such gossip. He arrived a the 2000 Golden Globe Awards hand in hand with his good friend Jodie Foster and proceed to snuggle up to her throughout the evening. As he admitted at the time, "the intention was to create a stir."

A few months later, he cuddled and kissed Australian model Erica Baxter on a hotel balcony in Rome while he was promoting Gladiator. And it was all designed to titillate the cinema-going public.

Crowe is something of a Hollywood rarity – a single, solvent heterosexual with none of the usual superstar baggage of ex-wives and children. So it is no accident that his name keeps being linked with women in the throes of a break-up. He has been there to provide support for Nicole Kidman, Kim Basinger and Heather Graham when their relationships with other men went off the rails. But Meg Ryan was the only one he fell in love with. Circumstances conspired to throw them together last year just as her marriage to Dennis Quaid was unravelling.

According to friends who spent time with them, they were besotted from the outset. They dined in London’s romantic Mirabelle restaurant and went to a David Bowie concert, posing afterwards on either side of the singer. Later, Crowe showed off Meg to his admiring cronies in Australia. "I had dinner with them when they were in Sydney," says Crowe’s old friend Stuart Wagstaff. "She arrived on one of those dresses that look like nighties but are very fashionable. He’d booked a restaurant for all of his old friends and he was enjoying catching up but he also took great care to see that Meg was all right. He was very attentive."

The proof that Crowe was serious came when he took Meg home to his farm, Beacon Hill, the centre of his emotional universe.

He bought the 560-acre spread when he began making serious money in the mid-nineties, and shares it with his parents and brother Terry. There are cows, chickens, his dogs Lucy and Chasen, and even a duck-billed platypus. Besides miles of pasture, he has planted 80 acres of rosewood, red cedar and native Australian trees.

He tried to describe this haven to Meg Ryan by reciting some lines from a famous Australian poem called Clancy Of The Overflow: "And the bush has friends to meet him/And their kindly voices greet him/In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars/And he sees the vision splendid/Of the sunlit plains extended/And at night the wondrous glories of the everlasting stars."

As we shall see, those lines made a deep impression on Meg. So what was it that drove her to ditch him in such a brutal way?

Rumours abound that she got fed up with his "overactive eyeballs" – but while his appreciation of other women undoubtedly contributed to the break-up, the full story is more complex. Meg is one of Hollywood’s most private stars and trying to deal with the publicity the romance attracted, as well as care for her nine-year-old son Jack, proved too much – particularly when she had to choose between spending Christmas in LA with her son or in Australia with Crowe.

As he later commented: "The bottom line is, I have a big life here in Australia. When I’m off the hook with work, I have to come home. Meg has the same needs. We both have huge schedules."

But Crowe’s remarks also revealed the depth of the bond he had established with Meg. "She is a searcher," he said. "She’s got an incredibly inquisitive mind, so it was very easy for us to be in the same room together for hours and hours and hours, just talking. That was very special."

Months after they split, it became evident that they retained strong feelings for each other. Sensing his nerves as the Oscars approached, Meg had the verse from Clancy of the Overflow inscribed onto a silver cross, which she sent to him as a good luck charm.

Only this July, after he finished filming A Beautiful Mind, Crowe and Meg spent a quiet evening in his suite at New York’s Mercer Hotel. Friends said she was keen to rekindle their relationship but Crowe was more hesitant. "She told him her time with him last year was the most exciting of her life," says a fiend. "But she was going through such a messy split with Dennis and had to put her son first. Now she felt that was behind her and she could give all her energy to Russell." Now friends say they have been enjoying long phone calls after Meg contacted him in Australia following the September 11 terrorist attacks. According to a friend: "Ever since, she’s had three of four-hour marathon calls with him for days running. She says they need time to see if their passion is sparking back up."

The friend added that Meg is "impressed" by how much more grounded Russell has become recently, having told her that he had "re-evaluated" his life. Just last month, Russell told a TV interviewer in Australia about his feelings for Meg: "I fell in love with one of the most beautiful women in the world and, for some reason, some people think it’s a crime."

Certainly there has been no indication that he has found anyone to rival Meg Ryan in his affections.

Whatever he decides about his future – with or without Meg – Crowe knows he is at a crossroads. He has spend 20 years striving for what he has right now – not just money and status but the opportunity to play challenging roles and work with top directors. As he joins Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise in the $25 million a movie league, he already knows success has come at a price. And the greatest sacrifice of all, according to one old friend, was not marrying the woman with whom he was besotted.

"It was 1995 and he’d been going out with the lovely Australian actress Danielle Spencer for nearly five years," says the friend, who doesn’t want to be named but has decided to speak because he wants to dispel Crowe’s "bad-boy" reputation. "They’d met on his film The Crossing and he adored her. He came to me one day in turmoil. He wanted to marry her yet he was desperate to break into Hollywood. "He was starting to get attention from America for his role as a Nazi thug in the cult film Romper Stomper, yet he knew if he married Danielle that dream would be compromised. "He’s not the type to do anything by half measures so in the end I advised him not to marry her.

"I quoted an old saying: "He who travels fastest, travels alone." He really took it on board and he’s quoted it back to me several times since. It’s almost become his mantra."

Danielle, a former soap star turned singer, confirms the seriousness of their relationship but says their break-up was inevitable. "It was about life direction. Things were starting to happen for him and I didn’t want to be in LA," she says.

Six years have passed since the couple split but their continued closeness was evident when Danielle, a petite blonde very much in the Meg Ryan mould, accompanied him to the Oscars this year.

Intriguingly, Danielle spent several days at Crowe’s farm, following his Christmas party. She says they walked, talked, relaxed and read but did not discuss his break-up with Meg. Her only reason for speaking publicly about their relationship is to refute reports that he is a philanderer, sleeping his way to the top.

"People get the wrong idea of Russell," she insists. "He’s actually very gentle, intelligent and loving."

Danielle recalls that Crowe had to go to Melbourne to make a film shortly after they met but constantly sent her gifts as reminders of his love. They had walked past a shop selling dolls’ furniture, and Danielle had said how much she liked them. Crowe bombarded her with enough dolls’ furniture to equip a tiny mansion.

As Crowe would later admit, constant separations put a strain on the relationship. Danielle visited him on the set of his first Hollywood film, The Quick and The Dead with Sharon Stone, but she knew her life lay back in Australia.

Crowe – who first dreamt of stardom as a punk rocker and still performs with his own band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts – captured their dilemma in the song Danielle. It spoke of her as "my invisible partner in travel" and described how being apart brought this outwardly macho man to tears.

In a 1995 interview, Crowe admitted that his lifestyle was an impossible burden for Danielle. "Imagine what it’s been like for my girlfriend for the past four years," he said. "I’ve done 14 movies and been 14 totally different people – she didn’t know who the hell she was sleeping with. The trouble is the travel – there is no time to get a rhythm going, and when we do, it’s very painful to get on another plane."

Such sensibility is hard to reconcile with his image. While he can be gentle and loving, as his ex-girlfriend suggests, he can also be flirtatious and lust-driven when the opportunity presents.

When the singer Courtney Love, all putting lips and heaving breasts, sidled up to him after the Golden Globes this year, he happily took her back to his hotel for the night.

He is a single man revelling in success and he’s open to opportunities for fun. If he sometimes gets the brush off – Winona Rider and teenage actress Leelee Sobieski apparently turned him down – this does nothing to dent his confidence.

Often he is simply out to shock. At his 37th birthday in New York, he astonished other guests by engaging in a prolonged, public petting session with Australian actress Peta Wilson. So what sort of woman will Crowe settle down with? His friend Geoffrey Wright, who directed him in Romper Stomper, believes that only older women need apply.

"Russell seeks the company of women who are accomplished and secure, which usually means they’re more mature. "That’s not to say he doesn’t enjoy a good flirt or a one-night stand but generally he seeks equals. He bonds with women he’s worked with, such as Sharon Stone and Charlotte Rampling. "Meg Ryan was the same – she may have been insecure about the collapse of her marriage but she’s very together. It’s the same with Jodie Foster – he enjoys that meeting of minds."

It seems no coincidence, therefore, that Crowe’s first serious long-term girlfriend was five years his senior. Shona sang backing vocals for one of his early bands, Russ le Roq And the Romantics. According to a fellow band member Graham Silcock, 25-year-old Shona was a commanding presence and Russell worshipped her. "There were a lot of young girls on the music scene but he was intrigued by Shona. She had this cold, alluring power and this look about her which said: "Don’t mess with me." Russell would talk about her in reverential tones."

They went out for more than a year. Soon after, Crowe moved from Auckland to Sydney where he started seeing Sheree, a nurse. Annie Wilson, an Australian actress who moved into the flat the couple shared, recalls: "They had been living together for several months when I arrived and he was really devoted to her. But he was so intent on becoming a film star that nothing was going to divert him from that goal."

Annie starred with Crowe in productions of Grease and The Rocky Horror Show. She says he was like a magnet for the young girls who hung around after the shows. "He loved it and he dated a few but never seriously." Annie believes Crowe’s appeal lies in his attentiveness: "If you go out with Russell, you’re it for the night. He’s really intense and listens carefully, which makes you feel wonderfully special. "He wasn’t always serious, though. When we went supermarket shopping we’d practise rugby passes with a bag of rice up and down the aisles. He was great fun."

There is one youthful "fun" episode that Russell has spent the rest of his life trying to live down. It happened while he was on location for the film Proof, one of his first screen successes in Australia. He is said to have seduced a young ingenue in his trailer and passers-by swear that, as their passion reached a climax, Crowe shouted "Go, Russ, Go!" at the top of his lungs. Back home, this has become the all-time favourite Russell Crowe anecdote.

Another romance came when he made the thriller LA Confidential. According to his friend Geoff Wright, Crowe fell for a jazz singer. Once again, Crowe had picked a partner who fitted the Meg Ryan mould. "She wasn’t a high-maintenance chick," says Wright. "I could never imagine Russell with a girl who slaves over her looks, such as Jennifer Aniston. He likes petite, outdoorsy types."

Crow would later split from the singer when she grew tired of traipsing round after him on movie sets but not before he’d moved into her LA apartment. "He lived on a steep hill and I often saw him out jogging. Now this is Russell for you – he’d do the really tough run uphill from Sunset Boulevard but at the top he’d stop to have a cigarette. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen in shorts and trainers smoking a cigarette in LA," says Wright.

It is precisely those anomalies which make Crowe so captivating to women. Sharon Stone, who in 1995 asked him to spend Christmas Day with her as a volunteer at a Salvation Army centre, said: "Russell has grit and luminosity at the same time. He is the sexiest guy working in the movies."

Crowe is also known for his eagerness to lure his leading ladies on to the dance floor. But he insists that his intentions are entirely honourable.

"When I was a little kid, my parents thought it was important to teach me how to dance. One of the first things I want to do with actresses when we work together in manufacture a situation where we dance together. "If you fall into each other with that sense of rhythm, then so many things are going to be easy. I can sense so many things when I am dancing: Does she trust me? Does she understand me? Will she approach these scenes, this script, with an open mind?"

Crowe’s understanding or relationships is what makes him a serious actor rather than simply a leading man, says Geoff Wright.

During Gladiator, the suggestion was mooted that Crowe’s character Maximus could fall in love with the dead emperor’s daughter. The actor refused. Maximus, he argued, was a decent man whose life was dedicated to avenging his murdered wife and son. The Roman general would never have switched his affections so easily.

Whether Crowe is as devoted to the family ideal remains to be seen, but he maintains that he wants to find the sort of enduring love shared by his parents. After 39 years together, he says, they still "cuddle up together in a corner" and enjoy romantic dances.

Crowe has also spoken of longing to have children. "I’m in baby mode like you would not believe" he said as long ago as 1995. "Unfortunately, making a family is not just up to me. I have to find someone else to agree with me, which is frustrating."

In the meantime, he fulfils his yearnings by spending time with his 12-year-old niece Chelsea, whom he took to the Oscars. And he sends his eight-year-old god-daughter, Bella, and her brother, Jackson, caps and T-shirts from wherever he is in the world.

It’s a touching insight into the gentler side of the star’s nature and an example of how hard he tries to keep in touch with friends and family. Crowe has never forgotten the support they gave him when he was a youngster with soaring ambitions but seemingly little change of fulfilling them.

But, as I will reveal on Monday, despite his extraordinary determination and talent, when his chance for global superstardom came, he almost missed it.

(Thanks to Lorraine for transcribing)

It was the role of his dreams. So why did Russell Crowe want to turn down Gladiator…and why did he refuse to make love to his beautiful co-star?

More than a year after it was released, Gladiator remains in the Box Office Top Ten, has grossed more than $500 million and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Yet the man who played the leading role of Maximus Decimus Meridius nearly turned the part down.

"I thought it’d be a load of crap – poncing around in a tunic," Russell Crowe later told friends, recalling how he so nearly dismissed one of the most challenging roles in modern film, and one which would make him a household name.

Crowe was midway through shooting The Insider with Al Pacino when the Gladiator team sought him out. He was immersed in his role as tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand and didn’t want any distractions.

Besides, there wasn’t a script ready, he pointed out, waving them away. It was The Insider’s director, Michael Mann, who alerted Crowe to his oversight. Mann walked into Crowe’s trailer one morning and told him that, while he appreciated the effort the actor was putting into his film, he’d be a fool to let the Gladiator role slip away.

Ridley Scott, Mann told him, was one of the best directors in the history of film, and Crowe should give the role serious consideration.

"A Hero Will Rise", the slogan that heralded the $105 million Roman Epic, could also be Crowe’s epithet. Had he not strapped on his sandals and taken up the sword, he might still be languishing in "supporting actor" territory – a talent, certainly, but not a leading man.

Instead, he’s gone from virtual anonymity to Number 41 on the list of the most powerful people in showbusiness in just over a year.

A love affair with Meg Ryan and friendships with Nicole Kidman, Jodie Foster and Sharon Stone have undoubtedly helped, but Crowe is far more than a 15-minutes-of-fame man puffed up on publicity.

His is a story of triumph over circumstances. Born at the bottom of the world, he fought for recognition, hoping that hard work and ambition would compensate for lack of training and limited connections.

As we shall see, he is a slow-burner who has come by his fame honestly, suffering poverty, humiliation and unemployment as he fought relentlessly to follow his dream.

And at the Oscars this year, his acceptance speech acknowledged the journey: "A dream like this seems vaguely ludicrous and unattainable, (but) this moment is directly connected to those imaginings.

"And for anybody who’s on the downside of advantage and relying purely on courage, it’s possible."

The Gladiator role, when he eventually agreed to it, was the culmination of years of slog and careful choices for Crowe. The role was first offered to Mel Gibson, but he told Ridley Scott he was too old.

Taking a gamble, Scott mused over the chap he’d been impressed by in LA Confidential. Sure, Russell Crowe could act, but was he a big enough name to hold up an epic? You’d have thought Crowe would have leapt at the opportunity, offering himself to the director of Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma and Louise with awe and gratitude. Instead, he finally signed on the dotted line on condition that he could collaborate on the script.

By all accounts, such an unusual agreement caused huge tensions. Crowe, fresh from The Insider, read a revised script and exploded. "He was upset," says screenwriter David Franzoni. "He felt his character didn’t have the vitality it originally had."

Of course, Crowe had his way and the character was "amped up", according to Franzoni. Crowe generally wins his battles. When a love scene was suggested between Maximus and the young emperor’s sister Lucilla, the actor balked.

"They thought she should come into the prison, I’m all chained up, she whips my gear off and Bob’s your uncle. Now with the emphasised honour of this man and his need to avenge the death of his wife and son, he’s not going to stop and have some nookie, is he?"

Likewise, when the studio sent Crowe a note asking that he refrain from playing football for fear he might hurt himself, he wrote back pointing out that if he could wrestle with four tigers, then he didn’t see why he couldn’t enjoy a kick-about of the "girl’s game", as he calls it in pointed comparison with his beloved rugby league.

Asked whether Crowe was difficult to work with, Scott laughed: "The good ones never are, I like a bit of rock and roll." Gladiator producer Douglas Wick, who envisaged Crowe for the central role from the outset, agrees. "With all of his demons, with Russell it’s always about the work," says Wick.

"He doesn’t tear up phone books to intimidate his directors or co-stars, but he questions everyone incessantly. That can be intimidating for some people. There’s no question Russell is volatile, but the genius is there on the screen."

Had he not been so talented, Crowe’s volatility would have blown him into obscurity by now. In 1988, he was fired from his "break-of-a-lifetime" role in the Sydney stage production of Blood Brothers after head-butting and breaking the nose of his co-star, Peter Cousins.

From the start, the brilliant but untrained Crowe had been at loggerheads with the refined, drama-school graduate – and one month into the run, the antagonism erupted in a violent outburst.

Director Danny Hiller knew the incident could not be overlooked. He demanded that each actor apologise to the other in writing. Cousens duly penned his conciliatory note. An apology from the 24-year-old Crowe never came and he was sacked.

Crowe retreated to his parents’ home in Auckland, furious at his stupidity. Fortunately for the fiery New Zealand upstart, director George Ogilvie had seen him on stage in Sydney, and the following year cast him in a film called The Crossing.

Ogilvie recalls Crowe rushing into his office without an appointment: "His front tooth was chipped, but I looked at him and thought: "This boy is going to play the part."

"I’d seen dozens of actors but Russell had an aura and knowledge in his eyes. So many young actors are pleading for recognition, but with Russell the hunger was different. He had this fantastic self-confidence." When Ogilvie asked Crowe which character he wanted to play, Crowe replied: "All of them." Ogilvie laughed at his enthusiasm but quipped: "I’m sorry, but we don’t have the budget."

When filming on The Crossing – which would also star Crowe’s future girlfriend Danielle Spencer – was delayed, Crowe secured a part as a soldier in what would be his first movie, Prisoners Of The Sun.

Director Stephen Wallace was incredulous when Crowe arrived for the audition. He recalls: "This was only a small part, but Russell asked if he could read some letters he had written as if he was this soldier in New Guinea writing home to his parents. He’d completely created a character within these six letters."

Following The Crossing (for which he had his chipped tooth mended), Crowe appeared in the black comedy Proof, a role which won him an Australian Film Industry Award for Best Supporting Actor. But it was his next part, as a neo-Nazi skinhead in Romper Stomper, which enabled him to get a foot in the Hollywood door.

From the outset, says director Geoffrey Wright, Crowe bugged him for the role. "He kept phoning, and though we’d quietly already chosen him, I was curious to test his persistence. The role of Hando required a lot of barely suppressed ferocity and that’s what Russell does so well."

Crowe’s commitment to the role was never in doubt. The actor had shaved his head, put on weight and been painted with tattoos – so once filming was over for the day, he tended to stay in character.

This led to Crowe being the ringleader in a potentially serious incident. Several cast members, including Crowe, were drinking at a bar in one of Melbourne’s smarter areas and got into an argument.

The landlady called the police. Finding them drunk and wearing red shoelaces – a symbol for hatred of the police – the officers took them back to the station and put them in a cell.

Wright says: "Russell didn’t want to spoil the experience by getting released too quickly, but eventually the police realised they were actors and let them go."

When critics applaud Crowe, they admire his intensity, masculine presence and rumble of a voice. But fortunately it is his breadth of talent which makes him such a consummate actor. Unlike other Hollywood favourites Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, who stick to what they do best, Crowe is a chameleon who changes his age, accent and shape for a part. This versatility was evident early in his career when, two years after Romper Stomper, he played a gay plumber in an art-house movie called The Sum Of Us. Crowe is utterly convincing in the role, even when engaging in some heated kissing and massaging with his male co-star, John Polson.

Having made ten films in four years – including Hammers Over The Anvil with Charlotte Rampling, in which he appears naked on horseback, Crowe was aching to test his talent in Hollywood.

Unbeknown to him, Sharon Stone had seen Romper Stomper, and demanded he be given a role in a film she was co-producing, The Quick And The Dead, starring herself, Gene Hackman and Leonardo di Caprio.

That movie should have been a highlight for Crowe; instead it was riddled with difficulties and movie critic Margaret Pomeranz thinks it is responsible for exacerbating his subsequent bad behaviour.

"I felt really sorry for him because Gene Hackman was an absolute **** to him," she said. "Here was this kid from Australia working with all these big stars, and Hackman came down on him."

At one time, the studio stopped paying Crowe’s hotel bill, when he was caught in a power battle between his patron, Sharon Stone and others who had never wanted him in the film at all. It was a bad time for Crowe, and it coincided with the break-up of his five-year relationship with Danielle Spencer. Moreover, the movie bombed.

But if The Quick And The Dead was a disaster, Crowe was still working to his own gameplan. The day after this year’s Oscars, he commented: "I turned down a lot of easy money early on, and that’s the only reason I’m in the position I am in now – because I made those hard choices from the time I was a young bloke."

It was his brutish portrayal of police offer Bud White in LA Confidential that earned him widespread recognition, yet it was his Oscar-nominated performance in The Insider which would stretch him – literally.

When director Michael Mann asked him to read for the part of the flabby 56-year-old scientist and father of two, Crowe asked why the director didn’t just hire an actor around the same age.

"I’m not talking to you because of your age," said Mann, reaching out to put his hand on Crowe’s chest, "I’m talking to you because of what you have in here."

The director would later compare Crowe with Marlon Brando: "Look at On The Waterfront or A Streetcar Named Desire, and you see this raw, powerful talent. That’s Russell to me."

Mann didn’t think it necessary that Crowe put on weight, but the actor was obsessive about transforming himself for the character. He stopped exercising and put on 35 pounds with a diet of bourbon and cheeseburgers. What he hadn’t reckoned on, however, was how long it would take to get the weight off. "I thought in my naiveté, six weeks to put on the weight, six weeks to take it off," he said. "It took five-and-a-half months."

While Crowe can be charming – he’d never met Jodie Foster but when her son Charles was born, he sent a tiny rugby jumper, simply because he respected her work – he can also be rude, petulant and surprisingly cruel.

A journalist from GQ magazine who spent three days on his farm in 1999 wrote how he humiliated his brother Terry as he tried to make a joke one evening. One family friend has revealed that Terry, the shorter and stockier of the two brothers, is often the subject of Russell’s wrath.

"It’s a difficult situation," says the friend. "Russell’s the one with all the money, the one who runs the place and keeps his family, but he’s away so much of the time. Everything continues as usual but then Russell comes home, throwing his weight around and making sure he’s the boss. It’s no surprise that Terry’s got a chip on his shoulder."

In some ways, Crowe is like a boy who won the lottery, and his friends don’t know whether to feel pleased, jealous or both. He says, despite his multi-million-dollar pay packets, he doesn’t hold onto money for long: "I’ve got a ten-lane freeway that goes out of my bank account and into my friends’ and family’s hands."

So where to from here? Next month Crowe’s new film, A Beautiful Mind, opens. In it, he plays the American academic John Forbes Nash Junior, a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who has spent most of his life battling schizophrenia.

Now Crowe plans to try his hand at directing, which has already prompted expressions of pity for those he will work with.

One of his friends believes the greatest threat to Crowe’s continuing rise is himself. "I think he drinks too much," muses the friend. "He’s a great party animal and there are occasions when he over-indulges. I can see a headline: "Actor dies in Harley accident after leaving party"."

Other believe Crowe has worked too hard and is far too smart to ruin what he has spent 37 years creating.

He will not disappear easily, and with his passionate, provocative nature, he’s certain to produce as many good headlines as films.

Romper Stomper director Geoffrey Wright believes he’ll become a legend whose death, after decades of fame, will be dramatic and heroic: "He’ll never stop performing – then eventually he’ll do an Oliver Reed and die on set."

(Thanks to Lorraine, Judy and Valerie for transcribing.)