‘The great actors are never easy.’
– Ridley Scott
‘There wasn’t a single person in Los Angeles who thought, “Oh, great!” I mean, everybody was kind of looking at me as though I was retarded, patting me on the back and saying, “Well, you know, L.A. Confidential was great, wasn’t it? At least you got to be in one good one…” And they were doing that all over town. I was like, “It’s Ridley Scott! Are you aware of what he’s capable of doing when it comes to creating a world?” Russell exclaimed to Empire magazine in a 2009 interview.
Gladiator was a film that should not have succeeded. Before it was released Variety said, ‘Even if the film is a big hit, it’s unlikely that the genre will come back in any significant way due to the high costs involved.’
How wrong they would be. Ridley Scott and Russell would resurrect the genre that had long been regarded as box-office poison – and it would be the blueprint for epics such as Troy, The Lord of the Rings and many others.
‘There were a lot of epic films made in the 1940s and 1950s in Hollywood,’ Scott said. ‘After that people just stopped going to them and there was this fear of making period films for the big audience. That was one of the big challenges, actually. You couldn’t make this film cheaply, but could you make it mainstream?’
He added, ‘Everybody was quietly sniggering that Roman epics of this nature went out 45 years ago and that it wouldn’t work. But I was absolutely confident about what I was going to do. Actually, I hadn’t been that confident since Alien.
‘It’s funny, but when you are charging down to the fence and you know you are going to jump, there is a different level of exhilaration. And yes, we had shortfalls – we were constantly behind on the writing – but we were never behind on the production.’
Gladiator would go on to be one the most loved films of all time, and Russell Crowe’s performance as the ousted Roman general Maximus would become iconic. However, like some of the world’s most popular movies, it was a rocky path from the page to the screen.
‘You know how they say an actor is the custodian of his role? Well, Russell is the bodyguard of his character. And he’s on duty 24 hours a day!’ So said Gladiator producer Douglas Wick. It was a part that would see Russell with broken bones, tendon injuries and several cuts and bruises.
Make no mistake, this was his biggest role and in typical fashion it was a role that he would seize and wring every ounce of effort, passion and patience needed from himself and others while making the film.
‘He would kill for his character,’ Wick added. ‘And Ridley would kill for the movie. So you have two very wilful people who are sometimes in disagreement.’
Russell recalled, ‘On the set of Gladiator, I didn’t have a very good relationship with the producers. I had a very good relationship with Ridley but the producers couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just chill out. The reason I wouldn’t chill out was because I knew that if I did fucking chill out, in those five minutes something stupid would now be in the movie. Like, they were trying to get me to do a love scene, and I’m saying to them, “What we’re doing here is about the vengeance of a man whose wife has been killed – you cannot have him stop off for a little bit of nookie on the way.”’
Ridley said of his reason for casting him, ‘Russell was really always my first choice. I noticed [him] maybe five years ago in Romper Stomper and I thought he was somebody worth watching. Once in a while somebody comes along, and he’s got all those little elements that accumulate together into making him.’
He added during the film’s premiere in Los Angeles, ‘I just thought Russell was fresh, a new generation – he’s a man definitely on his way up.’
Screenwriter David Franzoni would say, ‘A bunch of us were sitting in Steven’s [Spielberg’s] offices just jamming like jazz musicians, throwing names around. There were really only two crucial questions – who was going to direct and who was going to play the gladiator Maximus.
‘Well, we thought Mel Gibson, but we knew he wasn’t going to do it, and Russell was in our minds because we had all seen L.A. Confidential. And as soon as he signed on, there really wasn’t any further question about it. He was the guy.’
It was a part that Russell was very close to refusing. At that point he was working on the role of The Insider. ‘I was ignoring it because I was working. The two things weren’t coming together in my head. I thought it would be a load of crap – poncing around in a tunic,’ he is reported to have said.
During his make-up sessions for The Insider, he and Mann would chat about the film, the shooting for that day and so forth. Talk would inevitably extend to other things like future projects and so forth. And when Mann heard that Russell was thinking about turning down the part, the director said he would be crazy not to work with Scott. ‘You should take this Ridley Scott project more seriously,’ Mann told him. ‘It is my belief that Ridley Scott is in the top two per cent of shooters who existed in the power of the cinema.’
Scott was a hugely influential director thanks to films like Alien and Blade Runner. But his recent CV, which included the likes of G.I. Jane and White Squall, had led some to suggest that his powers to thrill audiences had waned. But after meeting with him, Russell was not only convinced by the director but put his faith in a film that really hadn’t got a working script at that moment.
‘Usually, I make my decision based on the script,’ he explained. ‘I make films that give me goose bumps when I read them. But that one I chose because of the concept. They called me and said, “We’re not going to show you the script, because we don’t think you’ll like it as it is. But here’s the idea: Ridley Scott, 185 AD, and at the beginning of the film, you are a Roman general.” That was enough to convince me to talk to Ridley because it spoke to my imagination and it was a chance to work with a guy Michael Mann calls one of the best film-makers in the history of cinema. And there they had me…’
The film came about through screenwriter Franzoni. He had been given a three-picture deal with DreamWorks studio based on the success of his screenplay Amistad with them. He mentioned the idea to Steven Spielberg, who asked three questions, Franzoni recalled. ‘“My Gladiator movie – it was about ancient Roman gladiators, not American, Japanese, whatever else?” “Yes,” I said. “Taking place in the ancient Coliseum?” “Yes.” “Fighting with swords and animals to the death and such?” “Yes.” “Great! Let’s make this movie.”’
Franzoni had had the idea for the film after reading the 1958 novel Those About to Die by Daniel Mannix. His screenplay had the protagonist Narcissus (as he was named then) become something of a superstar gladiator who is sponsored by the Golden Pompeii Olive Oil Company. An advertising slogan has the line: ‘Narcissus would kill for a taste of Golden Pompeii Olive Oil.’
‘My vision from the beginning was – this is not Ben Hur. It’s All Quiet on the Western Front,’ Franzoni said. ‘This is a grown-up movie about war, death and life in Rome – the life of a gladiator.’
However, he also went on to say, ‘I would have liked to have had more fun with this’ – a reference to the elimination of the Olive Oil Company endorsement.
John Logan wrote the second draft of the script, turning it into a more serious affair and changing Narcissus’ name to Maximus, before William Nicholson became the third writer on the film.
Why the changes? Gladiator Film and History author Martin Winkler notes that ‘it seems rather likely that it was Scott who turned the film from Franzoni’s socio-political, delightfully bizarre action film into a more sombre study of war, death and life in Rome.’
The screenplay would go through many more changes, even when the cameras were rolling. ‘Last-minute tweaking of the script and a new ending helped the production to stay on track,’ explained producer Douglas Wick.
Gladiator would be the start of a blossoming relationship between Russell and Scott. Almost immediately, Scott realised the full extent of working with an actor like Russell. Straight away, Russell expected to collaborate. ‘There were still details to hammer out. We sort of had to take the script apart to rebuild it into a narrative that we could agree upon, Ridley and I.’
Of course, it could be argued that a script with just a heavy concept and an outline is perfect for Russell, who is vocal about shortcomings in a script. He and Scott came up with several ideas to benefit the film. Russell remembered one of his school’s Latin mottos – Veritate et Virtute – and walked up to Scott with an idea.
‘I went to Ridley, ’cause I was looking for something instead of just saying, “Goodbye”. Something that felt gladiatorial… military… something that felt part of the time. And so I remembered that school motto and I converted it, and I said it to him in Latin. And he sort of raised an eyebrow, and he took his cigar out of his mouth and goes, “What’s that mean, then?” I said, “Strength and Honour,” and he goes, “Say that!”’
He added, ‘Possibly, a lot of the stuff that I have to deal with now in terms of my quote unquote “volatility” has to do with that experience. Here was a situation where we got to Morocco with a crew of 200 and a cast of 100 or whatever, and I didn’t have anything to learn. I actually didn’t know what the scenes were gonna be. We had, I think, one American writer working on it, one English writer working on it, and of course a group of producers who were also adding their ideas and then Ridley himself. And then, on the occasion where Ridley would say, “Look, this is the structure for it – what are you gonna say in that?” then I’d be doing my own stuff as well. And this is how things like, “Strength and honour” came up. This is how things like, “At my signal, unleash hell,” came up. Um, the name Maximus Decimus Meridius – it just flowed well, you know?’
One battle Russell would lose, however, was his belief that Maximus should have a Spanish accent. ‘I wanted to do Antonio Banderas with better elocution. But they wouldn’t let me. They didn’t want people to be distracted by it. But I felt when you say you’re Spanish 50 times in the course of the movie, I should be doing the accent. Instead, basically everybody in the movie does, you know, Royal Shakespeare Company two pints after lunch.’
‘Russell was not well behaved. He tried to rewrite the entire script on the spot,’ said an insider on the film. ‘Russell could act like a jerk but he’s an artist. He’d have his little meltdown and stomp off for half an hour.’
Whatever his actions on set, it’s clear that he came bounding into the film with a different outlook from action stars of the past – the Stallones, the Schwarzeneggers and the Willises.
‘Those kinds of action heroes leave me cold and it really gives me a pain in the arse,’ he said in an interview. ‘As far as they’re concerned, the big mistake is their monolithism. A good soldier is a man who can control his fear a little bit longer than the others. Those heroes are never scared of anything.
‘The approach to my character is different, more subtle. Maximus is a general. To help me playing the character, I gave him a past. The past of a nine-year-old kid who would have joined the Roman army, would have climbed one grade after another, would have been noticed during battles and would have become – and the film starts here – a general who is faithful to Marcus Aurelius. He’s a man who truly built his life, who has a wife and a son, vineyard and olive groves, who doesn’t give a damn about the fact that his amour is shining or not. He knows what is important and what is not, and his life is even more precious because of that. It can’t be more different to the action heroes you’re talking about. They’re crude characters with a gun in their hands!’
About Maximus he adds, ‘I think he’s a man guided by love – the love he feels for his Emperor Marcus Aurelius, for the Roman Empire, for his wife and his son. Each time he comes to a decision, it’s consistent. He’s a straight man, but he’s also a warrior, a fiery and rough man who is able to split in two his enemy with a blow of his sword, because at that time soldiers bodily fought and that’s the way Maximus leads his life.’
It was a physically and mentally draining film shoot that would see Russell exhausted by the demands of both the character and studio politics. He would storm off set but then he would make sure everyone, from runners upwards, got their rugby fleeces of his team. Generous to a fault one minute, moody the next.
He would have impromptu rugby games with the cast and crew, watch football games with them, and even take bets on Manchester United winning the 1999 Champions League cup final despite being 1-0 down with minutes to go. When Manchester United did go on to win, he ran around spraying beer over everyone.
Charlie Allan, the chief executive of the Clanranald Trust, played a German warrior in Gladiator, and the pair have been friends ever since. ‘I first met Russell on the set of Gladiator when he came over to talk to me and asked if I owned a motorcycle or just owned the leather jacket. I replied, “Two Harleys, mate.” Russell then told me about his own Harley and the special paint job he has on it with permission from Harley Davidson themselves. We hit it off from there and he invited me to meet him for a beer after the shoot.
‘I thought he was softly spoken and a really nice likeable guy. A man’s man, into his bikes and music, and down to earth. I had seen him in previous works and you would think that I would have had an opinion about him but I realised I didn’t. I immediately thought, “I like this guy, this guy is OK.”’
On the set of Gladiator, the conditions were very difficult but Russell’s energy helped. Allan recalled, ‘The weather was much more cold, the light never really came as it was February and the mud was up to our knees having been churned up with deforesting and preparing the set.
‘It was a perfect setting for a battle in the early morning. The suspense could be felt as we all knew the clash and hand-to-hand fighting was about to begin. The atmosphere was electric and everyone had a buzz about them. There were approximately 1,500 people on this small set, not including crew. The sound carried as it travelled slowly in the cold air and the smoke machines did their work well.
‘Morale dipped a little but a game of rugby with a makeshift ball helped put the spark back in there. The Celts lost the battle but won the rugby.’
The producers didn’t know what to do with Russell. Frustration at their actor’s unwillingness to toe the party line – there were even reports of him getting into brawls with the locals – was matched only by their lack of understanding of exactly why he was doing this. He was not demanding money or actor perks – he was just becoming a nuisance.
Russell said, ‘I’ve been told that Jeffrey Katzenberg rang Michael Mann and said, “Look, this guy is just not rolling with the punches as we want him to, so what’s it all about?” And Michael said, “Well, if you’re having problems like that with Russell, then you’ve got to know that you should just follow him.” Jeff said, “Is this about fucking ego and stuff?” and Michael started laughing. Because vanity doesn’t come into it. Is it right for the fucking character?’
And it’s clear that he threw himself into the character. To get into the role of being a leader among men, Russell organized a 6,500km (4,000-mile) motorbike ride around Australia with his pals.
Then there were the injuries. ‘I cracked a bone in my foot. I got a little fracture in my hip. Both my bicep tendons popped out – luckily, at different times, so I still had one arm I could use. It’s the nature of doing these kinds of things… I love these things, which are quite dangerous to do. They may look simple, but galloping down a hill, for example – horses won’t do it by themselves unless you tell them to do it.
‘I actually had one hell of an experience. You felt we were using more napalm than Apocalypse Now. One of the flame pots had fallen over and nobody noticed, so when they said “Action!” and pushed the button to start the fires, my horse got a jet of fire right up his behind, and he didn’t like it very much and started going backwards down the hill.
‘He had blinkers on, I had a helmet on, we couldn’t see behind us. He backed into a tree and then another tree and a branch pierced my cheek, going all the way through.’
In an interview with Film Review, he added, ‘Filming was a physically trying experience. At the outset, on paper, we had planned a break of around seven days between the combat scenes in order to have time to recuperate and be ready to do it again. But after all was said and done, with all the changes in plans that happen during filming, we found ourselves doing them one after another. I fought tigers during the day, and prepared for the next scene in the evenings with the fight trainer, the master at arms, horse trainer… physically, it left scars. But looking back, it was also what made it an unforgettable experience. But at the time, when you look at yourself in the mirror and you have your biceps tendon coming out from your shoulder on the wrong side, you ask yourself, “What am I doing here?”’
The thrilling fight sequence with tigers (originally to be rhinos) prowling about also proved to be a hairy experience. ‘They are magnificent creatures, but they don’t always do what you ask them to,’ Russell remembered. ‘Meanwhile, it’s been 12 days to film scenes with them when we planned for six. There were some trying moments. They used a chain held by three men to limit their forward movements. That works very well as long as the tiger wants to go forward. One day when the guys were pulling a little hard, the tiger said, “If you don’t want me to go there, I can just as well come towards you.”
‘Two of them did what they had been told to do in that case: stay still and cover your head. But the third one panicked. He got two steps and the tiger was on him. Bang, on the ground! And the tiger was just playing. But you know how cats are… he is playing one moment and the next he can tear your head off.
‘Another time, at the moment when the tigers’ door opens, I was in the middle of fighting Sven [Ole Thorsen]. He was wearing his helmet, a really heavy thing, without peripheral vision. It appeared to me that the signal for the tigers was given a little too soon and I started to accelerate the rhythm. Our movements are planned like choreography. Because he couldn’t see what was happening, when the tempo increased, Sven stopped to ask what happened. And before he knew it, the tiger was on him. It gave him a big swat on the backside. Luckily for him, it was one of the tigers whose claws had been removed. Otherwise, he would have had those scars for the rest of his life. After that, I can tell you that he really learned to work better with the helmet on!’
Despite the injuries, it’s clear that Russell found something of the perfect working relationship with Scott. ‘Seeing him orchestrate five different camera crews on five monitors, you know, with 3,000 extras – he’d say, “I want this here, I want that there. OK, now if you can bring me in the 500 German guys – and get hairy guys in the front. Not those little skinny ones, hairy guys!” He gives everybody instructions and he gets ready for another take and I say, “What should I do?” And he says, “Oh, no. You’re fine.”
‘Ridley’s reputation as a director is that no matter how difficult the story he’s telling, he will finish on time and on budget. He’s also a very straight talker, and so am I. If you’re going to take a leap of faith like this movie, then these are the people to do it with.’
He would add, ‘When Ridley realised just how much he could get from me, he was like “Whoa”. He realised that he could have as much fun with me as he wanted, because there’s no level of anything that I can’t go to. There’s nothing I can’t do.’
Joaquin Phoenix, who played Roman Emperor Commodus, said of his experiences working on the film, ‘Initially, I was not sure where to start. Going through the first rehearsal dressed in my jeans, I was thinking, “What the hell am I doing?” Then I put on the layers of armour and I felt different. Costume and make-up really do make a big difference, especially because I’m obsessed with the physicality of the character.
‘At the beginning I permed up my hair twice, to look like the young, scraggy prince in waiting. Then, as he became emperor, I cut my hair and stopped going to the gym. I wanted to put on a few pounds, because I wanted some of that lazy decadence that would come from being an emperor.’
Because of the stars involved in the film (the cream of British thespian talent, including Derek Jacobi, Oliver Reed and Richard Harris), Phoenix was struck by nerves.
Phoenix remembered saying, ‘“Russ, I’m so nervous.” He just took me aside and he gave me words of support.’
Russell said of Phoenix, ‘Joaquin is a lovely guy, but nervous. He lacks a little self-confidence. Ridley would say, “You’re now the emperor and you have to walk out in the middle of the Colosseum.” And Joaquin would say, “But I’m a lad from Florida. What do you want me to do? Wave?”’
Luckily, Richard Harris came up with a plan.
‘Harris,’ Russell recalled, ‘with all his years and knowledge of the cinema and his wisdom, said quite simply, “Let’s get him drunk!” And the drinking session seemed to do the trick. Joaquin kind of realised, “Oh yeah, I’m an actor, so I can relax a little bit.”’
During filming of Gladiator, Russell struck up a friendship with Harris, a legendary hellraiser. Talk about two peas in a pod! After a heavy night out, the great actor turned to Russell and said, ‘You’re a good night in one man, Crowe. I think I’m going to like you.’
In 2001, Harris said, ‘What goes on now is so stupid. It’s like creating importance around themselves. On the other hand, I like a guy that a lot of people don’t like here in the States. And that’s Russell Crowe. A down-to-earth guy. When I was finishing up on Gladiator, Russell and I kind of hung around together. He’d come to my pubs, he’d walk in, sit down, no fuss. He took me to his pubs, the Australian pubs in London, no fuss. That’s what I like. And I hope he stays like that. And that’s why people don’t like Russell in Hollywood. He says what he feels, and he doesn’t play the game. He’s really from my generation, from the O’Toole, Harris and Burton generation. You know, no bull.’
In 2006, Russell travelled from Australia to a small Irish village to watch the unveiling of a bronze statue of Richard Harris, who sadly passed away in 2002. He said, ‘I met Richard at a time in his life when he was probably reflective of what he had done over the time he had spent on the planet. He very kindly passed a lot of wisdom on to me.’ Russell even sang a song at the ceremony.
He says now, ‘I miss him especially when I go to England. Because I’d invariably ring him up at The Savoy [Hotel, where Harris kept a suite] or maybe go to the bar there and just call his room. I was extraordinarily lucky with Richard. I would be able to find him in London because I knew his haunts. Even though it’s a big city there were specific places that he liked to go. I’m not sure if it was really driven by me or by him.
‘On the first night I met him, he said: “Crowe, is it true you were born in New Zealand but choose to live in Australia? Right, right. So I can talk to you in hushed and reverent tones about the All Blacks, and I can yell abuse at you about the bloody Wallabies!”
Talking about Reed, who passed away during filming of Gladiator, he said, ‘Oliver was very disciplined while we were in Morocco, which was great. It’s a very hard place to shoot, and I think this movie is a wonderful memorial to his contributions to cinema. I think it’s his best performance in years.’
Despite his critical success with L.A. Confidential and The Insider, Gladiator was Russell’s big break as a genuine movie star. ‘People were still patting me on the back and patronising me: “It’s OK. You might get another job,”’ he remembered. But after seeing a final cut of the movie, he had every hope the film would be a big success.