Clint Eastwood may have delivered a lot of Oscar-winning dramas over the decades but that also makes the director intimidating to film with.
Being the Man With No Name in the mid-60s, Clint Eastwood’s era as the lead of the Spaghetti Westerns granted the actor immortal status. With a single Sergio Leone trilogy, Eastwood was able to climb to such an echelon of Hollywood celebrity that the actor is still running strong as a guy behind the lens.
Clint Eastwood’s Hollywood handbook is so expansive in its content that if one wanted to accrue some foresight and knowledge into a certain area of expertise related to acting, Eastwood would readily have it. The Western legend has been around since the early 1950s and as of yet, shows no signs of quitting or stepping down without one last hurrah.
Judi Dench Has Complaints Against Clint Eastwood
The major ongoing problem with the workflow system in the film and television industry is the generational gap that exists between the different parts of the production crew. Often, a young and green director steps into the fray and blows away the minds of veteran Academy-winning artists (like Damien Chazelle did with Whiplash, La La Land, and Babylon).
Other times, directors in their 80s and 90s produce more relevant works of art than most current filmmakers (like Martin Scorsese did with Killers of the Flower Moon). Among them all, Clint Eastwood‘s works have been somewhat equivalent to the cherry on top as the actor-turned-director keeps delivering back-to-back Oscar-winning films with the smallest budget in the shortest time.
However, this habit of Eastwood is also the only thing about him that vexes Dame Judi Dench. The James Bond actress’s concerns regarding Eastwood have nothing to do with his confidence or talent and everything to do with his penchant for shooting only one or two takes during filming, leaving little to no room for error.
Clint Eastwood’s Directing Style Endangers Actors
For actors in the film and television industry, performance is the only thing that elevates or demotes them in the public eye. Their skill in enacting a scripted scene with natural ease and conviction either raises them to be deified like Robert De Niro and Daniel Day-Lewis or makes them forgettable like Steven Seagal.
However, despite one’s natural talent, it is the cushion of security provided by the option of multiple takes, the editing room, and reshoots that allow a movie to show the best possible version of itself. Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher are often criticized for overusing their authority to do multiple takes, often exhausting and wearing the actor out.
Clint Eastwood, on the other hand, does the exact opposite by doing only one (or hardly two) takes at most while filming, often exposing the actors to extreme duress with no room for a single error. Judi Dench, while working on J. Edgar, felt somewhat exasperated by Eastwood, divulging her conversation with the director on set to Louis Theroux in a 2022 BBC interview:
‘Mr Eastwood, could we possibly do that again?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, because we’ve just done it once. Could we have another go?’ ‘No.’
You don’t get so many goes at it either. I mean, for me, the whole filming is… is agony for me simply because you can’t… once it’s, well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Once it’s there, it’s there. If you’re in the theatre, you can get it better on Tuesday and perhaps not so good on Friday. But in film, you work on it and you do it and then the director decides and says, ‘Cut’ and that’s a print.
Even reputed and veteran actors without the security of redoing a take could feel threatened of being criticized over their poor performance in a scene if they feel dissatisfied with the quality of their work. Dame Judi Dench hasn’t been the only one to feel that way after working with Clint Eastwood. Matt Damon and Tom Hanks too have expressed their concerns regarding the same.