Clint Eastwood’s most famous Western movie character is the antihero known as “The Man With No Name,” but his breakout role was very different. Eastwood had played small roles in movies and TV shows since 1955, but he found success in aclassic old Western TV show.Rawhideportrayed the lives and struggles faced by cattle drovers in the 1860s, and Eastwood appeared in each of its 217 episodes. AfterRawhideended, Eastwood traveled to Europe to play a lead role in a Western movie, which led to a drastic change in his acting career.
Eastwood played The Man With No Name in the Western movieA Fistful of Dollars, which was a critical success with a 98% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and is one of themovies that defined Eastwood’s career. The so-called “Dollars Trilogy” all feature The Man With No Name and are considered amongEastwood’s best movies, redefining the characters he usually plays. Eastwood’s gritty and relatively expressionless acting style was suited to antihero characters, and his transition to playing these characters marked a change in his career afterRawhide’s more typical hero.
Clint Eastwood Is Best Known For Playing Antiheroes, But His Rawhide Character Was Anything But
Eastwood Took Risks To Escape His Association With His Rawhide Character
WhenClint Eastwood landed the role of The Man With No Name, it defined his career as a Western genre actor, but also resulted in Eastwood being typecast. The Man With No Name is an antihero, and Eastwood has continued to play morally complex characters throughout his career. However, while he is still best known for his antihero characters,Eastwood’sRawhidecharacter, Rowdy Yates, is the opposite. Yates is the young and impulsive ramrod ofRawhide’s cattle-driving crew, who has been praised for being heroic and criticized for being one-dimensional and foolish – including by Eastwood himself.
Eastwood was said to refer to Rowdy Yates as “the idiot of the plains.”
As both an actor and a director,Eastwood often portrays complicated characters with a dark backstory, and while he has acknowledged that playing Rowdy Yates boosted his career, he did not like the character. Eastwood was said to refer to Rowdy Yates as “the idiot of the plains,” with his impetuosity forming a key plot point in multipleRawhideepisodes. The Man With No Name in Sergio Leone’sA Fistful of Dollarstherefore represented a major departure for Eastwood – a gamble that evidently paid off. The movie was so successful thatA Fistful of Dollarsbegan a new genre - spaghetti Westerns.
Clint Eastwood’s Transition To Antiheroes Cemented Him As A True Hollywood Icon
ThoughRawhidemay be responsible for Eastwood’s Western career, his antihero roles in the moviesDirty Harry,The Outlaw Josey Wales, andUnforgivennearly eclipsed hisRawhidecharacter and took his career to another level. Eastwood became known for playing antiheroes, and though he starred in other movie genres besides Westerns, his in-depth portrayal of antihero characters and habit of delivering his lines through gritted teeth made him recognizable. This combination ofsignature features cemented Eastwood as a Hollywood icon, and he began to give his creative input into other movies while branching out into directing.
10 Classic Movie Anti-Heroes Dirty Harry Fans Would Love
The no-nonsense, lone wolf, cool guy persona of Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry can be seen in plenty of other anti-heroes from classic movies.
With Eastwood becoming a director and starring in his movies, it is easy to see why he was drawn to Leone’s creative plan to reinvent the Western. The Man With No Name is one ofClint Eastwood’s greatest Western characters, and Eastwood had significant input in creating him.Eastwood insisted that although he didn’t smoke, The Man With No Name should smoke cigars, and asked for fewer lines to keep the character mysterious.Clint Eastwoodkeeps his filming style understated, relying on compelling characters to keep his audience’s attention, and playing antiheroes has given him practice in doing that.
