Ridley Scott says Joaquin Phoenix got cold feet and nearly walked out of the first Gladiator film, just like what happened with a recent Todd Haynes project, in which the Joker actor was meant to play a gay man in 1930s Mexico.

“He was in his prince’s outfit saying, ‘I can’t do it,’” Scott recalled in a recent interview with the New York Times. Phoenix was playing Commodus, who begins the film as the unscrupulous, power-hungry son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris). According to the director, cast mate and lead actor Russell Crowe found the ordeal “terribly unprofessional.”

Fans noticed a pattern in the actor’s behavior following his dramatic, headline-making exit from a Todd Haynes film back in August. “Oh so he has a history of doing this?” one person commented. “That’s just his m.o apparently,” another added.

Ridley Scott convinced Phoenix to stay

The prolific filmmaker ultimately convinced a then 24-year-old Phoenix to stay by acting like his “big brother or dad.” “Gladiator was a baptism of fire for both of us in the beginning,” he concluded.

The actor felt “really, truly terrified” by the scope of Gladiator‘s production. “I couldn’t do the first scene, I was visibly shaking and I couldn’t get through the dialogue. My voice was quivering take after take,” he confessed on the ReelBlend Podcast while promoting another Scott collaboration, Napoleon, in 2023. Phoenix recalled that Scott later told him, at the end of the movie, that there was no film in the camera for the first five takes.

He knew that it wouldn’t be helpful to me to just say, ‘Let’s rehearse it.’ He had to make me feel as if we were actually filming, and it was really smart. He kind of figured me out. It was the only way to get me to be comfortable.”

Phoenix went on to receive his first-ever Oscar nomination for his performance.

Todd Haynes didn’t have as happy an ending

While Scott eventually figured out how to get Phoenix to stay, Haynes wasn’t as perceptive. Back in August, just five days before filming was set to start on the latter’s picture, the actor walked out on the project — one that he himself had brought to the director.

According to Variety, “entire sets” had been built on location in Guadalajara, Mexico by the time Phoenix got “cold feet.” Although it was speculated that the NC-17 gay sex scenes were the reason behind the actor’s last-minute exit, sources who spoke to the outlet said they were Phoenix’s idea. “Joaquin was pushing it further into more dangerous territory, sexually,” the Oscar-nominated director had told Variety in September 2023.

The untitled film, described as a “detective love story” and starring Top Gun: Maverick‘s Danny Ramirez as Phoenix’s love interest, had already been sold to international distributors, hinging on the Oscar winner’s casting. The same sources told Variety that the 50-year-old’s role could not be recast and that his decision had put the crew out of work and stakeholders in need of payment. “Losses could exceed seven figures,” the magazine reported.

A month later, at the Venice Film Festival, where he was premiering and promoting Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, Phoenix gave a vague, and so far singular, statement about the situation. “The other creatives aren’t here to say their piece, and it just doesn’t feel like that would be right. I’m not sure how that would be helpful, so I just don’t think I will,” he said. A few days after that, James McAvoy revealed that Phoenix was meant to be playing his character in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 psychological thriller film Split, but “ditched it” just two weeks before filming.