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Sun 31 August 2025 18:15, UK
When we talk about great actors whose work has transcended time and extends over an elongated period of it, there are very few who have as exciting and commendable an influence as Clint Eastwood.
Refusing to sit back and letting his career fade out, the actor-turned-director has never been too far away from his next picture. Cinema is Eastwood’s lifeblood, and since he was a young man, there is a necessity to his work. That intensity is found in all of his pictures and emanates from Eastwood, whether he is in front of or behind the lens.
Despite a career that is full to the brim with different kinds of movies, if you had to land one particular genre on his head, it would be action. Put a revolver in his hand, and it seemed like Eastwood came alive. A Fistful of Dollars would give Eastwood his first big break out of television and head him toward the bright lights of Hollywood.
Of course, some of the biggest pictures that immediately followed his casting in A Fistful of Dollars were the next two films that completed the trilogy, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. which came out in the following two years. Labelled as the perfect example of what a trio of films should achieve, by Quentin Tarantino, the run of movies is heralded as one of the finest ever created.
“I think there’s only one trilogy that completely and utterly works to the Nth degree, and that’s A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” said Tarantino, “It does what no other trilogy has ever been quite able to do.”
Tarantino continued, “The first movie is terrific, but the second movie is so great and takes the whole idea to such a bigger canvas that it obliterates the first one. And then the third one does the same thing to the second one, and that’s kind of what never happens. You’ll see this big jump from the first to the second and they don’t really land the third one.”
While this trilogy very much put Clint Eastwood on the map as a movie star, it also led to him becoming one of the most sought-after actors for those who were making westerns. He went on to star in Hang ‘Em High, Coogan’s Bluff and Two Mules for Sister Sara, each of which served a similar purpose to the trilogy he was formerly attached to. While they’re by no means bad movies, they represent a period in his career that Eastwood wasn’t a huge fan of. In an interview, he described the mid to late ‘70s as one of the best eras for actors, as they had more freedom to move outside of the films they were closely associated with.
“This is the best era for actors. Any actor today who’s doing well can have a certain amount of control. The old days seem like they were better for stars, but in spite of all the glamour, it was still `Here’s your next picture, Mr. Bogart’,” said Eastwood, “Today, you’re a free agent. If somebody doesn’t want to do what you want to do, you can leave ‘em for another outfit.”
During this period, Eastwood was involved with some of the biggest films of his career, such as Escape from Alcatraz, which was a departure from the pictures that had previously put him on the map.
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