Clint Eastwood has had a legendary career as an A-list movie star
and Oscar-winning director. But even though he's a Hollywood icon, there's still a lot
that even his biggest fans may not know about him. This is the untold truth of Clint Eastwood.
When Clint Eastwood was hired by Universal as a contract player,
he became friendly with Burt Reynolds, who had also been signed around the same time.
Both men would go on to soon become huge stars, but it wasn't all smooth sailing right away,
as they were also both fired by Universal in the same year. And the reason Eastwood
was let go was a rather unusual one. As Reynolds recounted on a 2000 episode of Larry King Live,
"He was fired because his Adam's apple stuck out too far. He talked too slow.
And he had a chipped tooth and he wouldn't get it fixed."
When Eastwood asked Reynolds why he'd been fired,
Reynolds explained that he was told he couldn't act. As he put it,
"I said to Clint, you know, you are really screwed,
because I can learn how to act. You can't get rid of that Adam's apple."
"It did hold him back."
"Yeah." "Oh yeah, absolutely."
"Yeah. Yeah."
"Poor guy."
"Poor guy. Whatever happened?"
Eastwood ultimately had the last laugh, because the next time he worked for Universal, he got paid
seven figures, substantially more than the $75 a week he was reportedly paid while under contract.
Eastwood was starring in the TV Western Rawhide when he flew overseas while the
show was on hiatus to star in a low-budget Western movie being shot in Italy. That film,
1964's A Fistful of Dollars, ultimately raked in more than $14 million at the American box office.
Fistful's surprise success led to Eastwood starring in two more spaghetti Westerns
from director Sergio Leone, as he once again played the poncho-clad gunslinger known as "The
Man With No Name" in 1965's For a Few Dollars More and 1966's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
In a 2002 interview with Entertainment Today, Eastwood confirmed a rumor that
he wore the same poncho in all three movies, and that it had never been washed. He quipped,
"If you washed it, it would fall apart. Yeah, I still have that poncho."
When Eastwood was asked if he'd ever had the poncho laundered,
he admitted that, in fact, he had not. As he recalled,
"It was folded up after The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and it hasn't been unfolded yet."
"You look great."
"Thank you."
Perhaps even more iconic than Eastwood's Man With No Name is Detective Harry Callahan,
the loose-cannon cop introduced in 1971's Dirty Harry. It may seem
impossible to picture any other actor in the role, but believe it or not,
Eastwood wasn't the original choice to play Harry. In a 2008 interview with MTV News, he revealed,
"I guess they tried to get a lot of people for it. They tried Frank Sinatra and Robert
Mitchum and Steve McQueen. Then they finally ended up with Frank Sinatra."
Eastwood was working on post-production for his directorial debut Play Misty for Me when
he received a call asking if he still had any interest in playing Harry. As he recounted,
"I said, 'What happened to Frank Sinatra?' And they said,
'Frank Sinatra's got some problem with his hand and he can't hold a gun.'
That sounded like a pretty lame excuse, but it didn't matter to me."
Eastwood then agreed to take the part, but he had one condition. Since his initial discussions,
the script had undergone several rewrites that left him unimpressed,
so he declared that he was only interested in the original script.
"You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"
Eastwood's not only an actor and a director, he's also been known to compose and perform music for
many of his films. Some of the movies that he's written musical pieces for include the likes of
Heartbreak Ridge, A Perfect World, The Bridges Of Madison County, Absolute Power, and Space Cowboys.
He also wrote and even sang the song that plays during the closing credits of 2008's Gran Torino.
In addition to all that, Eastwood has also composed the full musical scores for
several of his movies, including Mystic River, Changeling, Million Dollar Baby,
and Flags of Our Fathers. In a 2003 profile in The New Yorker, he explained how he used Mystic
River's acting trio of Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Kevin Bacon as musical inspiration. As he put it,
"They all formed this triangle, so I started writing a triad,
playing with that on a piano. And all of a sudden I developed this theme based on
this triad, which is nothing terribly complicated, but to me — in a movie,
the music shouldn't be terribly complicated. It should be supporting, not overriding."
Eastwood's musical pursuits have also gone beyond film scores. Back when he
was playing Rowdy Yates on Rawhide, he went into a recording studio to lend his voice
to a collection of cowboy songs. Produced as a merchandising tie-in with the show,
Rawhide's Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites was released in 1963. The collection included
the original song "Rowdy," a musical homage to his cattle-driving character.
Plenty of stars have transitioned from entertainment to politics,
like Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jesse Ventura. In 1986, Clint Eastwood
also threw his hat into the political ring when he ran for mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea,
California. His campaign wasn't exactly fueled by genuine political ambition;
instead, it all had to do with a grudge. His bid came about after a two-year legal battle with
Carmel's council, which had blocked his plans to construct a building by citing outdated and often
ridiculous ordinances that Eastwood believed were halting progress. As he complained at the time,
"They want it to be like it was in the 20s. Well, it can't be.
Of course we need to control growth, but some of the things they've done are silly."
Eastwood was ultimately elected, and one of his first official acts as mayor was a symbolic one,
as he altered an ordinance that the city had previously used to deny granting a
permit to an ice cream parlor. During a council meeting, Mayor Eastwood joked,
"I hope to never read about the ice cream cones again."
When his two-year term ended, he declined to seek re-election.
Eastwood has played his fair share of iconic characters over the course of his career,
but there were a couple of other big ones that he declined to take on,
as he opted not to play either Superman or James Bond, despite opportunities to do so.
In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he revealed that he was offered a
decent amount of money to play Agent 007 in what turned out to be George Lazenby's sole
outing as Bond in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. As Eastwood explained,
"This was after Sean Connery left. My lawyer represented [Bond producer] Cubby
Broccoli and he came and said, 'They would love to have you.' But to me,
well, that was somebody else's gig. That's Sean's deal. It didn't feel right for me to be doing it."
As for the Man of Steel, Eastwood felt that he was too old for the role, as he was in his late
40s when the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman hit theaters in 1978. Also,
putting on tights and a cape to play a comic-book superhero just wasn't his thing. As he put it,
"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."
While Eastwood may have turned down his chance to play a superhero,
in 2014 he demonstrated his own real-life heroism. As Steve John,
CEO of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, told the Carmel Pine Cone,
"Clint saved my life."
During an event ahead of the golf tournament John was chatting with VIPs and enjoying some hors
d'oeuvres when a piece of cheese became wedged in his throat and he began to choke. Fortunately,
Eastwood walked right up behind him and knew just what to, as he gave him the Heimlich maneuver,
thereby dislodging the cheese and rescuing him from choking to death. As Eastwood recalled,
"I looked in his eyes and saw that look of panic people have
when they see their life passing before their eyes. It looked bad."
He added,
"I gave him three good jolts, and that got it out. And then
I made him drink a big glass of water with a bunch of lemon squeezed in it."
Looks like we now have to add "life-saver" to Eastwood's already-packed resume.
There was another time that Eastwood saved a life, his own,
in fact. When he was serving in the United States Army, he was flying on a plane when
it crashed into the ocean off the coast of Point Reyes, California after the World War
II-era bomber ran out of fuel. As he recalled in 2015 to a group of Loyola Marymount students,
"What was going through my mind was just a stark fear, a stark terror."
Luckily, Eastwood was a strong swimmer, as he worked as a swimming instructor
during his stint in the Army. As he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016,
"I could see the Marin County coast from a distance. I don't know how far
it was — it seemed like 50 miles, but it was probably a mile or two.
Then it got dark. It was quite a way into nightfall before we reached it."
What Eastwood didn't know while making the arduous journey to shore was that he
was swimming through an area where sharks had been known to breed. Looking back, he admitted,
"I'm glad I didn’t know that at the time or I'd have just died."
While his friends may call him Clint, in academic circles he's known as Dr. Eastwood. That's because
he's the recipient of not one, but three honorary degrees. In 2006, he received an honorary Doctor
of Fine Arts from the University of the Pacific. Not coincidentally, he'd been on the board of
the university's Brubeck Institute, named for jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, since it was founded
in 2000. Then in 2007, Eastwood was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of
Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. As Elizabeth M. Daly, dean of that USC school, said,
"Clint Eastwood is an icon of film and television,
inspiring audiences around the globe. His work on both sides of the camera
exemplifies the creativity and dedication that we strive to instill in our students."
During the commencement ceremony,
Eastwood was also presented with the school's inaugural Honorary Alumni Award. Also in 2007,
the actor received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Boston's Berklee College of Music.
He accepted the honor during that year's edition of the Monterey Jazz Festival.
A little-known fact about Clint Eastwood is that he's a practitioner of transcendental meditation,
abbreviated TM. He hasn't often publicly discussed his interest in TM,
but in 2011 he recorded a video for the David Lynch Foundation, an organization
founded by filmmaker David Lynch to teach TM to schoolchildren. As Eastwood detailed in the video,
"I've been using it for almost 40 years now, and I think it's a great tool for anyone to have,
and to be able to utilize as a tool for stress."
"And stress of course, it's comes with almost every business."
Eastwood also noted,
"I think you'll find it's a great system to use in life in general.
Otherwise why would I have been doing it all these years? Almost half of my life."
Eastwood also opened up about TM in a 2009 interview with GQ, as he revealed that he
tries to meditate twice per day. And while working on a movie, he becomes downright
religious about ensuring that he incorporates meditation into his schedule. As he explained,
"I believe in whatever self-help you can give yourself [...] So
meditation with me was just a self-reliant thing."
Considering Eastwood's longevity,
we're not surprised at how well it's been working out for him.
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