Russell Crowe, 59 years old and without a beard, in a photo published on his X profile.
“The actor prepares.
First shave since 2019″.
The selfie of Russell Crowe (Wellington, New Zealand, 59 years old) published on his X account would be simply another of the many
selfies
that the actor shares with his almost three million followers (on a set, in a bar, on a train , sometimes selfies so closed that only one of his two very famous blue eyes appears in the image).
But there was a difference: he seemed, in him, much younger.
Without the wild, very white beard that has accompanied him in recent years, both in his personal life and in his films (he wore it, more tamed or less, in
The Pope's Exorcist
and in
Poker Face
), the actor seemed different, or at least, the one that was in another stage of his life.
Among the comments, the predictable: applause.
“Handsome!”, “How good it looks on you” or “You look 20 years younger” (others, with more restraint, only subtract 10).
Others were significant: “You have a great face to hide behind that beard.”
The appreciation is repeated, sometimes, in the form of a photograph, by users who simply leave a photo or
gif
of the actor in his first films from the nineties.
In his first film known to the general public,
Virtuosity
(1995), those two blue eyes lost in a face of pale makeup convinced the public that he was an android before a dialogue confirmed it, and in
LA Confidential
(1997) they were the gravitational centers of attacks of fury that even the seismographs felt.
Everything was in them, the beard was superfluous.
Facial hair was present in what was his introduction to mass popular culture: he sported a beard in
Gladiator
(2000), as a devastated military leader who has lost his family and does not think about shaving, and has done so in almost all his recent movies.
Russell Crowe, shaved and young, in 1990. The Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax Media via Getty Images)
Male facial hair is often in the news.
Justin Bieber's mustache was (as vilified as it was defended), it is every time someone shares a photo of Jimmy Kimmel without a beard, it is if Shawn Mendes grows it, it comes to Spanish politics when the beard becomes a part of the right-wing war of words and the term has its own label in tabloid media such as
The Mirror
.
There are areas that seem fertile ground for beards: according to the American edition of
GQ ,
late night
shows
are one of them, perhaps an element that encourages the codes of carefreeness and relaxation that one seeks in these spaces.
There is a very interesting type of beard because it is the one that most clearly and faithfully speaks of freedom, not just hair: the so-called
retirement beard
, that is, the retiree's beard.
It is white (because it catches its owner at a certain age), wild (because its owner does not have to appear on a set or in an office or serve anyone at the counter) and free.
It is the one that Crowe just removed, precisely, and not because he is retired (he is 59 years old and has several filmings planned), but, probably, because someone asked him to.
Russell Crowe in 'LA Confidential' thinking about what to break up next.
“You have to let the skin breathe and, from time to time, shave your beard and air it out,” explains stylist Clemente Blanco.
“Otherwise, the pore grows due to the weight of that hair pulling constantly and when one day you finally take it off, your skin has holes bigger than some of the apartments I've lived in.”
Crowe may have been advised to shave by both a film director and a dermatologist.
And a stylist?
“I don't think Russell Crowe's decision was at all a matter of tendency,” says Blanco.
The actor has shown that he has both style on the screen and carelessness off it: we have seen him heavier, more disheveled, more bearded or more gray.
He is, in his own way, the complete opposite of a Tom Cruise who fights fiercely against the effects of age: the external features of maturity and the absence of a body of normative beauty not only do not seem to scare him, in fact, the He greets effusively, as if he were Orson Welles.
The press took care of documenting their weight gains and losses, especially in the past decade, when talking about other people's bodies was much more common and better received than today.
Although in all cases it was due to the demands of the role: we saw Crowe weighing almost 120 kilos in
Two Good Guys,
from 2016, also in
Erased Identity,
from 2018. In 2019, when the series
The Loudest Voice
also forced him to look belly, he got tired of talking about it.
“I've stopped talking about how I gain or lose weight for a role,” he explained to
Entertainment Weekly,
“because then that becomes the entire article.
All people say, in the end, is that.
And it's boring."
(He Got It Right: The article was titled
Russell Crowe Prefers Not to Talk About Weight
.)
Russell Crowe this February at the Sanremo Festival.Mondadori Portfolio (Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Im)
Following his own rules, no one asks Crowe why he grew his beard or removed it.
According to Clemente Blanco, the face that currently triumphs for him is the clear one, the soft one, the one that can be seen in all its magnificence on the screen of a mobile phone while he speaks to millions of followers in a TikTok video.
The hipster
beard
was officially considered dead in 2014 and although certain websites (especially those that sell beard products) have been announcing its return since 2020 (although the protagonist of the pandemic was the mustache essay), it seems that Crowe is following fashion and leaving, without intending or desiring it, that the beard is finally free to grow, to be dyed white and also to disappear when it has to.
No codes, no readings.
It was just hair.
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