Russell Crowe has taken on a series of iconic roles with minimal complaints, but his role as Jor-El in the upcoming blockbuster Man of Steel has the actor opening up about one of the “toughest costumes” he has ever had to wear.
"The spandex in this thing is like four layers," Crowe told MTV News at the film's Los Angeles press day. "And then when you put the ceremonial robes on top and 40-pound leather cape and all of that sort of [stuff], it's fine if you're just standing there but when you have to jump around doing fight sequences and everything, it was a bit of a challenge."
Although it seems tough to maneuver in the constricting costume, Crowe explains that one of the biggest challenges was holding his bladder.
"The main challenge is probably not being able to go to the bathroom for eight hours at a time," he confessed. "Once you're in your costume, you're stuck in it until lunchtime, because it was 20-25 minutes just to get out of it. So there was a lot of new and interesting things on this."
"The thing is, every movie you do is pretend," he observed. "When we were doing 'Gladiator,' we only had one third of the Colosseum, so you were reminded in every split second it was only pretend. And that stuff doesn't bother you, it goes with the territory. But I did a CGI-heavy movie in 1995 called 'Virtuosity' and that was when you had to be really mathematically specific in order for things to be done properly — and now it's a bit more fluid. You can exist in that space a lot more naturally, so it was kind of fun."