Russell Crowe saw Joaquin Phoenix as 'terribly unprofessional'

Russell Crowe felt his Gladiator co-star Joaquin Phoenix was "terribly unprofessional".

The stars of the original Gladiator movie didn't initially see eye to eye, according to their director Ridley Scott.

Ridley, 86, spoke ahead of the release of his new sequel, Gladiator II, and revealed the male leads had a fundamental lack of rapport in the early days of shooting, as Joaquin felt too nervous to play his role and Russell found his hesitation frustrating.

Joaquin, now 50, played the Roman emperor Commodus in the 2000 movie, opposite Russell, now 60, as Maximus, a vengeful general-turned-slave.

"(Joaquin) was in his prince's outfit saying, 'I can't do it,'" Ridley recalled to the Times. "I said, 'What?' And Russell said, 'This is terribly unprofessional.'"

Ridley added the experience was something of a "baptism of fire" for both Joaquin and himself, as he attempted to calm the actor's nerves.

"I can act as a big brother or dad," he explained. "But I'm quite a friend of Joaquin's. Gladiator was a baptism of fire for both of us in the beginning."

Joaquin had previously described how "overwhelmed" he felt by the magnitude of the epic historical drama.

"I think that probably Gladiator was one of the most intimidating because the first set that I went on was just massive," the Joker: Folie à Deux actor told Collider in 2018.

"It looked like it was acres of land, and tons of trucks and trailers and, you know, hundreds of extras, and multiple cameras... Suddenly the scale of this hit me and I was overwhelmed by that."