Clint Eastwood Had To Be Convinced To Star In This Crime Thriller

Few movie stars have ever had a more unerring sense of what their fans want than Clint Eastwood. The biggest risk he ever took was, really, no risk at all. Yes, he spent one of his last hiatuses from the CBS Western hit "Rawhide" to make a very different kind of Western with Italian auteur Sergio Leone in "A Fistful of Dollars," but if that film had flopped he still would've be an in-demand television star. Instead, the low-budget, unusually-violent-for-its-time oater became an international hit (three years before its U.S. release in 1967), and made Eastwood look like something of a counterculture trailblazer for how it spit in the face of the traditional Westerns still being made by John Wayne.

Eastwood's stature as arguably the biggest star in Hollywood would be solidified in 1971 when he brandished a 44 Magnum and chased down a thrill-seeking killer in "Dirty Harry." Eastwood would make a stinker every now and then (e.g. "The Gauntlet," "Sudden Impact," and "City Heat"), but it wasn't until 1990 with "The Rookie" that he seemed to briefly lose his knack for connecting with his audience. Then he went and made his best film to date in "Unforgiven."

Since then, Eastwood has made films that are undeniably Eastwoodian in their grumpiness and surprising tenderness. This doesn't mean they're always comforting (good luck feeling anything but devastated at the end of "Million Dollar Baby"), but they do leave you grappling with their difficult themes. Along the way, there's only been one film that felt a tad close to out of character for Eastwood, so you might not be surprised that he needed a bit of prodding to take it on.

A consistently surprising tale about an elderly man who, teetering on the brink of financial ruin, agrees to smuggle cocaine for a Mexican cartel, 2018's "The Mule" wasn't a slam dunk project for Eastwood – at least not when it came to him playing the title role. On the surface, Earl Stone isn't that far out of the star's comfort zone; he's grumpy in a way-too-old-for-this-s*** way, which, as some critics noted at the time, made this film feel like Eastwood's farewell if not to directing, then certainly to acting.

In an interview at The Metrograph, Eastwood once copped to being skeptical of playing Earl at first before eventually being convinced by an assistant to take the plunge. As he told the audience:

"When I did [...] 'The Mule,' I liked the script, but I had no idea of starring in it. I thought, 'That's just something I'll direct.' My gal in the office said, 'You've got to play it.' I said, 'You're kidding.' I just thought it was a good script and an interesting project. Sometimes you have to listen to what's going on around you. Good idea. Why not?"

"The Mule" is, like many of Eastwood's late-career movies, a modest work, but still incredibly vital. Though it didn't generate any significant Oscar buzz upon its release in theaters, the movie has acquired a bit of a cult following in the years since. Now 94 years old, people are preparing for Eastwood's reputation after the utterly bungled release of his very good courtroom drama "Juror #2." This is when we need that gal in his office to step up and convince him to give it another go, because he's still got something of value to say.