Now finding itself a home on Netflix, Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott‘s war epic Gladiator is one of the best movies created in recent memory. Here we have some of the most incredible behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the iconic movies.
In the late 1990s, Ridley Scott looked up at Jean-Léon Gérôme’s neoclassical painting Pollice Verso and felt a rush of inspiration. The image, which depicts an armoured gladiator fighting in the Colleseum, was enough to convince the director to craft a Roman epic on a hitherto unseen scale. It was, of course, Gladiator.
Starring Russell Crowe as Maximus, Gladiator tells the story of a revered Roman General who is forced into slavery after upsetting the delicate ego of Commodus, the embittered son of Emporer Marcus Aurelius. He soon finds himself fighting for his life in the Roman arena, where he earns a reputation for bravery and skill. The only thing keeping him alive? The promise of vengeance.
On release, Scott’s Epic raked in a dizzying $460million worldwide, winning several awards and paving the way for the likes of Troy, 300, Centurion, Kingdom of Heaven and countless other historical bloodbaths. Filmed in England, Malta and Italy, Gladiator blends brilliant cinematography with memorable performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Russell Crowe and Oliver Reed, the latter of whom sadly passed away midway through the shoot.
Reed’s death isn’t the only surprising behind-the-scenes detail from Gladiator. Below, we’ll be looking at ten of the production’s most unbelievable moments, from actors getting drunk to calm their nerves to tigers nearly eating people alive.
10 behind-the-scenes stories from the set of Gladiator:
Joaquin Phoenix got drunk to calm his nerves
Ridley Scott wanted Gladiator to look as realistic as possible, which meant using real man-eating animals for the Tigris of Gaul scene, one of which very nearly mauled Russell Crowe. Thankfully the actor was able to shrug it off.
During a retrospective interview, director Ridley Scott explained that the tiger in question was “a big boy from tail to nose, eleven feet. You’ve got two guys on a chain with a ring in the floor to control it. Russell said, ‘Okay, release them,’ and when Russell would fall back, the tiger would come out of the hole, and Russell would roll out of the way, and he said, ‘F*** me, that was close'”.
Russell Crowe was nearly mauled by a tiger
Ridley Scott wanted Gladiator to look as realistic as possible, which meant using real man-eating animals for the Tigris of Gaul scene, one of which very nearly mauled Russell Crowe. Thankfully the actor was able to shrug it off.
During a retrospective interview, director Ridley Scott explained that the tiger in question was “a big boy from tail to nose, eleven feet. You’ve got two guys on a chain with a ring in the floor to control it. Russell said, ‘Okay, release them,’ and when Russell would fall back, the tiger would come out of the hole and Russell would roll out of the way and he said, ‘F*** me, that was close'”.
Ridley Scott burnt down a forest for the opening battle
Gladiator features one of the most thrilling and chaotic opening battle scenes of all time, a blood-smattered sequence in which the Germanic tribes descend on the Roman Army through a forest engulfed in flames. To the dismay of environmentalists, the fire wasn’t achieved using CGI but burned for real.
As it happened, England’s Bourne Wood, where Scott and the crew were filming, was scheduled for deforestation. The director decided to lend a helping hand, burning vast swathes of the forest. “The Forestry Commission wanted to lose some forest, so I said, ‘I’ll do it – I’ll burn it to the ground,'” Scott stated, adding: “They said, ‘Good.’ So I had 400 meters of forest I could burn and do what I wanted”.
Proximo was meant to live
When Oliver Reed passed away halfway through the Gladiator shoot, Ridley Scott found himself in a difficult position. The actor’s character, Proximo, was supposed to survive, but sticking with his original plan would have meant recasting Reed and reshooting all his scenes.
Instead, Scott rewrote the script to have Priximo sacrifice himself to the Praetorian Guard. He then hired a stand-in for Reed, who he shot from behind for the actor’s unfinished scenes, and then cut this with unused footage of Reed facing the camera.
Crowe thought the script was “so bad”
When principal photography began, the Gladiator script was just 21 pages long, and even that wasn’t very good. Ridley Scott tried to hide the working script from his prospective leading man, but Crowe managed to get hold of it anyway. He would later describe the early draft as “so bad”.
Crowe was urged to forget about the script, which he was promised would be developed properly, and concentrate on meeting with the director. Ridley Scott didn’t have a finished script, but what he did have was a powerful vision of what the film could be. In the end, this was enough to get Crowe on board.
Oliver Reed died after a drinking contest
Oliver Reed’s alcoholism was no secret, but it still shocked the Gladiator team to learn that it had played a role in his death. During a break between filming, the actor went to the pub, where the crew of a British Destroyer, who had perhaps heard of Reed’s legendary ability to imbibe, challenged him to a drinking competition.
By the end, he’d consumed eight pints of lager, 12 double rums and half a bottle of whiskey. He suffered a heart attack not long afterwards. “Everyone said he went the way he wanted, but that’s not true,” Omid Djalili told The Guardian. “It was very tragic. He was… pressured into a drinking competition. He should have just left, but he didn’t.”
Djimon Hounsou nearly stabbed someone in the head
Accidents will happen, especially when you’re carrying a sword. Djimon Hounsou learned that the hard way when he nearly stabbed someone in the head during one of the meticulously staged fight sequences in the arena.
Recalling the incident during a conversation with Variety, the actor confessed: “I almost accidentally stabbed somebody in the head in the fight sequence in the Colosseum when Maximus gets on the horse. Most of us got carried away, and I think when you’re truly doing it for real, the pretend sort of goes out of the way, and the emotional takes over, so a lot of people got hurt.”
Russell Crowe produced snot on cue
It’s hard to forget that haunting scene when Maximum returns to his family farm in Spain to discover the Praetorian guard have raped and killed his wife and son. Overcome by the brutality of it all, he kisses the feet of his wife, who has been hanged along with her son.
In the commentary included on the Signature Selection widescreen DVD of Gladiator, director Ridley Scott describes how Crowe got the scene in a single take. “We go off on one side, he says, ‘What do you want?’ So I said, ‘I want snot, tears, the worst condition you’ve ever been.’ And he said, ‘Snot?’ I said, ‘Snot.’ He said, ‘You got it.’ So he – I don’t know what he was doing back there… Actually, that was the first take. It was the best.”
Omid Djalili had his testicles crushed by Oliver Reed
Not long after the Spaniard is sold into slavery, a trader, played by British actor and comedian Omid Djalili, is confronted by hardened businessman Proximo, who complains of being sold a pair of “queer giraffes” who refuse to mate. In a bid to get his money back, he grabs Djalili by the crotch and twists.
In an article for The Guardian, Djalili revealed that, between takes, Oliver Reed refused to let go of his knackers, apparently asking if he could “‘grab [him] hard, to make it authentic?’ I said ‘fine’, so he did. Usually, you do the scene, they say ‘cut’, and you have a few minutes to reset before you go again. Ollie continued to hold my nuts during the reset. I was so frightened of him that I thought it was part of his acting process, so I allowed him to hold me while we talked about the food in the hotel.” It was only after the third take that Reed turned to Omid and said, “You do realise this is a wind up, don’t you?”
Russell Crowe described his real home in Marcus Aurelius scene
As previously mentioned, Ridley Scott’s script was constantly being rewritten, meaning that the cast were frequently required to memorise lines at the very last minute. However, there was also a lot of room for improvisation, a tool Russell Crowe turned to during one of Maximus’ early scenes with Marcus Aurelius.
In the scene, the empower asks Maximus to describe his home back in Spain. Instead of inventing the details of an imagined homestead, he simply described his home back in Australia. “Very simple place. Pink stones that warm in the sun,” he began. “A kitchen garden that smells of herbs in the day, jasmine in the evening. Through the gate is a giant poplar. Figs, apples, pears. The soil, Marcus, black, black like my wife’s hair. Grapes on the south slopes, olives on the north.”
