Hollywood’s most venerated living legend, Clint Eastwood, broke through in the 1960s, offering an alternative to John Wayne as one of the most violently popular western stars. Having established a tough outlaw image in the formative TV series Rawhide and mastering it in Sergio Leone’s legendary Dollars Trilogy, the dashing gunslinger consolidated his status as the iconic anti-hero cop Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry franchise.
Throughout his six-decade stint under the Hollywood limelight, Eastwood expanded his skillset to become a leading producer and direc tor, earning four Academy Awards and four Golden Globes for his duties behind the camera. Remarkably, Eastwood is still active today at 93 years of age and is currently working on his final movie, Juror #2.
Eastwood has lived the best part of a century and will undoubtedly be remembered for another century at least. Cameron Crowe, the esteemed filmmaker behind such titles as Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky and Almost Famous, once conversed with the Hollywood veteran and ended up discussing a couple of their favourite actors.
“I met Clint Eastwood once. I asked him about Chris Penn because he had worked with Chris Penn on Pale Rider,” Crowe told Film School Rejects. “We were talking about what an amazing guy Chris Penn was, and for some reason, we got on the subject of Tom [Cruise]. Clint Eastwood said, ‘100 years from now and more, people will look back on this generation of films, and the guy who will stand out more than anyone else will be Tom Cruise’.”
“Coming from Clint Eastwood, like, a foot-and-a-half away from you telling you that, I couldn’t wait to tell Tom that! [Laughs] I think it’s true,” the director added, endorsing his frequent collaborator. “You could create an argument for a number of other actors, but I don’t know anyone who’s built this kind of body of work in movies that will stand the test of time, and I would be honoured if one of our movies was a part of that. He’s done so many different, time-defining projects.”
In the interview, Crowe was asked whether he felt Cruise was oddly underrated as an actor, perhaps because “he doesn’t physically transform the way Daniel Day-Lewis does.”
“It’s true,” Crowe pondered. “He builds this body of work, movie after movie, and character after character. He gives you this body of work that’s rich and personal. He puts himself into every one of these movies. For a guy who’s so universally known, he’s not afraid of getting personal, even in a movie like Oblivion.”
Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion was a post-apocalyptic action movie that played to Cruise’s strengths but sadly didn’t excite many critics and moviegoers upon its arrival. However, Crowe managed to salvage excellence in Cruise’s performance.
“The scene on the Empire State Building is so romantic and emotional,” he continued. “He puts his heart out there, and it becomes so memorable over time. You see these performances where the guy is just vulnerable, and sometimes it’s hard to see because the Tom Cruise of it all is so commanding at the centre of the movie. You see more of it the second time.”