Gladiator Notes and Trivia


- Oliver Reed suffered a heart attack and died in Malta near the end of filming. Director Ridley Scott spent over a million dollars reshooting some scenes and digitally adding Reed's head to a double to create Proximo's death scene which had not been filmed with Reed.

- In the scenes of battle sequences with the German barbarians, Russell Crowe's facial wounds were real. They had been caused when his horse had backed him into some branches. The stitches are visible in his conversation with Richard Harris' Marcus Aurelius.

- Russell Crowe ad-libbed Maximus' description of his home in Spain from his own home in Australia.

- The tattoo on Maximus' arm, SPQR, stands for "Senatus Populusque Romanorum " which means "the Senate and people of Rome." The letters were used to denote official entities. They can still be seen in many parts of the city of Rome to this day.

- The scenes of the Coliseum were digitally enhanced. Only the lowest tier was a constructed set populated with extras. There are several scenes where either open sky or set dressing can be glimpsed where the upper tiers of the Coliseum should be.

- Unlike what transpires at the close of the film, the Roman Republic was never restored. Emperors continued to hold power until the Roman Empire fell.

- 'U' was not present in the Latin alphabet at the time period of the movie. 'V' would have been used.

- Russell Crowe had filmed The Insider prior to Gladiator and had gained some 40 pounds for that role. He had negotiated into his contract that he did not have to do any physical conditioning for the role of Maximus. As a result, a bit of a belly can be seen in some of Crowe's scenes while he was continuing to shed the weight during filming.

- Gladiator was filmed between January and May 1999 in England (opening battle sequences), Italy, Malta and Morocco.

- Gladiator's budget was $103 million. It earned $187,683,805 in the US and $457 million worldwide.






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