Russell Crowe proudly recalled “sticking to his guns” about not having sex scenes with Connie Nielsen in Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator.” Speaking at the Taormina Film Festival, the New Zealand-born actor was asked about a “certain attitude” he showed about the 2024 sequel to his 2000 Oscar-winning epic.
Crowe dodged speaking directly about “Gladiator II,” but he elaborated on his moral stance regarding the original film. “When we were shooting that film, there was a lot of pressure. The studio, the producers [thought] there should be sex between Maximus and the female characters. I kept pushing back.”
“This is the story of a man avenging the death of his wife and his child,” he went on. “There cannot be a moment in that journey where he stops and has sex with somebody. It doesn’t make any sense because that destroys the journey.”
The actor said he “stuck to his guns.” “Luckily for me, Ridley, even though he’d love a sex scene between me and Connie Nielsen, agreed with me back then that that was the emotional core of the film.”
“The studio at the time didn’t quite understand why,” he went on. “That’s the thing a lot of people don’t realize: from the second week of release globally, there were always more women in the theaters than men. You think that on the surface ‘Gladiator’ is a movie for men, but if it was a movie for men, it would be about revenge, but it’s not about revenge. It is a movie for women because it is about vengeance.”
