The classic movie Clint Eastwood was sure would be “awful”
As an actor and filmmaker who’s enjoyed over half a century of success, Clint Eastwood has honed the ability to trust his instincts when it comes to choosing the projects he either wants to star in or direct, which even extends to classics he wasn’t entirely convinced by.
The actor is one of the two most iconic on-camera talents in the history of the western genre alongside John Wayne, with his involvement stretching all the way back to his Rawhide days, where he played Rowdy Yates from 1959 to 1965.
As was to be expected, there were a lot of offers for similar characters in similar stories being sent his way, but Eastwood was wary of being permanently typecast. While his breakthrough role as a legendary leading man did admittedly come in a western, A Fistful of Dollars was anything but conventional.
A distinctly American type of movie shot on location in Spain by a relatively unknown Italian filmmaker, the actor seized the opportunity to do something completely different from Rawhide, albeit under the same sort of parameters. It turned out to be a genius move in retrospect, with the Dollars trilogy enduring as some of the most seminal work of his illustrious career.
That willingness to embrace uncertainty became one of Eastwood’s defining traits. Rather than chasing safety or familiarity, he was drawn to projects that felt slightly uncomfortable, trusting that instinct more than industry wisdom. It was an approach shaped by experience, knowing that playing it safe often led to stagnation, while risk at least offered the possibility of something lasting.
In that sense, Eastwood’s hesitation was not rooted in doubt about his own ability, but in the unpredictability of the collaboration itself. Working with an unfamiliar director in an unfamiliar environment meant relinquishing a degree of control, something few established actors were willing to do at the time. Yet it was precisely that lack of structure that hinted the project might become something unlike anything he had done before.
Embracing the chance to cast aside his wholesome image and play a grizzled antihero, the star’s working relationship with Sergio Leone became one of the most fruitful actor/director partnerships in the history of cinema, but Eastwood wasn’t entirely confident A Fistful of Dollars would even be good, never mind a landmark moment in both his filmography and the Western at large.
“Sergio was terrific for me,” he said to Empire. “I was this young man, having done three years on Rawhide, with an Italian director who spoke no English. I thought it was insanity and that insanity was intriguing for me.” Embracing the unusual sum of its parts, Eastwood knew that it was going to be a very different type of production, but he still wasn’t sold on whether it would yield results.
“I thought there will be a whole different approach, but it’ll probably just be awful,” he admitted, only for audiences the world over to disagree. “I was a big fan of John Ford, and Sergio was too, but his approach was so different: he had no restrictions, he’d kind of go off and do what he wanted even if it was somewhat satirical. It was certainly different from me.”
Far from being awful, Eastwood may have only been paid $15,000 and a brand new car for his troubles, but the effect it had on his career was seismic. Once the two spiritual sequels had been released to unite as an all-timer of a trilogy, his stardom reached a whole new level it’s maintained ever since.
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