An iconic presence in every sense of the word, history will always remember Clint Eastwood as one of the most legendary stars the movie business has ever had to offer.
Whether it was his unforgettable performances in the western genre that defined the medium’s evolution into harder-edged, grittier fare, the rugged Harry Callahan, or his evolution into a respected and awards-laden filmmaker, Eastwood has enjoyed an incredibly lengthy stint at the top of the ladder.
He’s played more than a few inimitable characters during that time, but there could have been a great deal more had he not developed a habit of turning down parts that would secure legendary status anyway.
There’s no doubt countless more roles that he’d knocked back over the decades, but it speaks volumes about Eastwood’s standing that he declined the chance to bring even more certifiable icons to life than he already has.
Every role Clint Eastwood turned down:
6. Agent K (Men in Black, Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997)
One of the most purely entertaining blockbusters of the 1990s, Men in Black thrived on the effortless chemistry between leads Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, which is ironic considering neither of them were Sony’s first choice.
“The studio really wanted Clint Eastwood,” director Barry Sonnenfeld admitted, but he was pushing for Jones. In another delicious twist of irony, when the number one contender had knocked back the opportunity, and his replacement was drafted in, there were no guarantees Sonnenfeld would remain on board.
“I almost got screwed,” he continued. “They couldn’t hire me because Tommy had director approval.” Fortunately, Jones gave the thumbs-up to the filmmaker, and sci-fi magic was made. It’s easy to imagine Eastwood as the grizzled Agent K, but it’s nonetheless impossible to envision Men in Black with anybody else other than its dynamic central duo.
5. Harmonica (Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone, 1968)
Eastwood and Sergio Leone were inextricably linked through their collaborations on the seminal Dollars trilogy, but the leading man of the spaghetti western trio wasn’t sold on reuniting for the director’s next voyage into the Old West.
Patrick McGilligan’s biography Clint: The Life and Legend recounts a meeting between the pair for Once Upon a Time in the West, where Eastwood declined the chance to play Harmonica, a part eventually filled by Charles Bronson.
That’s not the only role he turned down, either, with Leone wanting the assailants who ambush Harmonica before being killed to be Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach to draw a distinct line under the Dollars era, but he rejected that chance, too.
4. Benjamin Willard (Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
A nightmarish production in every sense of the world, Apocalypse Now emerged on the other side as a cinematic classic, albeit one that could have been very different had Eastwood played Benjamin Willard.
“Coppola called me up and asked me if I wanted to do the young guy I th ink later played by Martin Sheen,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter. “And asked me if I wanted to play that and I said, ‘Gee, I don’t know, I don’t understand this show too much.’”
Eastwood was reticent to spend 16 weeks in the Philippines due to “unknown factors” in the country, and having just finished building his own house on home soil, it forced him to decline the lead role in one of the greatest war stories ever committed to film.
3. John McClane (Die Hard, John McTiernan, 1988)
Frank Sinatra was contractually obligated to be offered the lead, having previously starred in 1968’s The Detective, but Eastwood actually held the rights to Nothing Lasts Forever in the early 1980s, which would eventually evolve into Die Hard.
It’s become the stuff of legend that every major star in the business turned down the chance to be John McClane before Bruce Willis secured his career-defining gig as the beleaguered detective, but screenwriter Jeb Stuart revealed that one of the reasons why Eastwood turned it down was because he didn’t understand the tone.
“They went to Clint Eastwood first. Ironically, his response to the producers was, ‘I don’t get the humour,”’ he explained. “Which, for me, was a shock because if you listen to a lot of those words, Eastwood’s one of the few people who could have delivered a line like ‘Come to LA, have a great time.’ All that kind of stuff. You could see him doing that. He was my inspiration.”
2. Superman (Superman, Richard Donner, 1978)
An infamously exhaustive casting process that eventually settled on Christopher Reeve, trying to find the right person to lead Richard Donner’s Superman drew almost the entirety of Tinseltown into its orbit.
Among them was Eastwood, who, despite being an avid comic book reader in his youth, wasn’t interested in squeezing himself into a skin-tight costume and playing a superhero capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound.
“I can remember – and this was many years ago – when Frank Wells came to me about doing Superman, so it could have happened,” he conceded. “This was when they first started to think about making it. I was like, ‘Superman? Nah, nah, that’s not for me.’ Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s for somebody, but not me.” In the end, the unknown Reeve was the pitch-perfect Clark Kent and ‘Man of Steel’.
1. James Bond (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Peter R. Hunt, 1969)
With Sean Connery vacating the tux at the end of his iconic tenure, the search to find the next James Bond ultimately settled on George Lazenby, but Eastwood was one of many much higher-profile names under consideration at the time.
The four-time Academy Award winner was “offered pretty good money to do James Bond if I would take on the role,” but he decided he didn’t want to step on anybody else’s toes. “My lawyer represented the Broccolis and he came and said, ‘They would love to have you.’”
For Eastwood, though, “that was somebody else’s gig.” Calling 007 “Sean’s deal,” the actor said “it didn’t feel right for me to be doing it.” He’s not wrong, either, considering the thoroughly American and world-famous star would have been a jarring Bond, to say the least.