Clint Eastwood - Has he ever played a villain?

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user with a doubt

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I was watching an old movie of his on cable in which he, as usual, plays the rough, reluctant hero.

So now I'm wondering if he has ever played the role of a "bad guy" in any of his films. The man made tons of movies over the years but I can't think of one where he was a villain.

Anyone? :)


By the way, any movie where he plays a "prison inmate" does not count ( "escape from alacatraz" ,etc). Even in the "Alcatraz" film, he played the role of a "good guy" or at least someone the audience can cheer for.
 
Technically yes - Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, for example, where he played a thief...Unforgiven, where he played a man who had a questionable past, having killed women and children...and indeed in a lot of his early westerns he was essentially the outlaw.

But as for truly, clearly defined out and out villain...not really. His characters have usually wither saved the day or had some sort of moral code that redeems them.

His character in Gran Torino had some racist views and was not partcularly likeable, but again he had that sense of morality and ethics that made you warm to him in the end.
 
Clint Eastwood could never play a baddie. It's too much against type.

It'd be like Steve McQueen not being cool, Marlon Brando not mumbling his way through a script or Keanu Reeves not being completely wooden.
 
I don't really think you could say he was a good guy in High Plains Drifter either. (Although it was basically an extension of the 'no name' character).

I suppose you could argue Dirty Harry is a fascist, at least in the first film, though maybe that depenRAB on your own political sensibilities.
 
Yes, he does commit rape within the first 15 minutes.
He's also no saint in Good, Bad & Ugly either, despite the "good" tag. He spenRAB the first quarter of the film saving the neck of a murdering rapist repeatedly for money.

Clint's the ultimate anti-hero - flawed yet magnificent :cool:
 
This is a bit like asking if John Wayne ever played a baddie. Eastwood, Wayne and a few other ''icons'' play themselves because that is what the public want.
 
Was that a body double in Escape from Alcatraz? As far as I remember, you see his legs and his arse.

The Beguiled is an excellent film but again he is no baddy, like Hans from Die Hard for example. In Tightrope, he has his weaknesses, but again he is not a bad guy.
 
On the 2 disc DVD of Unforgiven there is among the extras an episode of Maverick where Clint plays the bad guy. He's more of a loud mouth bully than a real villian though.

And he may almost have been a villian in the Batman TV series in the 60s according to imdb.com: He was going to play the villain "Two-Face" on the "Batman" (1966) TV series, but the show was canceled before the project began.
 
I take it back. Caught the last part of Honky Tonk Man last night and his legs are clearly visible as he lays sick in bed. Maybe he lost his sense of vanity about his chicken legs as he got older. For example it was very strange the way he kept his pants on when on a training run in Every Which Way But Loose.
 
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