Russell Crowe

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New Zealand-born Australian actor, whose fabulous performance as the Roman General Maximus Decimus in the film Gladiator (2000) earned him the "Best Actor" Oscar. A gifted and impassioned actor, he portrayed with a rare talent such diverse real-life people as tormented whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider (1999), brilliant and mentally-ill mathematician John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (2001), boxer Jim Braddock in Cinderella Man (2005), and television executive and media consultant Roger Ailes in TV miniseries The Loudest Voice (2019). Crowe made his directorial debut with 2014 drama film The Water Diviner, in which he also starred. Crowe has also been the co-owner of the National Rugby League (NRL) team South Sydney Rabbitohs since 2006. He is the son of Jocelyn Yvonne (née Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe, both of whom were film set caterers; his father also managed a hotel. One of Russell Crowe's maternal great-great-grandmothers was Māori, he also has English, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Scottish, Swedish and Welsh ancestry. When Crowe was four years old, his family moved to Sydney, Australia, where his parents pursued a career in set catering. 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 (in 1994 Thompson played the father of Crowe's character in the film The Sum of Us). When he was 14, his family moved back to New Zealand where, along with his brother Terry, he attended high school, leaving at the age 16 to pursue his ambition of becoming an actor. Crowe began his performing career as a musician in the early 1980s, performing under the stage name "Russ Le Roq". Crowe returned to Australia at age 21, and from 1986 to 1988, he performed his first professional role in a New Zealand production of The Rocky Horror Show, playing Eddie/Dr Scott. After appearing in the popular TV series Neighbours, Crowe won an Australian Film Institute (AFI) Best Supporting Actor award for his role in the film Proof in 1991, and an AFI award for Best Actor for Romper Stomper (1992), an Australian film which followed the exploits and downfall of a racist skinhead group in blue-collar suburban Melbourne. Now concentrating on American films, he co-starred with Denzel Washington in Virtuosity (the duo later appearing together in American Gangster) and with Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead in 1995. He went on to become a three-time Oscar nominee, winning the Academy Award as Best Actor in 2000 for Gladiator. Crowe has become known for his temper, a man who defends his privacy sometimes with his fists. On his 39th birthday, 7 April 2003, he married Danielle Spencer in a sunset ceremony on his cattle property Nana Glen, near Coffs Harbour in Australia. The newlyweds met in 1990, but split in 1995 when Crowe moved to Hollywood, rekindling their relationship in 2002. They have two sons, Charles Spencer Crowe, born 21 December 2003 in the evening, and Tennyson Spencer Crowe, born in Sydney, Australia at 7:27 AM on 7 July 2006 (some reports gave 7:21 AM). In October 2012, it was reported that Crowe and Spencer had separated. The divorce was finalised in April 2018. Link to Wikipedia biography