Los Angeles, June 13 (IANS) Hollywood actor Russell Crowe recently recalled how he stuck to his guns about not having intimate scenes with Connie Nielsen in Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’.

The actor attended the Taormina Film Festival, and was asked about a “certain attitude” he showed about the 2024 sequel to his 2000 Oscar-winning epic, reports ‘Variety’.

The actor dodged speaking directly about ‘Gladiator II’ but he elaborated on his moral stance regarding the original film.

He said, “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”.

He further mentioned, “This is the story of a man avenging the death of his wife and his child. 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”, as he said, “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. 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”.

As per ‘Variety’, the actor then shared that ‘Gladiator II’ “failed” because it lacked that moral core.

“For them, in a second movie to destroy that moral centre. It’s very interesting because the second movie barely took the same box office that the first movie took. That’s 20 years later. When you apply how much of a change there’s been on the value of a dollar, they failed. They failed because they didn’t understand why it was successful, it had a moral core”, he added.

–IANS

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