Russell Crowe Raves About Chocolate Statue of His 'Gladiator' Character: 'Available to Eat'

The actor shared an image of the chocolate replica, which was displayed at the Hamrun Chocolate Festival in Malta over the weekend

Russell Crowe is looking sweeter than ever.

On Thursday, the actor, 59, shared an image of his Gladiator character, Maximus, in chocolate form — thanks to a towering statue created for a competition at the Hamrun Chocolate Festival in Malta over the weekend.

"Some people get statues made of bronze. Some in marble," Crowe wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "In Malta, they have made me out of … chocolate!!!"

"When the competition is over, I will be available to eat," Crowe jokingly added.

The statue — which the Thor: Love and Thunder star shared was created by artist Tiziano Cassar and inspired by the 2000 movie — has earned plenty of love on social media even outside of Crowe's shout-out. The life-like confection was observed by thousands of festival attendees, and some took a moment to buzz about it online.

Related: Russell Crowe Calls Original 'Gladiator' Script 'Absolute Rubbish'

It seems this year's event kept to tradition — as a preview for the 2023 festival noted that the "main attractions of the 2022 edition were all life-size, made entirely of chocolate and refined during the festival in front of all those present." This weekend's festival marked the 13th edition.

"Honored to be acknowledged by the actor himself," Cassar wrote on Facebook after Crowe's tweet. "Looking forward to showcasing the final life-size showpiece tomorrow."

Last month, Matthew McConaughey came face-to-face with his own statue on The View, when he was shown his Madame Tussauds wax figure for the very first time. McConaughey, 53, even approached the figure and struck the same pose, quipping, "I feel like AI is alive and well."

"I don't remember when, but I did wear this suit, and I remember those shoes," the actor said of his statue, who he joked "feels alive."

Ed Sheeran also got the wax-figure treatment this year, when the Panoptikum Hamburg in Germany unveiled its own likeness of the singer-songwriter in July. Wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, red sneakers and a guitar on a strap, the Ed lookalike now joins other high-profile figures who have been immortalized in wax including Angelina Jolie, Queen Elizabeth II, Karl Lagerfeld and Henry VIII.

Related: Russell Crowe Says 'Being Famous Was Easy' Before Gladiator: It 'Took Fame to the Other Place'

In other Crowe news, the Oscar winner revealed in April that he thought the original script that he read for Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, was "absolute rubbish."

During a chat with Vanity Fair, Crowe shared that while he was "confident about my abilities as a leading man," he wasn't so confident about the "world that was surrounding me."

"At the core of what we were doing was a great concept, but the script, it was rubbish, absolute rubbish," he said.

"It had all these strange sequences," Crowe continued. "One of them was about chariots and how famous gladiators used certain types of chariots and some famous gladiators had endorsement deals with products for olive oil and things like that, and that's all true, but it's just not going to ring right to a modern audience. They're going to go, 'What the f--- is all this?' The energy around what we were doing was very fractured."

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Still, the actor said he was "blown away by" the final product after "continued conversations with Ridley" and reworking the material. The film itself ended up taking home Best Picture at the 2001 Oscars. And now, more than two decades later, Gladiator has its very own chocolate statue.

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