The only three movies with Clint Eastwood’s name on them that he didn’t act in or direct
Hollywood is full of actors who direct, actors who produce, and actors who do nothing but act. Clint Eastwood has ticked all three boxes numerous times, but he’s only been credited on three films where he wasn’t standing on either side of the camera.
Considering his career started over seven decades ago, he’s been a star almost as long, and he founded his production company in 1967, it’s clear that the four-time Academy Award winner has been looking out for number one above all others. Think of a modern-day actor-turned-director, and the chances are high they’ve produced at least a handful of films they weren’t otherwise directly involved with.
George Clooney backed Ben Affleck’s Argo and David Gordon Green’s Our Brand Is Crisis among dozens of producing and executive-producing credits. Affleck has been credited on at least half a dozen movies he didn’t act in or direct, and Bradley Cooper earned an Oscar nomination for producing Todd Phillips’ Joker.
Even more actors have formed production companies to shine a light on smaller projects from unknown or untried directors, but not Eastwood. Malpaso has churned out 60 features and a solitary documentary since Hang ‘Em High, and of those 60 flicks, only three of them weren’t directed by Eastwood or featured him in an acting role.
Clearly, it takes something special for the veteran to venture outside of his wheelhouse and throw his weight behind somebody else, so what drove him to break a career-long habit three times? Nepotism, mostly. One of the industry’s great scourges, all of Eastwood’s hands-off credits saw him support his nearest and dearest.
The first was 1986’s oddball dramedy Ratboy, the feature-length directorial debut of his longtime partner Sondra Locke, who also played the lead role. Just to be clear, she didn’t want him to do it: “I begged Clint not to be involved from the get-go,” she said. “Because I just felt that our personal relationship was such that somehow there was going to be a problem.”
A decade later, Eastwood produced James Keach’s The Stars Fell for Henrietta, an adaptation of Winifred Sanford’s novel, Luck. Funnily enough, the female lead was played by Frances Fisher, who was his partner at the time, and the film also marked the acting debut of their daughter, Francesca.
The third, and so far final, time Eastwood put his name on a picture that he didn’t act or direct was in 2007. On the surface, a low-budget film about a train engineer who kills a suicidal woman and struggles to keep his failing marriage together before the late woman’s son unexpectedly turns up on his doorstep and moves in doesn’t sound like something the legend would get involved with.
However, it just so happened that Rails & Ties was his daughter Alison Eastwood’s directorial debut. He didn’t do her any more favours, though, with her sophomore film Battlecreek only having one family member’s name in the credits. As it turns out, the only thing that can make him slap his nomenclature on a movie he hasn’t acted in or directed is cold, hard nepotism.
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