Russell Crowe reveals why he thought original Gladiator script was ‘absolute rubbish’

The Hollywood star has surprised many after revealing his thoughts on the Ridley Scott-directed blockbuster that won him an Oscar.

It was the film that won him an Academy Award and brought him success in Hollywood in the years that followed. But Russell Crowe says he almost walked out on filming Gladiator in 2000 because of its “absolute rubbish” script.

Recounting his experience on the blockbuster to Vanity Fair, the 59-year-old revealed he had hesitations about taking on the lead role of Maximus, namely because the original script was just not up to par.

“Gladiator is my 20-somethingth movie, so I was confident about my abilities as a leading man,” he said. “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.”

Russell Crowe admits he wasn’t a fan of the original Gladiator script.

The actor played a Roman-General-turned-gladiator out to avenge the death of his family.

The New Zealand-born actor explained that the script went on tangents about chariots and gladiator endorsement deals 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 said.

Crowe said he seriously considered quitting the movie, but it was his “continued conversations” and “faith” in director Ridley Scott that made him stay 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 started filming, he and Scott agreed on just “21 pages” of 110-off-pages of the film’s script, “so we had a long way to go.”

Gladiator went on to win five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe’s performance as a former Roman-General-turned-gladiator, who is out to avenge the murder of his family.

Russell Crowe went on to win an Oscar for Best Actor in 2001 for his role in the film.

Russell Crowe says he’s ‘slightly jealous’ he’s not involved in the sequel due out in 2024.

No doubt the script changes helped make the film the classic it is today, with the action-drama now getting a sequel in 2024, two decades later. Scott will be at the helm again as director, but Normal People actor Paul Mescal will take on the lead role.

In a recent interview with Collider, Crowe said he felt “slightly jealous” about not being involved in 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 told 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.”

Originally published as Russell Crowe reveals why he thought original Gladiator script was ‘absolute rubbish’