Actor Clint Eastwood has spoken some of the most unforgettable lines in cinema since his Dirty Harry days. But there was one catchphrase that Eastwood began to sour on overtime.
Clint Eastwood had a hunch about ‘Dirty Harry’
Dirty Harry would become one of the films that defined Clint Eastwood’s career. But the role as the renegade tough cop originally wasn’t his in the beginning. Many celebrities were considered for the role before Eastwood, including legendary singer Frank Sinatra.
“They tried Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen. Then they finally ended up with Frank Sinatra. I was in postproduction [on Play Misty for Me], and they called up and asked, ‘Are you still interested in Dirty Harry? I said, ‘What happened to Frank Sinatra?’ And they said, ‘Frank Sinatra’s got some problem with his hand and he can’t hold a gun,’” Eastwood recalled to MTV News. “That sounded like a pretty lame excuse, but it didn’t matter to me. I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ But since they had initially talked to me, there had been all these rewrites. I said, ‘I’m only interested in the original script.’”
Eastwood had a feeling about the character he’d later help make a permanent fixture in pop culture.
“You kind of have a hunch,” Eastwood once said in an interview with Empire. “There was a loneliness about the guy, he had an empty life, but he also had this obsession with getting criminals off the street.”
Clint Eastwood grew sick of hearing 1 of his most iconic movie lines
As Harry Callahan, Eastwood rattled off dialogue that left a lasting impression on audiences worldwide. His famous ‘Do you feel lucky’ line is one that’s been referenced and parodied in Hollywood to this day.
The Dirty Harry sequel, Sudden Impact, had another one-liner that would stick with fans. Eastwood’s Make my day’ quote in the film became another popular piece of dialogue that would be echoed for years to come. The Cry Macho actor predicted audiences would embrace it.
“I kind of had a feeling ‘Make my day’ would resonate, based upon ‘Do you feel lucky, punk?’ in the first movie. I thought that Smith & Wessen line might hang in there, too. But ‘Make my day’ was just so simple. I still get it a lot,” he said in a 2008 interview with Esquire.
But after a while, Eastwood felt that perhaps the line had been worn out.
“Now, I didn’t know it would go like it did. People flew banners with it here, above the golf course. After a while, I really got sick of hearing it,” Eastwood once said to David Breskin.
Why Clint Eastwood wouldn’t do another ‘Dirty Harry’ movie
Eastwood has starred in five Dirty Harry movies during the course of his career, with The Dead Pool the final film in the series. And for the Oscar-winner, five was enough. Still, the actor wouldn’t have minded starring in something at least similar to his Dirty Harry series if the story was there.
“I wouldn’t only because I think that character’s been worked to death. But a similar movie might come along and it might have a lot of interesting things in it. But there would have to be something compelling about the action-something in the story that is really unusual or interesting,” Eastwood once told Psychology Today.