“What the f*ck is all this?”: Russell Crowe Considered Leaving His Oscar Winning Movie After Disappointment With Its Shooting
Russell Crowe has been in the Hollywood entertainment industry for more than two decades and has starred in some great movies such as American Gangster, The Insider, A Beautiful Mind, and The Quick and the Dead. One of his most successful movies is Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, released in 2000.
Gladiator is an epic historical film that features Russell Crowe as the lead character Maximus Decimus. Despite the initial doubts that the movie wouldn’t be winning any Academy Awards, it went on to be nominated for 12, making it the movie with the highest number of Academy Award nominations of 2001. However, there was a point of time during the movie’s shooting when Crowe seriously doubted its potential.
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Russell Crowe Doubted Gladiator Would Be Received Well
Right behind Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 2, Gladiator was the second highest-grossing movie of 2000. Russell Crowe had joined the movie even before its script was completely written. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Crowe shed light on the behind-the-scenes of the movie and how it was almost ruined. He said:
And it had all these sort of strange sequences. One of them was about chariots, you know, and how famous gladiators – and this is all true, right – used certain types of chariots and some famous gladiators had endorsement deals with products for olive oil and things like that, and that’s all true, but it’s just not going to ring right to a modern audience. They’re going to go, ‘What the f*ck is all this?’
Furthermore, the Les Misérables actor said that although Gladiator had a great concept, its script was “absolutely rubbish” as he was doubtful of the world surrounding him. As it turns out, Crowe had nothing to worry about considering how successful the movie became with a plethora of accolades under its belt including Crowe’s win in the Best Actor category of the Academy Awards.
Russell Crowe Considered Ditching Ridley Scott’s Gladiator
The instances of actors abandoning projects are rare but not unheard of, especially when they are doubtful of the projects’ success. Russell Crowe had his doubts about Gladiator turning out well so, he considered completely ditching the movie but didn’t get through with that decision, and fortunately, that decision turned out to be the best for him.
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The State of Play actor’s issues were clearly recognized by director Ridley Scott who did his best to ease Crowe’s worries. Crowe said:
It was my continued conversations with Ridley [Scott] that sort of gave me faith. He said to me at one point in time, ‘Mate, we’re not committing anything to camera that you don’t believe in 100%.’ So when we actually started that film, we had 21 pages of script that we actually agreed on.
So, Gladiator‘s making was a rather unconventional process as Scott went on to change the direction of the film throughout production. It is unusual and surprising that the movie did so well despite a poor script, and most of the credit goes to Ridley Scott who not only convinced Crowe but also changed the movie’s whole trajectory.
Source: Vanity Fair
