‘Unrecognizable’ Russell Crowe Is ‘Getting Annoyed With the Focus on His Weight’

He’ll always be a handsome man, but Russell Crowe is looking nearly “unrecognizable” these days. On Thursday, November 7, the star was spotted out and about in Sydney, Australia’s Kingsford Smith Airport — but if you didn’t know who he was, you might have overlooked him entirely. After putting on weight to play Roger Ailes, the late chairman and CEO of Fox News, in the Showtime TV series The Loudest Voice, he hardly looks like himself. Unfortunately for the Australian actor, an insider told In Touch he’s getting tired of comments about his body.

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“Russell is getting annoyed with the focus on his weight,” a source exclusively told In Touch about the 55-year-old star. “He considers it part of his job. He’s no Christian Bale, who seems to gain and then lose the weight overnight, but he’s told his friends not to worry; he’ll get back down to fighting weight eventually. He’d really like to tell people to mind their own business,” they said. “He’s in no rush.”

He also doesn’t mind the physical transformation. “Russell loves acting, he loves transforming mentally and physically into a character,” the inside continued. For him, it’s part of the craft — but there are some down-sides to changing your physical appearance so drastically in such a short amount of time. “He’s learned that the older you get, the harder it is to get your old body back.”

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And he’s made some major changes. “Russell has famously gone from a sexy, buffed out gladiator to having the ultimate dad bod in his last few films,” the source explained. “He’s really unrecognizable. He likes to joke that he’ll sacrifice whatever it takes for a good character, like eating more to play the late Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, but the road back to leading man status — on or off the screen — is a battle. The older you get, the harder it is.”

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Now that he’s moving onto other works like The Georgetown Project, the movie he’s currently filming, we may see a whole new side of the star. Until then, he just may want to enjoy the relative anonymity that allows him to walk through the airport without being mobbed by fans. Check out the gallery below to see how the star has changed.