2000 Hit Action Film Won 5 Oscars - But Missed in This Major Category

The 2001 Academy Awards went down as quite the ceremony.

The action epic known as Gladiator cleaned up with five wins, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe. Its director, however, would walk away empty-handed - and still remains Oscar-less to this day, sadly enough.

The Best Director category in 2001 was particularly noteworthy, given that fellow auteur Steven Soderbergh was nominated twice that year - for both Erin Brockovich and Traffic. This, of course, increased Soderbergh's odds of winning the race, but fans still thought Gladiator director Ridley Scott would nab the trophy.

Nonetheless, Soderbergh, 63, accepted the honor for Traffic, and Scott, 88, wouldn't even receive an Oscar when Gladiator won Best Picture that night - since the statues went to his film's producers. Tough break.

Crowe's win, meanwhile, laid the groundwork for what would become a two-year sweep of the Best Actor category. The following Oscars, he won the same race for A Beautiful Mind. Which performance do you like better?

Friday, May 1 marks 26 years since the official release of Gladiator, which would ultimately become a box-office smash. Inspired by the 1958 Daniel P. Mannix novel Those About to Die, it made $466 million globally and became the second-highest grossing movie that year.

Here's the official synopsis of Gladiator, which holds an 80% average critics' rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 265 reviews: Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) takes power and strips rank from Maximus (Crowe), one of the favored generals of his predecessor and father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the great stoical philosopher. Maximus is then relegated to fighting to the death in the gladiator arenas.

Then came the Scott-directed sequel in 2024, which also received mostly positive reviews but is considered no match for the original. It helps that Gladiator II brought back co-star Connie Nielson and added beloved A-listers Pedro Pascal and Paul Mescal.

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This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 11:25 AM.