The one actor Clint Eastwood refused to be overshadowed by: “That galled me”
Whenever Clint Eastwood is in a movie, he tends to be the centre of attention, which is fair enough when he’s one of the most iconic stars in Hollywood history who’s been reminding audiences of that fact since the early 1960s.
Few actors have ever possessed as much natural screen presence as Eastwood, and while nobody would ever consider him one of the all-time greats from a purely performative perspective, he carried himself with more effortless charisma and attention-grabbing aura than the majority of names to have ever plied their trade on the silver screen.
The point is that when people watch an Eastwood movie, there’s only one place in the frame where their gaze will be drawn. He’s as magnetic as they come, but he’s still plagued by the insecurities that hound any star as they try desperately to ensure the focus remains entirely on them whenever they play a leading role.
He might have gotten a little shorter over the years, as tends to be the case with most folks who live long enough to enjoy their 90s, but in his pomp, Eastwood stood at a hefty six feet and four inches tall. That only benefitted him when he was trying to make his name as a leading man, but he didn’t care much for sharing scenes with people who could make him look any less statuesque.
That meant poor Liam Neeson suffered when they worked together on 1988’s Dirty Harry sequel The Dead Pool, where he played music video director Peter Swan. The actors are both the exact same height, but because Eastwood was playing the stoic badass and Neeson was merely a supporting player and a bit of a weasel, that simply wouldn’t do.
It’s ego massaging at its most pettiest, even if the Irishman wasn’t in a position to argue. After all, he was still getting his feet wet in American cinema, and he was filming opposite a living legend reprising one of their defining roles, so if Eastwood wanted to come off as taller onscreen, there wasn’t much he could do about it.
“They actually put me down a couple of inches shorter than Clint,” Neeson told the Tampa Bay Times. “Where we were filmed side by side, he stood on curbs and the upside slopes of hills. Because he was the hero, I was made shorter. That galled me.”
Neeson had recently been told that he wasn’t tall enough to play a giant in Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride after he went in to audition for the role that was ultimately played by the much more apt Andre the Giant. Yet, Eastwood was adamant that he simply couldn’t abide by having Harry Callahan and Swan presented at the same height in The Dead Pool.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Clint Eastwood Newsletter
All the latest stories about Clint Eastwood from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.