‘Absolute rubbish’: Why Russell Crowe nearly quit Gladiator

It was the movie that gained him an Academy Award and introduced him success in Hollywood within the years that adopted. But Russell Crowe says he virtually walked out on filming Gladiator in 2000 due to its “absolute rubbish” script.

Recounting his expertise on the blockbuster to Vanity Fair, the 59-year-old revealed he had hesitations about taking over the lead position of Maximus, specifically as a result of the unique script was simply lower than par.

Gladiator is my 20-somethingth movie, so I was confident about my abilities as a leading man,” he stated. “What I wasn’t confident about with Gladiator was the world that was surrounding me. At the core of what we were doing was a great concept, but the script, it was rubbish. Absolute rubbish. And it had all these sort of strange sequences.”

The New Zealand-born actor defined that the script went on tangents about chariots and gladiator endorsement offers that Crowe believed was “just not gonna ring right to a modern audience”.

“They’re gonna go, ‘What the f**k is all this?’ The energy around what we were doing was very fractured,” he stated.

Crowe stated he critically thought of quitting the film, but it surely was his “continued conversations” and “faith” in director Ridley Scott that made him keep on set.

“He said to me at one point in time, ‘Mate, we’re not committing anything to camera that you don’t believe in 100 per cent,’” Crowe recalled.

Crowe revealed that when he began filming, he and Scott agreed on simply “21 pages” of 110-off-pages of the movie’s script, “so we had a long way to go.”

Gladiator went on to win 5 Oscars, together with Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe’s efficiency as a former Roman-General-turned-gladiator, who’s out to avenge the homicide of his household.

No doubt the script adjustments helped make the movie the traditional it’s right this moment, with the action-drama now getting a sequel in 2024, 20 years later. Scott will probably be on the helm once more as director, however Normal People actor Paul Mescal will tackle the lead position.

In a current interview with Collider, Crowe stated he felt “slightly jealous” about not being concerned within the sequel, given it was such a “huge experience” in his life.

“I’m sure that [there have] been things on [Scott’s] mind for the last 24 years that he thinks he can probably do better,” Crowe informed the outlet.

“He’s going to want to go back into that world and create something [on] the same level of spectacle as the first one.”

Source: www.news.com.au