How Russell Crowe Broke Both Legs Filming Ridley Scott Movie, but Didn’t Know For 10 Years

Russell Crowe did not receive the best reviews of his career when starring in Ridley Scott’s take on Robin Hood in 2010, but it is impossible to fault his dedication to the movie – especially when he completed filming with two broken legs.

Speaking to People, Crowe was promoting his new movie Land of Bad, but took a moment to recall how he managed to break both of his legs while filming Robin Hood, even though he did not know he had done it at the time. The Oscar-winner explained:

“I jumped off a castle portcullis onto rock-hard, uneven ground. We should have prepped the ground and buried a pad, but we were in a rush to get the shot done in the fading light. With hundreds of extras around, arrows flying, and burn pots setting the castle on fire, there was no pulling out. As I jumped I remember thinking ‘This is going to hurt.’ It was like an electric shock bursting up through my body. We were shooting a big movie, so you just struggle through, but the last month of that job was very tricky. There was a number of weeks where even walking was a challenge.”

According to the actor, he didn’t actually mention the injury to anyone and continued on with the shoot without missing a day. As he put it, “I just kept going to work.”

Russell Crowe Discovered He Broke His Legs a Decade Later

As Crowe said, he continued on with the Robin Hood shoot, and then took a break before staring in another movie, 2013’s Man of Steel, but that was not because he broke his legs, as he didn’t discover that fact until a decade later. Explaining how he began to have “strange pains” in his legs ten years after the event, Crowe revealed that he went for scans, saying:

“I thought it was nothing serious. After working through a long New York winter, my body was just missing exercise and sunshine. [The doctor asked], ‘When did you break your legs?’ Apparently he could see the remnants of fractures in both shin bones. To jog my memory he said, ‘Would have been maybe 10 years ago?’ Apparently I finished that movie with two broken legs. All for art. No cast, no splints, no painkillers, just kept going to work and over time they healed themselves.”

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Every Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe Movie Collaboration, Ranked

The two award-winning powerhouses made their mark with Gladiator, so it’s no surprise that a sequel is in the works.

Robin Hood was by no means a critical hit, with the movie struggling to a 43% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but the film still managed to take over $320 million at the box office but was nowhere near as successful as the pair’s collaboration on 2000’s Gladiator, which became one of the biggest movies in both their careers. While Scott is about to delve back into that world again with Gladiator 2, Crowe does not make an appearance in the movie, but still has plenty of other projects on the way.