c. People magazine

Born in New Zealand, and raised in Australia and New Zealand, Russell Crowe is the biggest star to come from Down Under since Mel Gibson, something that the actor is well aware of. "People are always comparing me to Russell Crowe," he told Entertainment Weeklyin 1995. "I've started to ask them, why don't you ever compare me to Judy Davis?"

As hot-shot detective Bud White in 1997's L.A. Confidential, Crowe held his own opposite movie vixen Kim Basinger (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her effort). Now, in Michael Mann's The Insider and Ridley Scott's Gladiator, Crowe is poised to take his talents to a high level, which could make the Gibson comparisons go away for good.

Crowe got into show business at an early age -- his parents were caterers who often worked for films, and young Russell got a small guest-starring role on the Australian TV series Spyforce because his parents were slinging hash on the set. (Spyforce star Jack Thompson and Crowe were reunited 24 years later when the older actor played his father in the movie The Sum of Us).

During his teen years, Crowe concentrated on a music career, recording a single, "I Want To Be Like Marlon Brando," under the nom de plume Rus Le Roc. His singing talents helped him land stage work, in a production of Grease and a two-year run as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a touring production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "It's the only show that kept my interest, and that's because it changed every night because of the audience reaction," he told Interview in 1997.

The ever-restless Crowe made the move to films shortly there after, landing small roles in small Australian films Prisoners of the Sun and The Crossing, before making waves internationally in the critically acclaimed Proof and the neo-Nazi drama Romper Stomper, where his performance as the brutal skinhead Hando won him the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor.

Romper Stompergot Crowe over to America when Sharon Stone saw the film and insisted that he be cast opposite her in The Quick and the Dead, the anti-western she was starring in and co-producing. After Dead he played a computerized villain on the run in Virtuosity, and then Bud White in L.A. Confidential.

Director Curtis Hanson cast Crowe and fellow Aussie Guy Pearce as the leads in L.A. Confidential because he wanted unknowns who were also clean-cut all-American types to play the heroic Los Angeles cops. Apparently there's something about Crowe that suggests that he is beyond reproach, since he is playing now playing whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, who leaked damaging information about the tobacco industry, in the docu-drama The Insider. To transform into the middle-aged scientist Wigand, the thirty-something actor was required to gain a few pounds, wear eyeglasses and have his hair dyed gray. He'll go to another extreme in the upcoming epic Gladiator, playing a general caught in a struggle for the leadership of the Roman Empire.

Let's just hope that Crowe doesn't look at his dailies and smile. "Satisfaction is something that's very difficult for me because I'm not sure if I'll ever reach that level," Crowe told The Toronto Sun in 1998. "And if I do, it'll probably be the last film I ever do."

- Sean Griffin