20 Things You Didn’t Know About Gladiator
15. Making It Up As He Went Along
The main problem with an unfinished shooting script is that actors need dialogue, and what Crowe had to work with was often not up to scratch. He’d end up rewriting plenty of lines himself while on location, scrambling to find something of value in what little he had.
One key example was Maximus’ description of his home in Spain - the kitchen garden, the smells. That was improvised, and actually a description of Crowe’s own farm in Australia - a common thread in almost every Russell Crowe interview from the year dot is how much he loves his home and misses it while he travels.
Even the name itself was ad libbed - Crowe hated ‘Narcissus’, the name of the gladiator when he signed up, and nothing since had caught his imagination either. He went with Maximus Decimus Meridius on the spur of the moment on set, because he liked the way it rolled off the tongue.
That infamous line ending in "...and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next", however, was not improvised - but not for lack of trying.
That line had been a sticking point for a long time: initially, he refused to say it at all, considering it “garbage”. On-set screenwriter Nicholson, by now used to Crowe rubbishing his work, cheerfully admits that the lines might not have been the best, considering the pressure everyone was working under. Apparently Crowe wrestled with it for some time before grudgingly going for it simply because he couldn’t come up with anything better himself.