Crowe started his career as a contributing editor and writer at Rolling Stone magazine in 1973 where he covered numerous rock bands on tour.

Crowe directed his seminal work, the autobiographical film Almost Famous (2000), which is loosely based on his early career as a teen writer for Rolling Stone.

He has directed the music documentaries Pearl Jam Twenty (2011) and The Union (2011), produced David Crosby: Remember My Name (2019), and created the Showtime series Roadies (2016).

[5] His mother, Alice Marie (née George), "was a teacher, activist, and all-around live wire who did skits around the house and would wear a clown suit to school on special occasions.

[11] Crowe began writing for the school newspaper and by the age of 13 was contributing music reviews for an underground publication, The San Diego Door.

[citation needed] On a trip to Los Angeles, he met Ben Fong-Torres, the editor of Rolling Stone, who hired him to write for the magazine.

During this time, Crowe interviewed Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Eagles, Poco, Steely Dan, members of Led Zeppelin, Stephen Bishop and more.

Because Crowe was a fan of the 1970s hard rock bands that the older writers disliked, he landed a lot of major interviews.

Simon & Schuster gave him a contract, and he moved back in with his parents and enrolled as Dave Cameron at Clairemont High School in San Diego.

Crowe focused on six main characters: a tough guy, a nerd, a surfer dude, a sexual sophisticate, and a middle-class brother and sister.

He chronicled their activities in typical teenage settings—at school, at the beach, and at the mall, where many of them held afterschool jobs—and concentrated on details of their lives that probed into the heart of adolescence.

The reviews of Fast Times at Ridgemont High were positive, and the film ended up launching the careers of some previously unknown actors, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Eric Stoltz, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Anthony Edwards, Nicolas Cage, Forest Whitaker, and Sean Penn.

Following that success, Crowe wrote the screenplay for 1984's The Wild Life, the pseudo-sequel to Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Brooks executive produced Crowe's first directing effort, 1989's Say Anything..., about a young man pining away for the affections of the seemingly perfect girl.

During production, bands like Nirvana were not yet national stars, but by the time the soundtrack was released, their song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had to be cut from the film because it was too costly to buy the rights.

Crowe had signed members of Pearl Jam, shortly before their burgeoning, nationwide success, to portray Dillon's fictional band 'Citizen Dick'.

Tim Appelo wrote in Entertainment Weekly, "With ... an ambling, naturalistic style, Crowe captures the eccentric appeal of a town where espresso carts sprout on every corner and kids in ratty flannel shirts can cut records that make them millionaires.

[17][18] Maguire is fired after having a moral revelation, writing and distributing a mission statement calling for sincere service to the athletes and less money for the agency.

[19] Renée Zellweger appeared as an accountant who sets aside her job security to follow Maguire's charismatic moral aspiration in both work and love.

Digging into his most personal memories, Crowe used a composite of the bands he had known to come up with Stillwater, the emerging act that welcomes the young journalist into its sphere, then becomes wary of his intentions.

In addition, Crowe took a copy of the film to London for a special screening with Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

[25][26][27] Vanilla Sky is a remake of Alejandro Amenabar's 1997 Spanish film Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes).

[28] In 2005, Crowe directed the romantic tragicomedy Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst, which opened to mixed reviews,[29] scoring 45 on Metacritic, the same as his previous effort, Vanilla Sky.

With production on Aloha delayed, Crowe set his next feature, the family comedy-drama We Bought a Zoo, based on Benjamin Mee's memoir of the same name.

[30][31] The book's story follows Mee, who buys and moves into a dilapidated zoo (now Dartmoor Zoological Park) in the English countryside.

Looking for a fresh start along with his seven-year-old daughter and his troubled fourteen-year-old son, he hopes to refurbish the zoo and run it and to give his children what he calls an "adventure".

[32] It was announced in early June 2008 that Crowe would return to write and direct his seventh feature film, initially titled Deep Tiki and Volcano Romance, set to star Ben Stiller and Reese Witherspoon, and to be released by Columbia Pictures.

The documentary features musicians Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Booker T. Jones, steel guitarist Robert Randolph, Don Was and a 10-piece gospel choir who all appear on the album with John and Russell.

[36] In an interview with Pearl Jam on March 9, 2009, bassist Jeff Ament said that their manager Kelly "has had the idea to do a 20-year anniversary retrospective movie so he's been on board with [film director] Cameron Crowe for the last few years.