The comment comes during a conversation about his role as Geoff*, the loving son to Jack Thompson's widower dad, Harry. By the same token, playing a gay young man - complete with love interest in Greg (John Polson) - is not a political statement for Crowe, "or any sort of crusade. The bottom line is, playing a homosexual character is a totally valid thing to do. This is just another story from the human condition and that's what the job's supposed to be, right?"

The Sum of Us revolves around the relationship between Geoff* and his tug-boat** captain dad, who is so eager to accept Geoff's sexuality that he tends to go overboard and scare off Geoff's lovers. The film is at once touching and funny, sad and revealing. For Crowe, 25***, it is another showcase performance

TATTOOS: To many Crowe is still Hando, the skinhead in Romper Stomper (Geoff Wright's controversial film), with tattoos on his fingers, a swastika on his wall and a huge chip on his shoulder. But his vastly different characters in The Silver Brumby, Proof, Hammers Over the Anvil, Spotswood (The Efficiency Expert), The Crossing and Brides of Christ suggest an actor with plenty of range. Five best actor and once best supporting actor awards (from the Variety Club, the Motion Pictures Exhibitors Association, the Film Critics Circle and the Australian Film Institute) tend to confirm it. Yet, after Romper Stomper he was immediately offered half a dozen roles with shaven heads. He threw the scripts in the garbage bin, went off to Adelaide and played a horse trainer who falls desperately in love with Charlotte Rampling in Hammers Over the Anvil.

Then along came producer Hal McElroy and the script for the Sum of Us, from the play by Australian David Stevens which had already proved itself on stages around the world. It offered him the chance of a complete contrast to anything he had done before.

"Playing extreme characters or characters that are hard to portray or things that challenge you personally ... that's keeping your edge. Because you don't know what you're doing. If you do things that are too easy for you, that require no real thought process or whatever, or where the script or the story has no subtlety, I just get bored. I get really, really bored. The more variety the better."

What better variety than his next role for producer Jeremy Thomas (who made The Last Emperor) and director Clare Peploe, which he has just finished shooting in Mexico. In Rough Magic, set in 1950, he plays an ex-Raider Marine (tough guys like the commandos) who is working as a stringer for the Los Angeles Times in Mexico. His co-star is Bridget Fonda, "who plays a magician running away from an arranged marriage", says Crowe. "And, of course, we fall in love. Well, actually, we rise in love. There is a sex scene in which we are levitating. That'll be something ... "

A levitating sex scene with a Hollywood star is a long way from his first leading role as the star-crossed lover Johnny just four years ago in The Crossing. He had just come from a supporting role in Blood Oath, where he found a generous mentor in Bryan Brown. But it was working with director George Ogilvie that gave Crowe his test by fire, and lasting admiration for Ogilvie.

"With a director like George Ogilvie, who is basically saying to you, 'I'm not going to control what is coming out from you'...you have a director who is not saying to you, 'Here's the definitive how to do it'. You have a director who's saying, 'Show me how you can do it. Show me where you can find these qualities.'"

HOLLYWOOD: The fact that Crowe is Russell Crowe's most active promoter has helped him onto the Hollywood ladder. He made several trips to Los Angeles in 1992 and 1993 for meetings with agents, directors and producers. They saw his work and recognised his star potential. He made his first big-league film earlier this year The Quick and the Dead co-starring with Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone.

He describes the film as a "heightened Western with biblical overtones; I'm there because I have business with Gene." For it Crowe took on a Texan accent, tinged with a bit of Southern sibilance. "It doesn't interest me to pretend to be an American to succeed, but I have no objection to playing an American character in an American film. But I come from here. Like Judy Davis...you can play any character and they know where you come from."

For his role as Cort, the gunslinging minister, Crowe got his hands torn and bloodied while mastering the gun. Typically, he had to perfect it, scoring 48 out of 50 at the Tuscon competition ranges with the sherrif's department SWAT team. He learnt to spin handguns, and even invented a diagonal spin they are still musing over back in Arizona.

Hackman, says Crowe, "plays the archetypal baddie, and he's a great actor. Full stop. Sharon is a woman with a mission. I think I owe my job to Sharon; she wanted me to do it. Sharon's under a hell of a lot of pressure right now, but (she is) an incredibly graceful person. We had a good, tight, working realtionship; discusseed things. She has a lot of other things going on in her life and it didn't stop for the film."

But with a crew of 240 and 21 prinicpal characters, movie-making took a turn for the bigger - if not easier. "I felt more isolated than I'd ever felt," he says. "It was hard going from the closeness of The Sum of Us to that."

Like so many of his jobs, that one was also away from home base - Sydney - and Crowe is the first to admit how much damage his career has done to his four-year relationship with actor Danielle Spencer.

"I don't know if it (the relationship) is surviving," he says wryly. "The trouble is the travel: there is no time to get a rhythm going and when we do, it's very painful to get on another plane. All I know is that sooner or later I've got to have some babies. I'm in baby mode like you would not believe."

REPRODUCE: Then, in mock Teutonic accent, to underecut his seriousness: "I wont issue! I vont to reproduce! Vill you help me?" This last is addressed to the world out there.

The very element of fame that reflects his career advance seems to be corroding his life. "Before, we used to be able to go to functions. Do a little bit of business; have a little bit of social fun.

"But now when I go to these functions, if I go, from the obligation to communicate with people, it's just a lot easier by myself. One of the main things we sorted out in our relationship ... is the fact that my success was affecting her, in that she would not want to come out with me because it would tip the balance (as far as her career was concerned).

"But the reason why I can say that sort of stuff clearly and concisely is I do understand it totally."

It is not mandatory for actors to be complex, but this one is. The resolute lover contrasts with the bad-boy image which, he claims, has been manufactured by "people who work for the papers".

"There isn't a director who wouldn't work with me again," he says in defence, then adds with a wicked snort, "... maybe a few producers ... they get the mouth."

While he works hard at promoting his career, he definitely does not like to play the game; "it's bulls**t" to pander to the publicity machine "or to dress a certain way for image." It is not any one thing, it is everything: he wants to retain his private, personal ethos, his attitudes, his belief systems, his relationsip with his god and his fate. Does he believe in some higher being directing things or is his life self-directed.

"I certainly didn't create this situation: it was Bryan Brown. Hah, no silly joke. No, I mean, I believe in a god if that's what you're saying. But I also believe that you make your own life.

"My cousins Martin and Geoff, the cricket players, have a great saying: 'Success is a matter of luck. Ask any loser.' When you put that in your mind doing your seventeenth 4 am call or some s**t on consecutive days, it sort of gets you out of the door and in the car on time.

"Because it's not a matter of luck; you make your own situations that come up. You know confidence is a usable commodity if it's not coupled with stupidity, and that doesn't mean that I haven't done some stupid f*****g things. I'm known for it. But at least I stand up there and say I can give it a shot, I can have a go at that.

"I'm work-obsessed. No, I don't conform, but I get on with what is required. And I do have an opinion...which may be a problem. But if people take the job seriously, there is no trouble with me. And I mean taking the job seriously, not taking myself seriously."

Crowe has been hotheaded, amusing and generous, but always unpredictable, and even rude and overbearing: "It's not arrogance: it's honesty. I'm chameleon-like ... on a beach I'm aquatic; in the bush, bush-like." He laughs. "I went through so many different things growing up (New Zealand-born, Sydney-bred since four, with roving publicans for parents). "I didn't live in a house till I was 14, so I'm very adaptable."

Tolerant of "just about everything", he admits there are a few exceptions. "People in this business try to play hidden agendas - you have to cut through that. And certain predictable, behavioural manipulation annoys and bores me (that means he gets angry). If you want to ask me something, ask me. Don't try deception; I'm good at picking it up. If you want to be my friend, be honest."

EMOTIONAL: Then there is the temper: "I don't sit and brood; it's a flash, then it's gone. I'm also very good at controlling it if necessary. But I'm also good at controlling it if necessary. But I'm a very emotional person and passionate about what I want to do. I can have the odd tantrum, but at least people know where they stand. It's got me into trouble, I'm sure, but there are positives for every negative."

There are also positives and negatives to being an actor in Australia: "Living here, you don't have the same options; here, I get one or two scripts a month. In Los Angeles, I can get 12 a week."

Crowe reads everything himself and despite the scarcity of suitable scripts, he prefers to work in Australia. But he does want to keep working. "The more you work, the better you get. There'll come a time when I won't feel the need to work continuously. But the last few years have been like final exams, like being put to the test."

Rapid indeed has been his rise: he sees it as progression. "I have to see another challenge," he says. "I've been reluctant to talk like this before: I didn't want to become a target. If I'd been direct about my ambitions ... people see a bare-faced admission of ambition as a threat. But you see, ambition gets confused with ego, so I step out of that game.

"The job is pretend, right? It's pretending. What you can't do is take pretend into the business. The business is real. Ego you use for a whole lot of things in this business.You've got to have it to protect yourself against all the people who're going to tell you that the job meant d**k. Yeah, I know the job means d**k. It's only entertainment. But think about the quality of life without it.

I do have a lot of other things going on. If for some reason I couldn't make another movie, I wouldn't shrivel up and die. I'd just focus my passion and commitment on something else."

NOTES BY: RSTCA
* Spelled "Jeff"
**Should be "Ferry-boat Captain"
*** Actual age at time of article: 30