"You can take what you get out of doing amateur theatre or whatever, but until you see On the Waterfront or A Streetcar Named Desire, you kind of realise something did shift greatly in cinema performance."
Crowe gets to impart plenty of interplanetary paternal advice to his screen son in the new movie. It's not the first time he's played mentor to Henry Cavill, whom he first met as a teenage extra on Crowe's 2000 movie Proof of Life.
"He'd ask me about acting and was very serious. I think that touched me a bit and I knew in that moment I should talk to him straight. I suppose it's a matter of recognising somebody from the same tribe," he says. "I had been that kid many times when I asked a person something and really needed an honest answer.
"I told him it was a difficult gig and that nobody would do him any favours but that no matter how ludicrous he thought his dreams might be, if they were real, he should pursue them."
Crowe sent a care package when he returned to Australia after the Proof of Life shoot. "Henry was in boarding school, and I imagined that if you're in those circumstances, receiving a package in the mail must be one of the greatest things in life. So, I sent him a Wallabies jersey, which is always good for an Englishman, an All Blacks jersey, some Vegemite, and a photograph from Gladiator, and signed it, 'Dear Henry. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'."
Crowe's eventual reunion with Cavill wasn't what he expected. "When we started at the gym together, month after month he didn't say boo about that whole experience. Didn't say a word about how we met," he says, "And it was nagging at me all the time. Then one day out of the blue, Henry repeated the words back to me, 'If you become an actor, they treat you like shit, but they pay you pretty well'. Crowe laughs. "That is unmistakably my level of comedy."
Crowe's Man of Steel role has him in a cosmic conflict with Krypton rebel leader General Zod, but he had slightly more intimate concerns. "My biggest battle was with some of the costumes I had to wear. They were very restrictive. They looked slick but it was a battle to move.
"I will say that Zack Snyder never mentioned anything about the spandex before we did the deal," he laughs. "I had to wear four layers of spandex. It put me into a mild panic."
- TimeOut, additional reporting AAP