Clint Eastwood He has become a legendary director and actor in his own right, but his beginnings were not exactly easy. In fact, he himself has confessed that during his early days he participated in a movie so bad that he seriously considered leaving his dreams behind in Hollywood and returning to the studios.
“I went to see her and said I’m finished”
The movie Eastwood is referring to is ‘Attack Under the Sun’. Released in 1958, Eastwood had been playing small roles in movies and series for some time by then, but this feature film directed by Jodie Copelan promised to be his big break. However, the reality was very different, as he himself recalls:
One day I started getting some parts and then I did a little movie on Fox called ‘Attack Under the Sun’. It was probably the worst movie ever and… But I had the second lead in it and an actor named Scott Brady was the lead. And the movie was made in eight days. So it was really went full speed. And I saw her. I went to see her, she was at a second performance in North Hollywood. I went to see her and said I’m finished. I have to go back to school. I have to do something else, I have to get a job of another type.
Luckily for everyone, Eastwood then had a stroke of luck, since the actor remembers that it was in that situation when “I accidentally bumped into someone at CBS on Beverly Boulevard and they were doing a Western called ‘Whip.’ And they chose me as one of the protagonists“.
Eastwood was in charge of the cast of ‘Whip’ from 1959 to 1965, but there came a point where he got tired of playing the same type of character for so long. Added to this were the difficulties of Sergio Leone to cast a lead for ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ due to tight budgets, which led the producers to look at lesser-known American actors. And it was really then when everything changed for the author of unforgettable films like ‘Sin Perdón’ or ‘Gran Torino’.
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