Clint Eastwood, known for his breakout role in the Dollars trilogy, earned a smaller salary than his other notable roles before gaining international fame.
With a career spanning over 6-decades, Clint Eastwood has made a mammoth fortune with his net worth standing at $375M following his contribution to the field of acting, filmmaking, and composing. However, it wasn’t always sunshine and rainbow when it came to his salary in the entertainment industry, especially during his early 20s when he was just starting out as an actor.
Although it took Eastwood a while to land his first acting gig after getting rejected for Six Bridges to Cross, the following year, he made his acting debut in Revenge of the Creature. But after a string of minor and often uncredited roles, his career eventually picked up the pace with the western series Rawhide, for which he wasn’t exactly paid boatloads of money.
Clint Eastwood Made $700 per Episode for His First Major Project
While it was Sir Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy that earned Clint Eastwood international stardom, prior to playing the lead in the Western, it was his part in Rawhide that put him on the map. And for his role of Ramrod Rowdy Yates, he reportedly made around $700 per episode which approximately adds up to $6000 in today’s dollars that pales in comparison to his huge paydays.
A few years after marking his debut in the hit western, the actor would eventually find himself playing the iconic Man with No Name in 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars, which he agreed for $15000.
Clint Eastwood Almost Didn’t Return for the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
For the first installment in his Dollars trilogy, Sir Sergio Leone originally aimed to cast James Coburn in the badass role, but eventually let go of his plans for budget issues, as Coburn charged $25000.
Per BBC (via Farout Magazine), Leone stated,
“I really wanted James Coburn, but he was too expensive. The Italian cinema is very poor. We got Clint for $15,000, Coburn wanted $25,000.”
Following the mammoth success of A Fistful of Dollars, Eastwood’s paycheck witnessed a healthy spike for the sequel, as the studio offered him $50,000. But for the threequel, the Unforgiven Star made an astonishing $$250K following his reluctance to reprise the role in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Sir Leone almost recasting Charles Bronson in the role.
Thankfully, the American icon went on to star in the threequel, often considered the best the genre has to offer, and the film became the biggest success of the trilogy, making around $38 Million.