Russell Crowe is going to be baptized

Russell Crowe decided to be baptized.

Photo: Russell Crowe is going to be baptized

"I'd like to do it this year," the Oscar-winning actor tells Men's Journal. "My mom and dad decided to let my brother and me make our own decisions about God when we got to the right age. I started thinking recently, `If I believe it is important to baptize my kids, why not me?"'

Crowe says the baptism will take place in the Byzantine chapel he built at his country ranch in Australia for his wedding to Danielle Spencer in 2003. The couple have two sons, 3-year-old Charlie and 1-year-old Tennyson.

"It is consecrated and everything," Crowe says in the magazine's December issue, now on newsstands. "Charlie was baptized there. And when Tennyson gets baptized there, I will, too."

Crowe - a reformed Aussie bad boy with a reputation for throwing temper tantrums - is more spiritual than people may think.

"I do believe there are more important things than what is in the mind of a man," he says. "There is something much bigger that drives us all. I'm willing to take that leap of faith."

Crowe, who won an Academy Award in 2001 for "Gladiator," co-stars with Denzel Washington in "American Gangster," a Universal Pictures release, which is now in theaters. His screen credits also include "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Insider."