It seems those feelings have struck a chord with Australian audiences: In its nine weeks in Cinemas here Sum, the warm and witty story of a straight meat-and-potatoes dad (played by Jack Thompson) and his footy-playing, beer-chugging gay son (Crowe), has taken around $3 million and is due to open, with a 110 city release, in the US in February. Also opening then is The Quick and the Dead, a western in which Crowe, 30, plays "an ace gunfighter turned preacher man" alongside Tinseltown heavyweights Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman.

"It was certainly different being on a $35 million studio film," says Crowe. "It was an incredible cast. There were lots of (actors) with names I didn't know but I'd go, "There's the father from Splendour in the Grass!' Remember the big black guy from Spartacus? He's like f*****n' 80 million years old now, but he's still got the same face!"

But while Crowe's track record is undeniably dazzling - in the past four years, he has appeared in 12 movies - the man himself is low key. "People see the surface level of what's happened, but there've been another hundred films that I wanted to do and they got somebody else. There's been a lot of bad luck as well."

One stunning example of that is the thriller Red Rain, a Rosa Colosimo production which began shooting in Italy in September, 1993 only to fold in the second week. "Me and Jennifer got the nod that we'd better hightail it out of the hotel because the police would be coming", a distinctly unamused Crowe recounts. "They hadn't been paying the bills and there was no money. It was cool: I got to meet Jen - she's a really nice girl - and I got to go to Italy." According to Melbourne-based Colosimo, who is engaged in legal action against the funding body, the Film Finance Croporation, "Russell was paid a fair percantage of his salary. I hope if I win the court case, I'll be able to pay him out in full."

Happily for Crowe, the Rain experience is a one-off exception and business, as it were, is booming. In March, For the Moment, a Canadian made "eight Kleenex" war-time weepie starring Crowe as an Australian pilot, was screened at Canadian and US film festivals with raves in the Hollywood trade bible Variety for Crowe's "stardom-in-the-making lead performance". Rough Magic, a mystical thriller co-starring Crowe and Bridget Fonda, wrapped in the US in August. Producers of Crowe's planned project Pacific Meltdown, in which he will play the lead and contribute to the script, hope to have the funding to film in Queensland next year. In the meantime he's trying for "one film in particular - a US Romper Stomper, so to speak. If I get it, I'll be extremely lucky."

Luck, it seems, is something Crowe thinks about a lot. "People look at me now and they see success, but I'm thinking. "Wow, it's going to be really weird when they look at me and see failure!"

He shrugs. "The bigger you get, the bigger the drop," he says dismissively. "But hey, I'm just telling stories, folks!"