The only actor who turned down Clint Eastwood three times: “What are your objections?”
His reputation precedes him to such an extent that most actors wouldn’t even ask what the part was; if Clint Eastwood asks you to be in his movie, then you’ll say yes, because it’s a Clint Eastwood movie.
That might scan as hagiography, but it isn’t. Take Judi Dench, for example: she’s one of the greatest actors of her generation, and won more than enough awards to fill a couple of trophy cabinets, but she admitted she was as giddy as a teenager when she got the phone call she’d been waiting her entire life for.
The four-time Academy Award-winning actor and filmmaker has become so iconic that nobody thinks twice about signing on when he comes knocking with an offer. He’s Clint fucking Eastwood, after all, who in their right mind would even contemplate turning him down once, never mind three times?
The answer, as it turns out, is Tyne Daly. When the third instalment in the Dirty Harry franchise, The Enforcer, was recruiting its cast, she wasn’t a well-known actor. Most of her work had been one-off appearances on TV shows and a handful of features, which wasn’t the type of background that would give any performer the confidence to turn down the biggest and most bankable leading man in the business.
And yet, she did. James Fargo’s 1976 sequel partnered Harry Callahan with a younger partner, Kate Moore, and Daly rejected him three times. “He said, ‘What are your objections?'” she recalled. “We started talking about the script. I said I had had interesting talks with policewomen. And I said, ‘Let me confront one little bad guy.'”
Even though she was a virtual unknown in Hollywood, never mind when compared with Eastwood, Daly didn’t want to play a one-note woman in a macho action flick. “Initially, I didn’t want to do it,” she confessed to Smashing Interviews. “I felt the part was limited and that, basically, she was a joke.”
That must have impressed him, since he asked her for a fourth time. Eventually, she did what not many people have ever managed to do in a film where Eastwood either directed or played the lead role; Daly sat him down, read him the riot act, and convinced him to dramatically alter the character in the script.
She explained that he “allowed me to influence her with what I considered to be, give her a point of view, a backbone.” It was even more impressive, “because he didn’t have to do that,” and could have easily taken the three rejections as a sign. Or, as the actor put it, “He could have hired some much more compliant lady.”
An actor who hadn’t played a particularly memorable role repeatedly turning down Clint Eastwood was unheard of in the mid-1970s, but Daly stuck to her guns. Sure, she relented at the fourth time of asking, but only if her demands were met. Since she’s now a six-time Primetime Emmy winner and a five-time Golden Globe nominee with a Tony in her back pocket, it’s clear that she knew what she was talking about.
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