{"id":357856,"date":"2026-01-07T22:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/357856\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T22:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:45:09","slug":"the-terrible-actor-clint-eastwood-always-felt-sorry-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/357856\/","title":{"rendered":"The “terrible” actor Clint Eastwood always felt sorry for"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Clint<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Wed 7 January 2026 17:15, UK <\/p>\n

While it\u2019s not impossible, stars are very rarely made with their first performance. Clint Eastwood<\/a> is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history, and he\u2019d been working for over a decade before he finally broke through as the iconic figurehead of Sergio Leone\u2019s Dollars trilogy.<\/p>\n

As often tends to be the case, there are exceptions. Edward Norton in Primal Fear, Natalie Portman in L\u00e9on: The Professional, Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures, Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, and James Dean in East of Eden are among those who exuded star quality in their credited feature debuts, but it doesn\u2019t happen all that often.<\/p>\n

The worst-case scenario is when a complete novice is thrown in at the deep end and left to fend for themselves in a role they\u2019re completely unqualified to play, especially when it\u2019s a high-profile project from a known filmmaker with an ensemble cast of veterans, which can leave a newcomer feeling like a deer in the headlights.<\/p>\n

She would rebound several years later by playing the female lead in Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s seminal Breathless before becoming an iconic figure in the \u2018French New Wave\u2019 movement, but that\u2019s exactly what happened to Jane Seberg when she was plucked from obscurity to headline Otto Preminger\u2019s 1957 period piece, Saint Joan.<\/p>\n

The director launched a nationwide talent search to find his Joan of Arc, and after being submitted by a neighbour, Seberg made her first film appearance after beating out 18,000 other contenders by playing the title character in a film that was eviscerated by critics, most of whom savaged her performance.<\/p>\n

The star\u2019s two overriding memories of Saint Joan were \u201cbeing burned at the stake in the picture\u201d and \u201cbeing burned at the stake by critics,\u201d with Seberg admitting that she was \u201cscared like a rabbit and it showed on the screen,\u201d and being asked to carry a film of that size in her maiden outing was \u201cnot a good experience at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

A dozen years later, she worked with Eastwood on Paint Your Wagon<\/a>, and he still felt sorry for her. \u201cTaking an inexperienced person and putting her in that kind of bad project, under that kind of pressure, it\u2019s terrible,\u201d he told Paul Nelson. \u201cNo matter how much a person looks like she\u2019s right for the part, there\u2019s just so much a person can do. If you\u2019re not any good, then how can anything else be good?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was adamant that there was \u201cno way an inexperienced young gal like that would be able to do that,\u201d suggesting \u201cit was just a Preminger fantasy going on.\u201d More than that, he was wary of the long-term effects it could have had on not only Seberg\u2019s career, but her confidence in her abilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get a reputation as being bad,\u201d Eastwood explained. \u201cIt\u2019s not that you\u2019re really bad, you just have never had a chance to be good in the normal stepping of things. It was too bad she hadn\u2019t gotten some smaller roles.\u201d It was an unfortunate way to kick off her big-screen tenure, but by the end of the 1960s, Seberg had more than washed away the ignominy of Saint Joan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Clint Eastwood Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about Clint Eastwood from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Wed 7 January 2026 17:15, UK While it\u2019s not impossible, stars are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[11436,96,137525,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-357856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-clint-eastwood","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jean-seberg","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}