Mr Masterful

You can smell the fear among the journalists waiting to interview Russell Crowe this smoggy morning in downtown Los Angeles. The 39-year-old actor has loathed the media since achieving stardom in 1997's

Where does all that apparently bottomless anger come from? Perhaps there's a clue in Crowe's repudiation of his public image in this month's Vanity Fair. 'You have to be a bloke if you want to live in Australia, but I'm not really a bloke, you know? I didn't grow up the high school jock. I'm a very interior person. These roles I've played that have a kind of physical element to them, they're all great achievements. Because I never really was a very physical person.'

This may explain why, although we are here to discuss Crowe's most physical role yet, as Captain Jack Aubrey in the $150 million seafaring epic Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, we don't delve into how he overcame chronic seasickness - I think I inherited it from my mother' - beat his fear of heights to climb a ship's mast, making studio executives clutch their chests when they caught the dailies, or how he nearly drowned during a storm sequence when the wind machines ran amok. His PR handlers have informed us that, after a year off, their client is kinder, nicer, softer, and he does seem more affable than usual, although ask the wrong question and he's quick to turn.

Enquire if he enjoyed his sabbatical, for instance, and you get this: 'Listen, mate, can we talk about the movie for a few minutes, if that's OK with you?' Crowe is, however, thinner. Dressed in slimming black, he gave up drinking to drop 49lb to play a boxer in preparation for his next film, Cinderella Man. Shooting Master And Commander, he tipped the scales at a whopping 17 stone. 'My director, Peter Weir, initially thought I should be larger, but my frame meant I couldn't be as nimble and surefooted as Peter wanted.' His tone makes it clear he doesn't want to go there.

He's much more comfortable talking about how he and co-star Paul Bettany (who also played his imaginary friend in A Beautiful Mind) sweated to become convincing violin and cello players for the below-deck scenes. The subtext is that this is the real Russell, the lad one primary school teacher called 'a lovely, sensitive little boy', the Russell who's closer to tortured mathematician John Nash than to Coliseum avenger Maximus Decimus Meridius. 'She's a very harsh mistress, the violin. Nothing has been more difficult than learning to play the violin - not tiger fights, helicopter stunts or gunfights. But I made a pact with myself that I wouldn't pretend. So I practiced for 18 to 25 hours a week and had three different teachers.'

It is the perfectionist talk Hollywood loves. Already there's the sort of Oscar buzz that is becoming de rigueur for a Crowe production.

Of his last six movies, he's been nominated for Best Actor three times, and won once, for Gladiator. Crowe will chat about his career, but remains prickly about anything else. Forget mentioning Meg Ryan, whom he wooed on the set of Proof Of Life, only to dump a few months later. 'I don't think about that stuff. It's not on my radar.' Crowe snaps, then is off and running about the deceitful press. 'I don't know why people bother bullshitting about me. I don't bother to address it. What am I going to say? "You're full of shit, mate." Quite frankly, if I was the creation that is portrayed in the media, then the best directors in the world wouldn't want to work with me.'

Still, if Crowe balks at his bad-boy reputation, he seems equally (and oddly) impatient with the notion that marriage to long-term, on-off girlfriend Danielle Spencer has mellowed him. Ditto impending fatherhood. Spencer is expecting their first child, a boy, in January. Crowe appears torn between the macho image and the altogether more gentle heart he hints he truly is. So much so he can contradict himself in the course of a thought: 'I don't know what this whole marriage-fatherhood-change-you-as-a-person-thing is about.

If I had changed, Danielle would have chucked me out. That's not why she married me. But I'm enjoying watching my wife flower. I very much enjoy being a married man and having conversations at 3am while I make her a cup of tea because the baby's kicking and she can't sleep.'

Could it be precisely this ambivalence which makes Crowe such a riveting presence on screen and such hot copy off it? It would certainly take a brave soul to suggest it to his face. An innocent question about what he hopes his son will inherit from his famous father provokes this response: 'I don't know how to answer that. Danielle and I don't have a checklist.' Pause. Scowl. 'But I do know that I hope he doesn't inherit having to talk to journalists.'