After coming off the heels of his biblical movie Noah, Russell Crowe shaved off the good-guy bushy beard and in exchange added some gnarly scars to his face for his new bad-boy role.

Playing gang leader Pearly Soames in the fantasy movie Winter's Tale, Crowe, 48, stars alongside blockbuster heavyweight Will Smith as well as Matt Bomer and Collin Ferrell. The film, not set to hit theaters until 2013, is set in 19th Century and present-day Manhattan and revolves around a thief, a dying girl, and a flying white horse. That description doesn't tell us much, but it does tell us it's going to get weird.

Crowe tweeted from the set, writing: "5km row 35 mins weights ...spent most of the day scaring the bejaysus out of @alanthomasdoyle on #winterstale , but that's art for you."