He is a man's man - or, rather, he is the kind of man in whom shabby, ageing, overweight, altogether untidy and unresolved males can see their manly image. In other words, Russell Crowe seems more than happy taking very little care of himself, his appearance or his "glamour". You can almost see the sneer forming at the mention of that commodity. And all over the world there are millions of men, out of shape and aching to be out of their normally controlled and confined minds, who think they can identify courage, prowess and leadership, no matter that he looks like someone from a dirty mac lineup. So Crowe is a movie star - at $15m to $20m a pop, thank you - but he seems to be just one of the scruffy lads. It is a hell of a trick and may be the best part of his charm.
Take American Gangster, one of the more outrageous recent pieces of free-form fantasy masquerading as an American movie. Anyone looking at that picture knows it's a vehicle for Denzel Washington: he wears the great clothes; he has Miss Puerto Rico in his lap; he has the scenes where he walks up to a hood and just pops him in the head in broad daylight. Meanwhile, Crowe - in an assortment of flea market clothes and estranged from family or sex - fusses and fidgets around as the honest cop who is supposed to be after Denzel. In fact, it's a character actor doing obeisance to a star, with the two guys so in love with each other's act that, in the end, they join forces, as lawyer and client, and the picture concludes with outtake footage of the two of them clowning around together. And the film is enormously entertaining and deeply stupid because it cheerfully caters to every male dream (chic and shabby at the same time) and finds the same scrap of chamois leather that can put a shine on both actors.
Another important part of the Crowe approach is to say: "Look mate, don't be put off just because I'm going to get nominated for this stuff - trust me, I'm hardly working. I wear my own clothes, no makeup. I'm not just the guy next door, I'm the out-of-work labourer who earns a few quid cleaning up the trash next door."
Yes, of course, it's a trick. You could have guessed that the first time you saw Crowe - probably as Bud White in LA Confidential, in which he is overweight, sluggish, brutal, but soft enough in the head to fall in love with a hooker who can act like Veronica Lake. Was it just the air of Australasia, was it that Crowe didn't shower before going to work, or was it an authentic attitude he had?
Over the years, we have seen more and more of that kind of Crowe - it was there as Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider, a man so anonymous and self-effacing he was literally hard to photograph. In another way, he was there as John Nash, the apologetic genius in A Beautiful Mind, and the very humble heavyweight champ of his own dingy apartment in Cinderella Man. In all those films you detected nothing less than the relish and zeal with which Crowe had set out to be not just someone we wouldn't recognise but someone we might not notice.
Yes, there is a bolder man, someone who could do sandals and toga as Maximus in Gladiator, or full naval uniform in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. But by now, we respect this surly man enough to believe he is in the Ridley Scott class - he can do whatever he wants. And women insist they like him (enough to justify his disdain for them), though in truth he has been allowed very few romantic opportunities yet on screen. With one Oscar and two other nominations, he has already made the A-list, and as he gets to be 50 (in 2014) his timeless lack of prettiness will provoke no objections in the casting department. The horrible abuse of a beautiful original - known as the movie of State of Play - will do nothing to soil or spoil his image. Russell Crowe came thoroughly unwashed and unironed.