The only actor who argued with Clint Eastwood on set: “Find his extra and put a shirt on him”
Having conquered the worlds of both acting and directing, Clint Eastwood immediately commands respect from anybody he works with in any capacity on either side of the camera.
After all, having been a star since the 1960s and a director for almost as long, there can’t be much left in Hollywood that he hasn’t encountered at least once. A legend and an icon, Eastwood is also famed for his economic professionalism, which has seen him turn the art of filmmaking into a well-oiled machine.
He never goes over budget, and he sure as shit never goes over the allotted production schedule, and very rarely will Eastwood shoot more than one or two takes of any given scene before moving on to the next. He’s collaborated with a cavalcade of high-profile actors spanning multiple generations, but only once has he ever argued with an actor.
Working on an Eastwood set is like stepping into a moving train: you either keep up or get left behind. Scripts are tight, takes are few and far between, and nobody’s hanging around waiting for someone to find their motivation. Eastwood runs the show with the kind of quiet authority that doesn’t leave much room for second guesses, and most actors, no matter how big their name, know better than to test that rhythm.
But in 1993, Kevin Costner wasn’t just another actor. Fresh off The Bodyguard and riding a wave of megastar confidence, he was used to the world moving at his pace. On the set of A Perfect World, though, he ran headfirst into a different reality – one where the clock wasn’t bending for anyone. Eastwood didn’t blink, didn’t raise his voice. He just made his move, shot the scene without him, and kept the whole thing rolling like nothing happened. Business as usual.
Since making his feature-length debut on 1971’s Play Misty for Me, the face of the Dollars trilogy has gone on to helm another 39 films. Jack Green was the cinematographer on 14 of Eastwood’s pictures between Heartbreak Ridge and Space Cowboys, so he knows what it takes to survive and thrive on one of his sets.
As he revealed to Esquire, Green never saw or heard Eastwood raise his voice, be challenged by any cast or crew members, or argue with any of his performers. Except once, when Kevin Costner was getting a touch too big for his boots on crime thriller A Perfect World.
Releasing in 1993, it came at the peak of Costner’s popularity and was his first credit since The Bodyguard, so he was on top of the world. However, tensions arose when the two-time Academy Award winner was summoned from his trailer to shoot a scene, only to inform Eastwood that he needed to wait because he wasn’t ready.
In typically gruff fashion, the filmmaker instructed the crew to “find his extra and put a shirt on him,” going ahead and capturing the stand-in walking through a field. When Costner emerged and declared that he was now prepared for a hard day’s work, Eastwood didn’t care. “Never mind,” he said. “We’re moving on.”
Being an A-lister and a draw in his own right, Costner had a heated exchange with Eastwood for having the temerity to replace him with an extra. Once again, Eastwood was utterly nonplussed, telling his tantrum-throwing leading man that “I get paid to burn film”. The star wasn’t ready, the extra was, and it’s not as if the icon doesn’t have a reputation for making hay in every moment the sun is shining.
Quite simply, Eastwood is not a man for fucking around, wasting time, or bowing to the whims of temperamental actors, and there was never a chance Costner was going to end up winning their argument and have the sequence filmed again when it was already in the can.
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