Australian audiences will get to see Russell Crowe next month in one of his most challenging roles yet: as Hitler’s right-hand man, Hermann Göring, in the film Nuremberg. At 61, with an Oscar, two Golden Globes, four AACTAs and a BAFTA under his belt, Crowe needs little further validation of his acting chops, except perhaps when it comes to playing characters with accents.

In 2022, Crowe opted for a campy, Greek-accented Zeus in the Taika Waititi-directed Thor: Love and Thunder. While the film was intentionally over the top, The Age‘s Karl Quinn compared Crowe’s character to Mark Mitchell’s now-dated Con the Fruiterer: “Zeus promising to destroy the world in ‘a cuppla days’.” Crowe had also shot each scene in a British accent, for which he studied with Sydney voice coach Victoria Mielewska, but test audiences preferred his Greek rendition. Mielewska diplomatically refrains from commenting on the final cut, while Waititi has since maintained, “Russell was right all along.”

The following year, Crowe played a “ludicrously” accented Italian priest in The Pope’s Exorcist. The New York Post‘s Johnny Oleksinski wrote: “If the horror doesn’t have you screaming, his Italian accent will.”

Back in 2010, BBC interviewer Mark Lawson asked Crowe about playing Robin Hood with a “slight Irish accent”. Crowe shot back, “You’ve got dead ears, mate.”

“Not every actor can pull off a convincing accent,” concedes Mielewska. “It’s risky, there’s anxiety. I’ve seen good actors walk away from great roles out of fear.” Kate Winslet studied with Mielewska to pull off a faultless Australian accent in 2015’s The Dressmaker; apparently, it’s a difficult one for actors to master. “This accent is so hard,” US actor Kaitlyn Dever said on the Skip Intro with Krista Smith podcast in March about playing wellness fraudster Belle Gibson for the acclaimed Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar. She worked full-time with Melbourne dialect coach Jenny Kent to get her mouth around seemingly simple words such as “No”.

Crowe spent five years preparing for Göring, even learning a little German. However, aside from a few phrases, the majority of his dialogue is delivered in English with a thick Bavarian accent, which develops as his character does. Crowe starts off sounding almost harmless and convivial, reminiscent of Hogan’s Heroes′ Sergeant Schultz. However, by the film’s end, he’s morphed into a convincingly deranged war criminal. Crowe nails it.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald,The Age and Brisbane Times.