Showing user role in author.php

Hi there, just wondering if anyone knows how to bring up the user’s role in the author.php template page?

I have done some reading and I see there is this:

$curauth->user_level;

..which shows the author level numerically. I would much prefer the page to show the author’s role as a word — eg, Administrator, Subscriber, etc.

I also wonder if there is a way to display the author’s last comments and the author’s numeric total of posts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! ??