10 Actors Who Rightly Turned Down Iconic Roles

5. Mel Gibson - Maximus Decimus Meridius (Gladiator)

Hugh Jackman Bond
Universal Pictures

Mel Gibson cuts a very controversial figure these days, his name in tatters after his strange drunken tirade about Jewish people and domestic abuse filings by then wife Oksana Grigoreiva in 2010. This also led to a rather nasty phone call being unearthed, where Gibson suggested if Grigoreiva was ‘raped by n*****s’ it would be her own fault.

His career tanked for a while but has since recovered, somehow. Leaving aside what you can and can’t get away with in Hollywood though, it’s undeniable that Gibson was once very hot property. So much so that Ridley Scott sought him out specifically for the lead role as Maximus in 2000’s Gladiator.

Gibson had fairly recently impressed audiences in Braveheart, and so did tick a lot of the boxes. Gibson himself though disagreed, turning the role down graciously, citing his age.

Gibson would have been between 42 and 43 when Gladiator was filming, and with the movie more action heavy than Braveheart, he simply didn’t feel he was up do it. When you look at how magnificent Russell Crowe was in the role, it’s hard to have any regrets.

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