Gladiator Star Russell Crowe Threatened ‘To Kill Producer With Bare Hands’ While Filming Oscar-winning Role ( Photo Credit – Instagram )
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Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s sequel to the 2000 Oscar-conquering epic, will hit theaters in November. Two decades after the first Gladiator movie dominated award season, Paul Mescal steps into Russell Crowe’s sandals as the enslaved Lucius.
The first trailer, which dropped this week, showed Normal People’s Paul Mescal playing Lucius, who remembers watching Crowe’s Maximus’s doomed heroics in the first movie.
The 2000 prequel stormed the box office, Grossing over $503 million. The Russell Crowe-led film was also a huge contender at the 73rd Academy Awards, winning five Oscars in total, including Best Actor, which Crowe won.
However, the film was also marred by controversy stemming from Crowe’s fiery temper. According to a 2010 book, Russell Crowe threatened to kill a Gladiator producer with his bare hands during a 3 am phone call while filming his Oscar-winning role.
Russell Crowe threatened to kill the Gladiator producer for refusing to pay the actor’s assistant.
The claims were made in Nicole LaPorte’s The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies and a Company called DreamWorks. Crowe allegedly threatened to kill the producer Branko Lustig, 77, a Holocaust survivor, after he refused to pay the actor’s assistants.
According to the book Crowe allegedly said, “You motherfucker. I will kill you with my bare hands”. After the threatening phone call, Lustig allegedly telephoned Steven Spielberg and asked to leave the production.
Russell Crowe also refused to recite a memorable line in the Gladiator movie.
According to the book, Russell Crowe also refused to recite a memorable line from the movie, “And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next,” as it rubbed him the wrong way.
Crowe allegedly told Ridley Scott, “It was sh*t. But I’m the greatest actor in the world, and I can make even sh*it sound good.”
However, the dialogue made it to the film and found a place in pop culture history.
This is not the first time the Australian actor has been accused of having a nasty temper. In 2005, he was arrested for throwing a phone at a hotel employee. He later apologized for the incident.
