Clint Eastwood did not celebrate his big break in Hollywood, but in Italy: after initially supporting himself with television series and supporting roles in films such as the monster classic ‘Tarantula’ (1955), he became famous through his collaboration with director legend Sergio Leone and became a Western icon – together they made the so-called Dollar Trilogy between 1964 and 1966, consisting of the films “For a Fistful of Dollars”, “For a Few Dollars More” and “Two Glorious Scoundrels”.
Eastwood largely owes his career to Leone, because even after his return to the US, the ‘Dirty Harry’ star attracted attention not least with Western films, some of which he also directed himself (from ‘A Stranger with No Name’ to ‘The Texan’ to the Oscar success ‘Merciless’. But anyone who believes that the two had one heart and one soul is mistaken: In any case, Leone has made no secret in the past about what he thinks of the current acting and directing legend – namely not too much…
In his career that lasted just over twenty years, Leone made only seven films, including the Dollar trilogy, but also eternal masterpieces such as ‘Play Me a Song of Death’ and the gangster film ‘Once Upon a Time in America’, which he released in 1984. made. filmed with Robert De Niro. The filmmaker, who died in Rome in 1989, was much more impressed by him than by his frequent collaborator Eastwood, as he said in an interview with revealed:
“Robert De Niro throws himself into his roles and puts on a new persona as others would put on a coat, natural and elegant, while Eastwood squeezes into a suit of armor and lowers his visor with a rusty thud,” says Leone. ‘Eastwood moves like a sleepwalker between explosions and hails of bullets, and he is always the same: a block of marble. Bobby [De Niro] is an actor first and foremost. Clint is a star first and foremost. Bobby suffers, Clint yawns.”
Despite his dislike, Leone worked intensively with the now 93-year-old for three years, because he too would have secretly known that Eastwood was of course appreciated for precisely the laconic, grumpy manner that he so harshly criticized about him. Unfortunately, Leone did not experience Eastwood’s mastery of great emotional cinema, as in “The Bridges on the River” (1995)…