Russell Crowe’s hair-raising performance as Hermann Göring in Nuremberg is the latest example of the veteran actor’s high-risk, high-reward approach. He has a knack for taking on difficult, baggage-laden roles that could have gone spectacularly badly – only to deliver the goods and make you want to stand up and yell “bravo!” You’ll struggle to find many other actors working today with an oeuvre as eclectic, varied and downright impressive as the Wellington-born star’s. Here are his 20 greatest performances.
20. Cinderella Man (2005)
Ron Howard’s film about real-life boxer James J Braddock, aka Cinderella Man, is overlong and middle-of-the-road but Crowe’s in fine form as the down-on-his-luck athlete who has a bung hand but maybe, just maybe, can mount a comeback. Sporting a convincingly rough-edged, working-class New Jersey accent, he softens the traditional bruiser archetype and makes potentially mawkish lines (“I can’t be a boxer no more!”) land with disarming sincerity.
19. Unhinged (2020)
Derrick Borte’s road-rage thriller is a bit of a B-movie: loud, implausible and indeed unhinged. But Crowe is scarily good as a full-blown psycho. When his character Tom Cooper pulls up beside the protagonist (Caren Pistorius) and asks her to apologise for beeping at him, you know you’re in for a hell of a ride, barely repressed rage oozing from his pores.
18. Broken City (2013)
A cocky, unsettlingly charismatic and totally corrupt mayor? Yep: Rusty can nail that part. Led by Mark Wahlberg as a former cop exposing the dirty laundry of Crowe’s Mayor Nicholas Hostetler, this unexceptional crime thriller is massively elevated by Crowe’s love-to-hate performance. Hostetler could have been a cartoonish villain from central casting but Crowe delivers a performance you can’t look away from.
17. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Ron Howard’s enjoyable biopic about Nobel prize-winning mathematician John Nash, who suffered from schizophrenia, illustrates mental illness through visual and narrative techniques that are palatable for audiences but often feel contrived. Crowe is the best thing about it, vividly rendering Nash and his tics and peculiarities.
16. The Silver Brumby (1993)
In this enchanting family film about the life of a mighty wild stallion, Crowe’s character remains, by design, an elusive figure, more legend than person. Known only as “The Man”, his story is told through bedtime-story narration conferred from a mother to her daughter. His presence hovers over everything – as if he’s part of the sky, the mountains, the natural order of things. It’s a broad and beautiful sketch of a bushman.
15. American Gangster (2007)
Ridley Scott’s sprawling crime drama positions Crowe’s plain-spoken cop, Richie Roberts, on a slow-burn collision with Denzel Washington’s drug baron, Frank Lucas, giving him emotional layers and a rich narrative arc. Roberts is a doggedly determined man who sees the forest for the trees and declines the easy path. Crowe is low-key but volcanic; flawed but likable.
14. Proof of Life (2000)
Not many action heroes can hold their own in a boardroom and look equally at home dangling from a helicopter amid bazooka fire. Crowe brings no-nonsense gravitas to hostage negotiator Terry Thorne, who works to free an American man (David Morse) abducted by guerrilla rebels in South America. The film lacks a little flair, but Crowe is great – and gets to keep his Aussie accent, delivering fun lines like: “I do this for a living, mate.”
13. The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)
“Bring me the pig,” Crowe’s Vespa-riding Father Gabriele Amorth growls in the opening scene of this pulpy horror-adventure and unapologetically operatic affair. The story trots out a possessed child (always the kids; why don’t demons pick quiet elderly people?) and a clutch of church secrets. Crowe brings a wry, self-aware glint to the film, inviting us in on the glorious absurdity.
12. Boy Erased (2018)
When we watch Rusty deliver a sermon from behind the pulpit in Joel Edgerton’s powerful drama about a young man (Lucas Hedges) subjected to gay conversion therapy, you don’t doubt him for a second. His character – the boy’s father, Marshall Eamons, a Baptist preacher – feels fully inhabited from his very first scene. It’s an unsettlingly nuanced performance: Marshall’s poise, swagger and ingrained prejudices land exactly where they’re meant to hurt.
11. Nuremberg (2025)
Crowe is the main attraction in this decent legal drama which is dotted with sizzling moments. James Vanderbilt’s handling of the trial of Hermann Göring (Crowe) and other high-ranking Nazis is stagey, histrionic and very “for your consideration”, but Crowe smashes it out of the park with an electrically interesting portrait of evil.
10. The Loudest Voice (2019)
The fat suit, bald wig and prosthetic jowls necessary to make Crowe resemble Fox News founder and conservative firebrand Roger Ailes give his performance in this juiced-up TV series a ring of novelty but Crowe prowls the role with intensity and an oily, hypnotic menace. This is another character who could have been a cartoon monster but instead gets layers and depth.
9. L.A. Confidential (1997)
Our man sports one hell of a glare in Curtis Hanson’s neo-noir crime drama, inhabiting a role he does so well: the bad cop with moral dimensions. Officer Wendell “Bud” White is a bit of a meathead – and knows it (“I’m just the guy they bring in to scare the other guy shitless”) – but Crowe makes him feel wholly real, pitted against Guy Pearce’s highly principled detective, Edmund Exley.
8. The Nice Guys (2016)
The odd-couple comedic chemistry between Crowe and Ryan Gosling – playing an enforcer and a private eye respectively – is irresistible in this hugely entertaining 70s-set action-comedy from Shane Black. “I don’t have a job title, I’m not in the Yellow Pages,” Crowe says early on, exaggeratedly gruff. He never seems to work hard for laughs and the role is a fun departure for him, though still a riff on his trademark “brute with heart”.
7. Noah (2014)
Rusty’s performance as the titular biblical figure keeps Darren Aronofsky’s surreal epic grounded, even as it careens into wild territory – for instance depicting angels as rock monsters and of course recounting a rather sensational apocalyptic narrative. He does a fantastic job stripping Noah of baggage, finding the human inside the legend, and making stiff, archaic dialogue sound perfectly natural, like “fire consumes all, water cleanses” and “be fruitful and multiply”.
6. The Sum of Us (1994)
Adapted from David Stevens’s classic Australian play, The Sum of Us features a beautifully layered Crowe as Jeff, a sexually confident 20-something gay man supported by his affectionate and jovial father (Jack Thompson). It’s a pitch-perfect performance – warm, cheeky, hot-blooded – that deepens when his dad suffers a stroke and loses the ability to speak. Jeff responds exactly as he was raised to: with unwavering love and acceptance.
5. 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
James Mangold’s cracking western follows Crowe’s outlaw, Ben Wade, whom authorities capture and attempt to transport to jail – which is no easy feat, given Wade’s knack for survival and his gang being in hot pursuit. This guy is a rare breed of gunslinger: violent, unflappable, erudite. He’s a little like Hannibal Lecter on horseback – always the smartest and most dangerous person in the room (or outside it, for that matter).
4. The Insider (1999)
Michael Mann’s ever-timely journalism drama excels at depicting a man embattled on all sides, with Crowe at the centre of the storm as tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand. He’s a melting pot of emotions and competing motivations: volatile, compromised and increasingly aware he can’t both protect his family and take a stand against big tobacco. Crowe’s brilliantly textured performance, like the film, projects a complex, unsentimental view of heroism.
3. Romper Stomper (1992)
Romper Stomper arrived like a thunderclap and came with what was then a shocking, unbelievable message: neo-Nazis still exist. Nowadays, tragically, that’s no revelation, though the film’s ferocious impact remains. None of Crowe’s characters have matched the raw intensity of Hando, the skinhead leader of a Melbourne gang in Geoffrey Wright’s unshakably visceral film, which dares us not to look away from evil.
2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Who wouldn’t want to join the crew of a grand old ship captained by Russell Crowe? The healthcare package aboard HMS Surprise leaves something to be desired, granted, but the leadership is exemplary. In Peter Weir’s last great film, Rusty navigates choppy waters, literal and otherwise, dealing with surprise attacks from the French and the fluctuating spirits of his crew. He gives Captain Jack Aubrey – famed for making daring decisions – both charm and flinty resolve. And he can even whip out the violin for a cheeky wee hoedown.
1. Gladiator (2000)
Crowe’s gift for imbuing volcanic alpha males with emotional depth has never been on finer display than in Ridley Scott’s exalted swords-and-sandals epic. It’s grand in every way but Crowe draws it inward as Maximus Decimus Meridius, a fallen general-turned-enslaved fighter propelled by vengeance. The star gets operatic battle scenes and grandstanding dialogue (“Are you not entertained?”) but keeps us intimately close to the man. The definitive movie gladiator.
