Russell Crowe pulls in £2.6M in auction to help finance divorce

Even Oscar winners need a little help paying the bills.

Russell Crowe unloaded dozens of items Saturday night at a Sotheby's auction in a bid to help him fund his divorce from ex-wife Danielle Spencer — and wound up raking in more than £2 million.

"The Art of Divorce," as the "Gladiator" star titled the event, went down in Sydney on his 54th birthday, and featured more than 200 items, including movie memorabilia, antique treasures, artwork and a collection of instruments.

"In case anyone is interested ... $3.7m [£2.6m] at the coal face and around $350k of conversations ongoing ... and a bunch of stuff I didn't really want to sell coming home ... not a bad hourly rate for a 5 hour shift," Crowe joked on Twitter Saturday night.

Among the most popular items was the breastplate he wore in "Gladiator" when his character Maximus (spoiler alert) bites the dust. The piece sold for £88,500, while matching leather wrist cuffs scored £22,600.

He also sold items from movies like "Master and Commander," "The Silver Brumby" and "Proof," though the Royal Navy dress blues from "Master" proved extremely popular, bringing in a £81,400 haul.

One of the more curious items was the leather jockstrap Crowe wore in the 2005 film "Cinderella Man." The protective piece went for £5,000 to one lucky bidder.

"I put it in the collection as a piece of whimsy and a bit of a gag. Funny enough, it's garnered a lot of attention," Crowe told "Good Morning Britain" on Friday.

He and Spencer wed in 2003, and news broke of their split in 2012. The divorce is just about finalized, and the ex-couple share two children.

"Getting to this point with the divorce, and no matter how amicable a split is, you've still got to unwind things at a deep level," he said. "I've never been somebody who deconstructs things. I've always been somebody who builds things. So it was quite a big lesson in life to become somebody who can deconstruct things. And I thought to myself, 'While I'm in the middle of doing that, how else can I do that? How else can I apply that?' And this is what I came up with."