Clint was a movie star before he was an actor. There is a difference. Very few actors are movie stars and some movie stars aren’t actors. Yes, they can all act but anyone who can be comfortable as themselves in front of a camera can act. Therefore, with direction and experience, everyone on earth has the capability of acting. That doesn’t make them actors.
Eastwood’s stardom was clear early on. From 1959 to 65 on RAWHIDE. 1964 with A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and Spaghettis that followed. If it wasn’t clear after WHERE EAGLES DARE and KELLY’S HEROES, then it was set in stone with DIRTY HARRY in 1971. From then on, Clint would be one of the most iconic American movie stars in the history of cinema. But by my estimation, he didn’t really become an actor until 1984.
That’s the year he made TIGHTROPE, a movie that might have been a shock to the system for some Eastwood fans. Suddenly, Clint makes himself vulnerable, accessible, still a bad ass but one with internal issues, one whose cracks show. At one point, his character is told, “I’d like to find out what’s underneath the front you put on,” a poignant line that reflects the purpose of the film. It’s a partial de-construction of the Eastwood persona, with enough grimaces and one-liners to still keep his base loyal. He would strike that balance in many pictures from then on.
To be fair, he started that process two years earlier with HONKYTONK MAN, perhaps the most over-looked Eastwood performance in his entire career. A flawed film, Eastwood’s country musician story is nevertheless moving, a touching tale that gives Clint a chance to play more with mortality than his previous pictures. But TIGHTROPE is a better picture and therefore a better vehicle for his acting skills. Beyond vulnerability, Clint also shows us his full blown sexual side, something you don’t see very often in an Eastwood movie. He hinted to it in THE BEGUILED and PLAY MISTY FOR ME (both films also hinted to his possibility as a true actor) but in TIGHTROPE he really lets loose and bares all! Beyond a natural and accurate sexual appetite, Clint reveals true fear for the first time. He’s afraid for his daughters (the scenes with his daughters are often touching and verge on heartbreaking). He’s afraid for the lives of the prostitutes he’s slept with who might be the next victims. And he’s afraid of how similar he might be to the killer. Fear is weakness, at least for a traditional Eastwood character. But however dirty he might be, this isn’t Dirty Harry we’re dealing with.
HEARTBREAK RIDGE (1986) is my personal favorite of his performances. The film took me by surprise when I watched it for the first time a couple years ago. Under the crusty exterior of Eastwood’s Gunnery Sergeant, he shows a surprising amount of humanity. The romantic scenes are the strongest in the picture and Eastwood continues his progression towards vulnerability and a layered performance. What could have been a routine military picture turns into a special movie, another gem of Clint’s career that gets a little lost in the more obvious choices. Speaking of lost, WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, released in 1990, is a too-often-forgotten work in his filmography. It’s a different animal than his other 80s performances. Eastwood is definitely playing a character here, perhaps for the first time ever not playing a variation on himself. Instead, he portrays John Huston. Some of the more extravagant demonstrations of Huston’s bravado are hard to swallow (though still fun) but it’s near the end of the picture that Clint shows us that “black heart” he’s hiding underneath and the ending shot is one of the actor and director’s finest moments.
This all culminates with UNFORGIVEN, still his best performance and arguably his best film as a director. With William Munny, he showed us sides of a Western “hero” he never had before: age, fragility, grief, remorse. It’s nothing like the men with no names or Josey Wales. From the opening farming scenes to the killings and conversation with The Kid about killing to his moment with Delilah after getting beaten up to the finale where he does have a few Clint movie star moments but laces them with a layer of deep darkness, his work in UNFORGIVEN shows Eastwood in full actor mode. It is the pinnacle of his development as movie star who is actually a damn good actor.
By the time he made THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY he was out-acting Meryl Streep. No joke, he’s better in that film than the most acclaimed actress in America. IN THE LINE OF FIRE might be the most interesting and odd mixture of Eastwood as actor and movie star. During the first half, he’s in full macho Clint mode, full of screen-winking one liners. But in the last hour of the picture, he shows the same depth and vulnerability that he did in UNFORGIVEN and would again in THE PERFECT WORLD and MILLION DOLLAR BABY.
Clint knows the business and understands his audience. He understands how to thread the line between movie star and actor, giving his devoted followers the satisfaction they need while providing viewers like myself, and himself, more depth. Eastwood knows why audiences come to see Clint. Most of them are paying for the one-liners, the grimaces, the iconic badass. But since the 1980s, he’s also known how to act just as well as any other American actor, whether he gets credit for it or not.
This will eventually be published on my website, runningwildfilms.com, and my Travis Mills Facebook page. For the next week, it is exclusively available here