What was Clint Eastwood’s first movie as an actor?
When an actor is as iconic as Clint Eastwood, it can be easy to forget that they were once just starry-eyed hopefuls with nothing more than their ambition and raw talent to get them to that first rung of the ladder. Few stars have had the longevity of Eastwood.
Since the 1960s, he’s been a permanent fixture in Hollywood, starting with his indelible performances in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy and carrying through to his career as one of the industry’s most successful directors.
Most Eastwood fans consider his role in the hit western series Rawhide to be his origin story, but in the movie world, it was a comedy about a talking mule that started it all. Setting aside an uncredited role he played in Universal’s Revenge of the Creature, it was 1955’s Francis in the Navy that nabbed him his debut.
The war comedy was the sixth film in the popular series Francis the Talking Mule, which, as its title suggests, centred on a mule with the gift of speech. Singin’ in the Rain actor Donald O’Connor played the animal’s sidekick, and in the sixth instalment, Eastwood played a young sailor named Jonesy. It might not have been the most auspicious of debuts, but everyone has to start somewhere.
What was Clint Eastwood’s first leading role in a movie?
Not to minimise the importance of Francis the Talking Mule, but Eastwood didn’t “make it” as a film actor until well into the 1960s. His first starring role was in none other than Sergio Leone’s classic 1964 spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars. He had played supporting roles in several films at that point, but had never played a main character.
Decades after the film was released and Leone attained auteur status, it might seem like unparalleled good fortune on Eastwood’s part to have landed such a role. At the time, however, the director was unknown in the US, had only ever directed one other movie (which was received poorly), and didn’t have a hope of casting anyone famous. Eastwood had proven his ability to play a cowboy in Rawhide, so he was, in fact, a pretty lucky hire for Leone.
Despite its minuscule budget and initial poor reviews, A Fistful of Dollars went on to become a hit, and is now considered to be one of the greatest westerns ever made. It launched the careers of its director and star, and paved the way for two further collaborations.
What is Clint Eastwood’s highest-grossing movie as an actor?
Most stars hit the pinnacle of their box office potential long before they hit 50 and less than a decade after they become household names. But in true Eastwood fashion, he fought against convention and won. He’s been scoring top box office numbers since the ’70s. 1978’s Every Which Way But Loose pulled in over $100million, while 1993’s Unforgiven nabbed nearly $160million. However, it wasn’t until 2008, when the actor was 78, that he appeared in his highest-grossing film as an actor.
Gran Torino stars Eastwood as a bigoted Korean War veteran in Michigan who forms an unlikely friendship with a young next-door neighbour (Bee Vang) after he tries to steal his Ford Torino. Eastwood also directed and produced the film, which went on to gross $270million at the box office.
Although the star scored an even bigger windfall with the release of American Sniper six years later, Gran Torino remains his most financially successful film as an actor.
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