The vital lesson Clint Eastwood taught Arnold Schwarzenegger: “A big idol of mine”
Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t seem like the type of guy who enjoys being told what to do. You don’t successfully run to be the governor of the largest state in the US by letting others take the lead. However, even Schwarzenegger is willing to accept subordination from time to time, and no one puts him in his place like Clint Eastwood.
Like Schwarzenegger, Eastwood is an alpha male, at least on screen. Like John Wayne, he spent most of his early career swaggering into desert towns with a gun at the ready, but unlike Wayne, his characters never made an attempt at taking the moral high ground. Whether he was playing ‘The Man With No Name’ in Sergio Leone’s Three Dollars trilogy or doling out his particular brand of vigilante justice in the Dirty Harry series, Eastwood’s screen persona has always dominated the action.
Crucially, he did it before Schwarzenegger. The Austrian bodybuilder might have larger biceps, but he can’t beat Eastwood on experience and longevity. Because of this, Schwarzenegger has always looked to the Fistful of Dollars star for inspiration, both in their respective youths and in their more recent years. Schwarzenegger set about to become an action star when he was still in his twenties and managed to succeed beyond his wildest dreams a decade later. Conan the Barbarian, The Running Man, and, of course, The Terminator franchise turned him into the consummate ‘80s action hero, arguably unseating Sylvester Stallone.
But time has a way of absolutely wrecking the body, especially when you spend your first four decades hurling it around soundstages and pumping it full of steroids. By the time the California governor got to be in his fifties and sixties, he was starting to feel the toll, but thanks to Eastwood, he realised that decrepitude didn’t have to end his tenure as an action star.
There is a scene in the 1993 film In the Line of Fire, in which the 63-year-old Eastwood played a Secret Service agent trying to protect the president from a crazed John Malkovich, when the actor pauses to catch his breath after running. “I thought that was so cool,” Schwarzenegger told Reuters in 2013.
“I remember how smart it was to acknowledge that because it took the curse off. No one was trying to say, ‘Isn’t he too old for this job?’” Eastwood, he continued, “Is a big idol of mine and I always like to learn from him.”
Schwarzenegger took that Line of Fire lesson and applied it to The Last Stand, a film that provided him with his first leading role since he took office as governor in 2003. As usual with his films, it lacked the depth and character development of Eastwood’s, but it did prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Governator could still pile on the muscle when necessary.
He tried to mimic his hero again a few years later when he planned to reprise his role as Conan the Barbarian in a film based on Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Sadly for Arnie fans and no else, it fell through, and he was forced to make alternative projects like Viy 2: Journey to China and that Netflix documentary about vegan athletes.
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