Russell Crowe Recalls Original ‘Gladiator’ Script Was ‘Absolute Rubbish’

etcanada.com:

If there’s a single film for which Russell Crowe is most associated, it has to be “Gladiator”. However, in a new interview the actor admits he had serious concerns about the script, and had to be talked into accepting the role by director Ridley Scott.

In a new video for Vanity Fair (above), Crowe reflects on the various roles he’s played onscreen throughout his movie career, describing “Gladiator” as “my 20-something movie.” “I was confident about my abilities as a leading man,” Crowe explained. “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.” READ MORE: Russell Crowe Admits He’s ‘Slightly Jealous’ Of The Cast Of New ‘Gladiator’ Sequel As Crowe recalled, the original script contained “all these sort of strange sequences” involving chariots and famous gladiators with “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 is all this?” It was his conversations with Scott, who shared his vision for the film, that convinced Crowe to overlook the script’s deficiencies. “[Scott] said to me at one point in time, ‘Mate, we’re not committing anything to camera that you don’t believe in, a hundred per cent,'” Crowe recalled.  “So when we actually started that film, we had 21 pages of script that we agreed on.