Clint Eastwood names his favourite female actors: “They weren’t afraid to be salty”
Clint Eastwood has had the privilege of sharing the screen with some of the all-time greats. John Malkovich in In the Line of Fire, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman in Unforgiven, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland in Space Cowboys, and that’s disregarding the myriad of talented actors he’s directed over the years.
The Man with No Name has also starred opposite some of their generation’s most legendary female actors. He and Meryl Streep played lovers in The Bridges of Madison County, a role that landed Streep one of her many Oscar nominations. He showed Hilary Swank how to box in Million Dollar Baby, which actually won her the big prize, and his real-life partner Sondra Locke appeared alongside him in numerous big screen outings, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, Every Which Way But Loose, and Sudden Impact. He also directed Angelina Jolie’s Oscar-nominated turn in Changeling, a story about a woman who suspects that the ‘missing son’ that is returned to her actually belongs to someone else.
Eastwood’s appreciation for female actors goes way back to his childhood, as he revealed in a 1995 interview with The New York Times. “I loved the actresses from the ’30s and ’40s,” he explained. “Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell, Bette Davis. They all had great voices, and they weren’t afraid to be salty.”
Bette Davis is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time, regardless of gender. Beginning her career on the stage, she moved to Hollywood in the 1930s and won her first two Academy Awards for ‘Best Actress’ for the 1935 drama Dangerous. After a period of career decline, she revitalised her image with an all-time great performance in All About Eve, in which she played a former starlet who becomes the subject of an obsessed fan. Eastwood has often spoken about his admiration for Davis’ powerhouse roles.
Of the three names mentioned by Eastwood, Rosalind Russell is by far the least famous, though that doesn’t mean she wasn’t extremely talented. She broke through in Howard Hawks’ 1940 film His Girl Friday, in which she memorably appeared opposite Cary Grant as a fast-talking, skittish reporter. Best known for her comedic roles, Russell was nominated for an Oscar four times, though she failed to bag the statuette on every occasion. Eastwood once told the American Film Institute that His Girl Friday was “one of his all-time favourite films.”
Then there’s Barbara Stanwyck, the only one of his three idols Eastwood actually stood a chance of working with. She appeared in a 1962 episode of Rawhide, the Western TV show that gave the gruff actor one of his earliest tastes of stardom. Alas, Eastwood wasn’t actually in that episode, so he missed his chance to act opposite a woman he had enjoyed watching as a teenager. Elsewhere, Stanwyck could be found in movies like Double Indemnity, Stella Dallas, and Baby Face. She was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1982.
Growing up on a diet of acclaimed female actors, you can see how Eastwood would be drawn to telling stories about determined, powerful women. Much has been written about how the star, who is so often equated with a certain ideal of masculinity, is secretly a highly feminist filmmaker, and with influences like Davis, Russell, and Stanwyck, he had a lot of great work to draw on.
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