Academy Award for Best Actor:

Academy Award for Best Actor:

Russell Crowe, Gladiator

Although in hot competition with several other superb actors for the Academy Award for Best Actor, Australian actor Russell Crowe certainly deserved the Oscar for his amazing performance as Maximus, the main protagonist in director Ridley Scott's Gladiator, released in 2000 to worldwide acclaim for its stunning photography, compelling story and its ability with the assistance of Crowe to take the viewer back in time to ancient Rome and to the gladiatorial spectacles of the Coliseum. Overall, Crowe's Oscar-winning performance as Maximus demonstrates his versatility as a seasoned professional actor and his inherent ability to bring a character to life without having the luxury of documented reference to any actual historical figure in the form of Aelius Maximus Decimus Meridius.

Of course, a professional film actor such as Russell Crowe must possess a certain amount of natural charisma and be able to emote true feelings related to love, passion, hatred, and even death. In this context, Crowe comes across on the screen as the living embodiment of General Maximus who ends up as a slave under the tyrannical oppression of Emperor Commodus and is forced to fight to the death in the arena as a gladiator. Also, Crowe's obvious physical attributes as a strong and masculine figure trapped in the madness of the late Roman Empire circa 180 A.D. creates a sense of utter realism, especially when fully outfitted in his gladiatorial armor.

In Gladiator, there are several scenes which express Crowe's professionalism as an actor capable of emoting the feelings of a man who loses everything he loves and admires as an important member of the ancient Roman patriarchal system. For example, his father/son relationship with Emperor Marcus Aurelius is quite touching, particularly when Aurelius pleads for Maximus to return to the city of Rome and accept his destiny as its new emperor in order to bring Rome back from the brink of social ruin and political chaos.

Unlike most actors of his generation, Crowe possesses the ability to use his face, especially his eyes, to express his innermost thoughts and feelings, almost as if he has managed to somehow enter the mind of his character, thus allowing the full extrapolation of Maximus' heart and soul as not only a greatly admired Roman field commander but also as a father, lover and true patrician citizen of Rome.