Russell Crowe Explains Why He Doesn't Regret Turning Down 'The Lord of the Rings' Role

justjared.com:

Russell Crowe is opening up about The Lord of the Rings.” If you didn’t know, the 60-year-old Gladiator actor met with Peter Jackson to play the role of Aragorn in the $2.9 billion-grossing film trilogy, but their conversation apparently led to the actor no longer wanting to move forward.

When asked about if he had any regrets for passing on the project in a British GQ video interview, he said: “I don’t actually.” Keep reading to find out more… “I very much felt the studio were making that decision, not the film director,” he went on to say. “And I talked to Peter Jackson over the phone, and he wasn’t saying the sort of things that directors were saying to you if they were really trying to attract you to a project.

And I just kind of got a sense that he already had somebody else in mind that he wanted to do. And me stepping forward and saying yes was actually going to get in his way.” “We come from the same place,” he added. “So there’s a nuance in that conversation that other people might not hear — we’re both New Zealanders — in his own way without him saying anything negative, that he had another plan.

So I just left it at that.” The director ended up casting Viggo Mortensen in the iconic role. He also addressed why he’s uncomfortable with a sequel to Gladiator.