With his tall willowy frame, smoldering blue eyes, and stern-set jaw, Clint Eastwood made a name for himself playing characters with reserved masculinity who were morally recalcitrant, such as the Man With No Name from Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. A slew of Spaghetti Westerns in the ’60s and ’70s led to a booming career in the ’80s playing antihero cop Harry Callahan, and in the ’90s and ’00s he began to direct Academy Award-winning films like Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.
Eastwood has been in the business of making movies for six decades and is generally regarded as a Hollywood icon despite having entered Tinsel Town with no acting experience. His laconic screen presence has inspired actors of every generation, 15 of which are below singing his praises.
Updated on October 31, 2021 by Kayleena Pierce-Bohen: With unforgettable characters ranging from the vengeful Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry and the righteous William Munny in Unforgiven, all the way to the polarizing Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino and his most recent turn as cynical ex-rodeo star Mike Milo in Cry Macho, Clint Eastwood continues a legacy of exploring the different sides of masculinity on screen. By examining these facets, it’s not surprising to find that the breadth of his influence can be felt in the performances and acting philosophies of many actors who have grown up with him and worked alongside him for generations.
Timothy Olyphant
One of Timothy Olyphant’s most widely recognized roles is as Seth Bullock in the hit HBO series Deadwood, in which he plays a town sheriff with the same steely-eyed presence as Clint Eastwood, hissing his lines between clenched teeth with the same smoldering grit.
In one of Olyphant’s best movies, he also voiced the “Spirit of the West” in the animated Western Rango, who was rendered to look exactly like Clint Eastwood. His impression was so good that viewers almost couldn’t tell the difference, and he took great pride in the relatively small role in an interview with Collider.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger has long considered Clint Eastwood a personal idol. Eastwood’s particular brand of steely masculinity would seem at odds with his hypertrophied manliness, but as Schwarzenegger’s gotten older he’s settled into eschewing his former macho persona to take roles that embrace his age (just like Eastwood).
In an interview for Reuters, he cites 1993’s In The Line of Fire, when Eastwood’s Secret Service agent is short of breath from running alongside the president’s limo, as an example of Eastwood demonstrating the realism of being an aging action star, and the Austrian Oak channeled Eastwood’s laconic presence as an aging deputy of a small border town in The Last Stand.
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood have been good friends since working together in the early ’90s on the Eastwood directed Unforgiven. They later teamed up for Million Dollar Baby and Invictus, both of which Eastwood again directed.
Speaking with Terry Gross of NPR, Freeman said Eastwood is “probably one of my favorite Western actors of all time”, and that he loves Eastwood’s directing style because “if you’re lucky enough to get a job with him, you’re allowed to work” and he doesn’t get hung up on “the idea of what’s in a scene and just does the scene”.
Tommy Lee Jones
An actor as well known for being comfortable directing in the Western genre as he is playing the weathered and ornery characters who inhabit it, Tommy Lee Jones is not only a big fan of Clint Eastwood, but has worked with him several times.
They starred together in Space Cowboys, and Eastwood’s Unforgiven directly inspired Jones’ directorial work The Homesman. In an interview about the movie for the New York Times Jones has said, “I admire everything Clint Eastwood does. If I had a list of heroes, Clint would be on that list.”.
Hugh Jackman
In James Mangold’s Logan, a much more serious take on the Marvel character Wolverine Hugh Jackman made famous in the early ’00s, Jackman -who has been told he looks like Clint Eastwood- channeled Eastwood’s character William Munny from Unforgiven.
In an interesting behind-the-scenes fact about Logan, Jackman wanted Logan’s final showdown to be just like Munny’s, which he described to CBR this way: “by taking that final action and shooting everyone down, he embraces all the darkness he’s tried to put outside him. Now he’s got to live with it, and it’s almost more devastating.”.
Ed Harris
Ed Harris starred with Clint Eastwood in the ’90s political thriller Absolute Power, playing the long arm of the law to Eastwood’s international burglar locked in a game of cat-and-mouse.
When it came time for Harris to star in HBO’s Westworld, about humans in the near-future visiting a Western theme park inhabited by sentient androids, he channeled Eastwood’s Man With No Name to become The Man In Black, a solitudinous gunsel who enjoys killing the androids. His relationship with the Lawrence character, and their quest to find the Maze, even follows the same plot beats as The Man With No Name and the outlaw Tuco in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson exploded into international fame with Mad Max, a sci-fi classic about a lone wolf traveling the wastes of a dystopian Australia, hunting the gangs who murdered his family.
In order to properly convey the right amount of tortured angst in his antihero, Gibson based his performance partially on Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name and the Pale Rider. The two have become friends over the years, bonding over their shared actor-director plaudits, and Gibson has described Eastwood to ET Online as a “wonderful human and gifted director”.
Pedro Pascal
Currently starring in the Disney live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian, a true amalgamation of Western and Samurai movies, Pedro Pascal channeled Clint Eastwood to create his mysterious galactic gunslinger, who spends the majority of the first season living as a bounty hunter like The Man With No Name from Eastwood’s Dollar Trilogy.
Also reminiscent of Eastwood’s other Western film role the Pale Rider, The Mandalorian travels the galaxy, blowing into trading posts and hives of villainy to clean up the town and help the disenfranchised.
Christian Bale
In the brutal Western Hostiles, starring Christian Bale as a gruff cavalry officer, Bale transformed himself into one of the immovable Western heroes of its Golden Age “just like Clint Eastwood”. He’s an amoral character with a checkered past who has become desensitized to violence but must find his compassion again.
Of the filming style, he stated in Washington Post “I wanted to be like Eastwood and let the camera come to me”. Then in true Eastwood fashion, when the bloodshed starts, he reluctantly finishes it with a furrowed brow and scowl.
Jamie Foxx
To prepare for his role as Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opposite Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Jamie Foxx took inspiration from four-time Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood.
He wanted his voice and presence to be quiet but deadly, seething with anger and power. He wanted to suppress his usual energy and channel it into a controlled funnel that came off with, as he mentioned in an interview with Contact Music, “Eastwood’s menace”. It’s how a bit of Eastwood made it into a superhero movie, despite the fact that Eastwood himself famously turned down playing Superman in 1978.
Bruce Willis
In the late ’80s, audiences wanted a different sort of action hero. They weren’t interested in a stoic, steely-eyed menace who silently mowed down his enemies and rode off into the sunset. After Bruce Willis made Die Hard, the character of John McClane became that action hero, and the archetype for many more.
Eastwood once owned the film rights to the movie and was considered for the role of McClane, but his approach was too cynical and grizzled, so Willis won out with his wise-talking, vulnerable take on the part, and the fallible approach was a hit. Ironically, as he got older, Willis would be known for the same squint-eyed, reserved characters Eastwood made famous.
Jeremy Bulloch
When George Lucas made his sequel to Star Wars, he created a secondary antagonist under Darth Vader to hunt Han Solo — a bounty hunter named Boba Fett. The Empire Strikes Back became a huge hit, and fans couldn’t get enough of the mysterious helmeted warrior.
As stated in an article for StarWars.com, actor Jeremy Bulloch based his performance on Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, which seems appropriate as Fett is a far more intimidating screen presence because he doesn’t rely on big displays of force, and says very little so as not to telegraph his intentions. It’s apropos that decades later, Pedro Pascal’s bounty hunter would be approached the same way in The Mandalorian.
Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey isn’t as well known for his serious roles as much as his comedic ones, but he finds ways to channel the flinty Clint Eastwood in unexpected ways. It helps that the comedian is an accomplished mimic, capable of a variety of winning impressions of famous actors.
Not only has Carrey impersonated Eastwood to great effect in his personal stand-up routines, he’s used his lines in movies ranging from The Mask to Bruce Almighty. Carrey has an uncanny ability to control every muscle in his face along with his vocal cords, making his impression of Eastwood even more convincing.
Lee Byung-hun
Lee Byung-hun has played plenty of emotive roles in his native South Korea, but in his American performances, he’s come across as callous, stern, and reserved. This is most evident in the remake of the Western The Magnificent Seven, in which he portrayed a laconic knife-throwing cowboy that would have been the appropriate lead in a Clint Eastwood movie.
In fact, the star appeared in a South Korean Western based on one of Eastwood’s movies called The Good, The Bad, and The Weird. Even though he played Park Chang-y (aka “The Bad”), he still took note from Eastwood’s performance in the Dollars trilogy and has stated in an interview for EverythingLBH, that he wants to become a great actor like him.
Steve Downes
The Halo franchise is one of the most popular video game franchises of all time, with the Master Chief’s story spanning an epic saga that takes place over the course of six games. Though there are a total of 16 games in the series, the ones featuring him are considered the best.
In order to prepare for the role of Master Chief, voice actor Steve Downes told theChicago Tribunethat he was instructed to base his performance on Clint Eastwood, ensuring the character would have the right amount of menace and gravitas and be a believable leader of men.
