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spreesmom wrote:

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mm, is that pic the real hole in his cheek? yikes, that must have hurt.

http://www.maximumcrowe.net/maxcrowe_interviews11.html

''I like to have some level of control,'' Crowe snorts. ''You tend to know what's best for yourself. I thought it was a rather ridiculous statement for him to have made. He was calling soccer a dangerous game, when in the movie I'd been wrestling tigers and driving guys out of the way of charging chariots. In one scene I had to gallop down a hill with 500 horsemen at breakneck speed. I had to jump through a ring of fire. And this executive thought playing a game of soccer would be dangerous?''

The disdain in Crowe's voice is palpable, particularly when he starts listing the injuries he suffered during the filming of Gladiator. ''I cracked a bone in my foot. I got a little fracture in my hip. Both my bicep tendons popped out -- luckily, at different times, so I still had one arm I could use.'' Crowe shrugs: ''It's the nature of doing these kinds of things. ... I love these things, which are quite dangerous to do. They may look simple, but galloping down a hill, for example -- horses won't do it by themselves unless you tell them to do it.''

Then he admits there was one moment that did scare him.

''I actually had one hell of an experience,'' he admits. It occurred during a battle scene in a forest, in which a row of flame pots had been set up. ''You felt we were using more napalm than Apocalypse Now. One of the flame pots had fallen over and nobody noticed, so when they said 'Action!' and pushed the button to start the fires, my horse got a jet of fire right up his behind, and he didn't like it very much and started going backwards down the hill.

''He had blinkers on, I had a helmet on, we couldn't see behind us. He backed into a tree and then another tree and a branch pierced my cheek, going all the way through.''

Having told this grisly tale with some gusto, Crowe then proceeds to make one thing clear: he was still not sorry to have accepted this film. For one thing, it would be a change of pace after his Oscar-nominated performance in The Insider as a pudgy, middle-aged research scientist who blows the whistle on the tobacco industry. But there was also the subject matter. ''I loved these epics as a kid. Listen mate, the sort of movie I love is the one where when it's over, I'm saying -- no, no give me another five minutes.'' Finally there was the fact that Ridley Scott (Alien, Thelma and Louise, Black Rain) would be directing.

Excerpt from
From whistle-blower to gladiator:
Russell Crowe is back in fighting shape and reveling in his role in Gladiator
By Jamie Portman
The Ottawa Citizen (April 28, 2000)