(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros / Claire Folger)
Tue 28 October 2025 19:15, UK
It feels safe to say that Clint Eastwood won’t act in another movie again, but you never know. After all, Juror No. 2 was repeatedly cited as the legendary star and filmmaker’s cinematic swansong, but those words never actually came out of his mouth.
Under most circumstances, you’d expect a guy who released his 40th feature from behind the camera at the age of 94 to call it a day, but this is Clint Eastwood. He’ll stop when he’s damned good and ready, but after the fake interview fiasco raised false hope, he hasn’t confirmed or denied that he’s got at least one more left in him.
Whether or not his directing days are behind him, acting seems to be in his past. The four-time Academy Award winner had been taking a backseat as a performer for decades anyway, and he’s only played four onscreen roles in the last 20 years, with Cry Macho his most recent showcase. Time catches up with everyone eventually, although he did have a morbid suggestion for what could bring him back.
Eastwood has been talking about retiring as an actor for almost as long as he’s been directing. He thought he was done after Million Dollar Baby, before Gran Torino changed his mind. He thought he was done after that, too, until he decided to pull a favour for his protégé, Robert Lorenz, and add some star power to his feature-length debut, The Trouble with the Curve.
He probably thought he was done after The Mule, and again after Cry Macho, so it’s foolish to rule anything out. As unlikely as it seems for someone in their mid-90s to read a script that moves them so much that there’s no other option than to get back in the performative saddle, Eastwood has proven that it’s impossible to write him off.
However, he definitely won’t be dusting himself off and getting back in front of the cameras for the follow-up to a film that starred his good friend, Morgan Freeman, although he did joke that it could be the perfect vehicle for a man of his advancing years when talking to Indie London.
“I had always planned when I started directing in 1970 that after a few years I’d get tired of looking at myself onscreen and say, ‘Hey, let’s not do that any more,’” he admitted. “But then every once in a while, something pops up. I’m not saying it won’t happen again, but probably, the odds get less as you set yourself for roles that fit your age group. Unless I do The Bucket List 2!”
Yep, Eastwood cracked that if an offer came his way to play around in a sequel to a movie that was predicated entirely on two old fellas who are on death’s door, he might consider it. There was an air of mischief to the suggestion, but that doesn’t make it any less ghoulish to hear an elderly gentleman suggest that the best use of his talents in his condition was to cast him as someone who’s already got one foot in the grave. He was semi-kidding, but it’s still grim.
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