Calling himself Russ le Roq, actor Russell Crowe started his music career in New Zealand in his late teens. Born April 7, 1964, in Wellington, New Zealand, Crowe’s family emigrated to Australia when he was 4 years old. When Crowe was 14, his family moved back to New Zealand where he released several singles by his late teens as Russ Le Roq before moving back to Australia at 21 and jumping into theater, including early productions of The Rocky Horror Show.
By the mid-1990s, Crowe’s acting career began taking off in the U.S. after co-starring with Denzel Washington in Virtuosity and The Quick and the Dead with Sharon Stone. Crowe won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Gladiator in 2000 and also earned two more Oscar nominations for The Insider and A Beautiful Mind.
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Throughout the ’90s, Crowe also fronted Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts and released three albums with the Australian band before they split in 2005. For nearly 20 more years, Crowe continued making music in several projects with musician Alan Doyle formerly with the Canadian folk band Great Big Sea through their most recent project, Indoor Garden Party.
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See-sawing between acting and music, Crowe has showcased himself not only as a vocalist but as an accomplished songwriter, writing dozens of original songs over more than 40 years.
Here’s a deeper look behind just five songs written or co-written by Crowe throughout the decades.
1. “I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando,” Russ Le Roq (1982)
Written by Russell Crowe
Under the tutelage of friend and musician Tom Sharplin, while Crowe was living in New Zealand and managing the Auckland venue called The Venue, he released the singles “I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando,” “Pier 13”, and “Shattered Glass.” Unfortunately, none of the songs charted for Crowe.
The country-Western-tipped pop song is an homage to the legendary actor.
People say I’m crazy
But I don’t know
I just wanna be like Marlon, Marlon Brando
2. “What’s The Difference,” Roman Antix (1985)
Written by Russell Crowe
Still playing around with his persona Russ Le Roq, Crowe formed Roman Antix with friend Billy Dean Cochran. Credited as Le Roq, Crowe wrote the band’s harder rock single “What’s the Difference,” which was released in 1985 with the B-side “Shoulda’ Known Better.” Roman Antix later evolved into 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.
3. “Danielle” (1998)
Written by Russell Crowe
After Roman Antix disbanded in 1989, Crowe and Cochran formed 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. Fronted by Crowe, the band featured Cochran and Dave Wilkins on guitar, bassist Garth Adam, drummer Dave Kelly, and Stewart Kirwan on trumpet. The band released the EP Photograph Kills in 1995, along with three albums—Gaslight (1998), Bastard Life or Clarity (2001), and Other Ways of Speaking (2003)—before breaking up in 2005.
Crowe wrote and co-wrote the majority of the band’s songs, including the wistful closing track “Danielle” from their debut Gaslight.
My invisible partner in travel
You’re never in your seat
Always tryin’ to unravel the love we make
While I try to forget
Forgettin’s only temporary
In the middle of nothing
My eyes get weary I feel like crying
I don’t often do
Danielle, you know I love you
I got on my travelling face
I know the obstacles
Adapt to the pace
And the different shape
Of a bottle of beer
4. “Mr. Harris,” The Ordinary Fear of God (2005)
Written by Russell Crowe
Shortly after 30 Odd Foot of Grunts dissolved, Crowe teamed up with Great Big Sea’s Alan Doyle and formed The Ordinary Fear of God. The band, also featuring some of Crowe’s former 30 Odd Foot of Grunts bandmates, released one album My Hand, My Heart in 2005. The album features 12 folk-rock songs predominantly co-written by Crowe and Doyle along with a cover of Nick Cave‘s Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus track “Breathless.”
My Hand, My Heart also featured a tribute to the late Irish actor Richard Harris, whom Crowe befriended while working on Gladiator. Before Harris died in 2002 at 72, Crowe planned to attend a rugby match with his friend. Harris died before they could go, but Crowe attended the game and for the first time in 37 years, Ireland beat Australia. “I knew that Richard was there,” said Crowe of the experience in 2006.
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After the game, Crowe sat with a pint of Guinness and started writing “Requiem in the Idiom of a Football Song” for Harris, which he later retitled “Mr. Harris.”
“It was written on the back of a beer coaster,” said Crowe of his hymnal to Harris, “so it’s very short.”
Mr. Harris take the field
And play the 16th man
We’ll sing of Athenrae
And you’ll do all you can
For the green
The glorious green
The emerald green
Of Ireland’s pride
We’ll take the fight
We’ll never yield
For Irish sons have Irish hearts
5. “Sadness of a Woman,” Russell Crowe and Alan Doyle (2011)
Written by Russell Crowe
In 2011, Crowe and Doyle teamed up for The Crowe/Doyle Songbook Vol III, a collection of nine original songs along with the acoustic demo versions of each. The album also featured Danielle Spencer on guest vocals.
She comes for me in silence
When the night is closing down
And most have drawn the curtains on their eyes
She wears a lover’s face
That has never seen a dawn
It disappears in daylight
And I know it’s just a disguise
And she says, I… carry the sadness of a woman
A sadness only women understand
You… you’ll hear my footsteps
Louder when I’m gone
Just like every other man
6. “Out of Range,” Indoor Garden Party (2017)
Written by Russell Crowe, Alan Doyle, and Scott Grimes
By 2017, Crowe and Doyle formed Indoor Garden Party with Scott Grimes, Samantha Barks, and Carl Falk and released the album The Musical. The 13-track album was written by Crowe and Doyle with some tracks co-written with Grimes. All three co-wrote the uplifting “Out of Range.”
Start with the step you don’t want to take
He said
Walk with a purpose that you won’t forget
Meet yourself
When you leave those other dreams behind
Lift your eyes
There’s a fire in the sky
You thought had died 10,000 miles away
Filling in the gaps of my yesterdays
Waving to the other souls
Who have come this way
I will find a home
In June 2023 the band performed at the Teatro Comunale Nouveau in Bologna, Italy with proceeds from the concert benefitting people impacted by the floods in Emilia-Romagna in May of that year, which claimed 17 lives and displaced thousands of people within the Italian region.
Photo: Carlo Allegri/Getty Images
