The movie Clint Eastwood refused to cast himself in: “I didn’t think I was right”
As you might imagine from the most potent double threat in Hollywood history, the director Clint Eastwood has worked with the most throughout his legendary career is none other than Clint Eastwood, and by a quite considerable margin.
Before he gradually phased himself out of the on-camera spotlight, barely a picture went by without the four-time Academy Award winner playing a role. In fact, between his feature-length debut on 1971’s Play Misty for Me and the release of his 25th film, Million Dollar Baby, 33 years later, it only happened four times.
He sat out Breezy because he was too young to play the lead, which went to William Holden instead, and as a lifelong fan of jazz, he decided it would be better if he didn’t distract the audience from his passion project by giving himself a meaty monologue or two in Bird. The third time he ruled himself out of the running, though, there were several parts he could have taken on.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the adaptation of John Berendt’s novel, finds John Cusack’s intrepid journalist heading to Georgia, where he becomes beguiled by the nepotistic figure of Alison Eastwood’s singer, and ends up being drawn into a murder trial with far-reaching implications.
There are several actors in Eastwood’s age range among the ensemble, with Jack Thompson, Bob Gunton, Richard Herd, and Geoffrey Lewis all playing either prominent or supporting roles in the legal drama, and they aren’t too far apart from the Dirty Harry and Unforgiven icon in terms of how many times they’d been around the sun.
He was never really one for staying in the background, though, which could explain why he didn’t see the need to step in front of the camera. “I didn’t cast myself because I, frankly, didn’t think I was right for any of the parts,” he maintained to The Virginian Pilot. “I do feel that my best performances have been in movies I directed, but the part wasn’t here in this one.”
Had Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil contained a main character who was about Eastwood’s age, then a cursory glance at his filmography would suggest that he’d have snatched it with both hands. After all, he’d starred in 17 of his previous 19 movies, and the common thread was that he was either the first or second-billed name in the cast.
It sounds like there might be a hint of ego, if we’re being honest, since Eastwood never played anything below second fiddle in his own pictures. He was listed first in the credits of his next three directorial outings, but sat out Mystic River, possibly because the four leads all needed to be played by younger men.
That might scan as harsh, but you don’t survive as long in a cutthroat place like Hollywood for as long as he has without spending a lot of time looking out for number one, so the explanation behind his absence from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil might be as simple as the fact that none of the older fellas in the flick were showy enough to make it worth his while.
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