2000’s Gladiator is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only is it a phenomenal film worthy of one re-watch after the next, but the way in which it was made also lends itself to a seemingly endless conversation about behind-the-scenes details that ultimately turned the project into a Best Picture winner and a cinematic classic.
Russell Crowe led the Ridley Scott-directed epic as Maximus Decimus Meridius, a celebrated and respected Roman general who’s betrayed by Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus, the son of late Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). Both Crowe and Phoenix had a good deal of credits on their filmographies at that point, but Gladiator undoubtedly propelled both to a different level of stardom.
While on Collider Ladies Night in celebration of the upcoming release of Nobody and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Connie Nielsen took a moment to look back on her experience working on Gladiator. She stepped in as Lucilla, Commodus’ sister and Maximus’ former lover, a character involved in some of the film’s most tense dialogue-driven moments. (Anyone else downright terrified of being called a “busy little bee” now?) Here’s what Nielsen told us about what it was like working opposite Phoenix and Crowe:
“The experience of working with such thrilling actors like Joaquin and Russell is something that just so enriches any scene. You just never know exactly what they’re gonna do and that’s the best feeling. Like when you’re with an actor who really just doesn’t give a f*ck about whether it’s gonna be too out there but just goes and has such courage and is never gonna be predictable, that is like a true gift when you’re doing great scenes like that.”
Ultimately, yes, Gladiator made the cast household names like never before, but Nielsen insisted that wasn’t on their minds at the time. It was all about the work:
“I don’t think that any of us really understood - we could feel that it was something special, but I don’t think we understood just how privileged we were to be on there. We were so busy complaining about the four pages of new script changes that we got every morning, and we were just really working so hard to make that vision come alive, you know? And we were all super deeply invested in it. I don’t think that I was thinking in terms of career-making or anything like that. I didn’t have a mindset like that. It was all about the story. It was all about the story and how we were telling that story that mattered to us.”
All actors certainly contribute to telling big screen stories, but the cast of Gladiator really had their work cut out for them in that department. As Scott, Crowe, Nielsen and Djimon Hounsou explained while celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary back in May of 2020, the script underwent heavy rewrites and then during production, the cast often received lines right on the spot. While that process must have been challenging, Nielsen insists it came with a valuable lesson learned:
“I think it’s part of the learning of an actor, is really also to just be humble as well. You’re not the one who’s putting up the $175 million dollars or however much it costs. You’re not the one who’s doing that. That’s the studios. And you also have to remember that you don’t know everything. You can’t see every single part of the film and I think that it’s really important to both burn the candle at both ends for the character, but to also at the same time be super humble in terms of - you’re also operating inside of the vision of the director and producers and financiers who somehow managed to make this thing happen.”
If you’d like to hear more from Nielsen about her experience on Gladiator, what it was like working with Al Pacino on The Devil’s Advocate, joining the DC films franchise with Wonder Woman and loads more, stay tuned! We’ll have Nielsen’s full Collider Ladies Night conversation for you on Friday, March 18th.