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Ok - Here I go with a series of weird connections. My avatar is Edwin Booth, one of the members of the 19th century Booth family of Maryland, some of whom are buried near me. Its most notorious member was a guy who spited the family by rejecting their unionism during the Civil War and killing president Lincoln, the infamous John Wilkes Booth. Brother Edwin, a staunch unionist, was the far more famous actor, but his career was tanked for a couple years due to the notoriety of his homicidal brother, an act that horrified Edwin. Edwin was the namesake of another famous actor, earlier in the 19th century, Edwin Forrest. Forrest, among other roles, played the lead in an 1831 stage play called The Gladiator. That play provided script hints for not only the 1950's Spartacus book and movie, but also for the writers of Gladiator, the movie. If you were looking for a contemporary actor with a similar on-stage demeanor, it might just be Russel Crowe, Maximus in Gladiator.