Russell Crowe says the original Gladiator script was 'so bad'

Actor said making film was a ‘unique experience’

Russell Crowe has claimed the first script he saw for his Oscar-winning film Gladiator was terrible.

The 2000 classic, which celebrated its 20^th anniversary last month, won Crowe an Academy Award for his performance as a Roman general.

Speaking on the latest episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Crowe called making Gladiator a “unique experience”, in part because the first script he received for the project was “so bad”.

“It was just so bad,” he said. “It was like, ‘Okay, ummm. Yeah.'”

He added: “The producer didn’t know I’d actually already been able to get a copy but the thing he said is, ‘I don’t want to send you the document we have, because you won’t respond to it. But, I want to encourage you to have a meeting with Ridley Scott.”

Gladiator was directed by Scott and written by David Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson.

Scott recently revealed that Crowe only narrowly escaped a real tiger on set. In the same interview, he also recalled the death of actor Oliver Reed during the making of Gladiator, remarking that he “dropped down dead on the floor of a pub”.

Crowe can next be seen in Unhinged, a thriller about a man with road rage who eventually snaps.