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Audiences are frequently left with the same impression. Crowe enjoys the trappings of celebrity: he has had nights out in Brisbane with Bruce Springsteen, dinner parties in London with Emma Thompson and a series of odd phone calls from Michael Jackson. ("He used to put on these funny voices and then giggle, 'Oh, Russell, it's Michael.'") But Crowe has yet to fully make his peace with being famous. "I think in a lot of ways I'm my own worst enemy, because I won't answer simple questions," he says. "And it's not because I'm arrogant necessarily--though I know now that if I say, 'These questions are tedious,' it will indicate that I am arrogant--but there's just some things that I think run counter to the whole gig that I'm doing. As far as I'm concerned, the reality of Russell Crowe should be vanilla, and the viewer can add whatever it is they need to make it work for them."
This is a wise strategy if the goal is a diverse career. Hanks, Cruise and ladies' champ Julia Roberts are the gracious wits audiences like to imagine themselves as, but they are also prisoners of their own goodwill, condemned to deliver endless variations on the same performance. Crowe can play anything because he has conditioned audiences to expect anything. He is smart enough to possibly be given credit for premeditating this eremitic media strategy; he is also obstreperous enough simply to hate having his privacy invaded.
Either way, Crowe's desire not to be known reads as petulance, and that, as much as anything, feeds his jerky image. It's not as though he never considered the possibility that he might become a movie star, right? "You know, I got in trouble a while ago when I said, 'Look, I don't want to be one of your movie stars.' I quoted Sinatra: 'I owe you my best work, but I don't owe you the time of day,' which is"--he pauses--"not exactly how I feel. But there is some merit in that. Let me just do my work. I just do the work. I'll make movies, and you go to the cinema. Why can't we just keep it at that?"
Recognizing that he has to give up something about himself, Crowe sometimes offers a true, if somewhat diversionary, narrative: Russell Crowe, simple bloke. Asked what advice he would give to an actor playing him, he says, "I'd tell them to get another job. It wouldn't be worth doing. I'm very boring." It must be said that Crowe's normal-guy credentials are impeccable. He loves rugby, throwing back a pint and working on his 800-acre farm near Coffs Harbor, six hours north of Sydney. He also loves playing with his band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. The actor-band is an unfortunate cliche of celebrity culture, but TOFOG, as Crowe's group is known, existed well before its lead singer became a household name. (Crowe and guitarist Dean Cochran have been playing together since their teens.) Nevertheless, the six-man group, essentially a very good bar band, has become an easy target and now exists almost in spite of Crowe's fame. "The vast majority of people who talk about us have never even heard us," says TOFOG drummer Dave Kelly. "'Russell Crowe's band? I heard they suck.' It's frustrating. But Russell's always been in the band. We can't imagine it any other way."