The Classic Western Series That Made Clint Eastwood Want To Start Directing

Among the many great Hollywood actors who became directors, Clint Eastwood might be the very best: He has two best director Oscars to his name, and both of those films ("Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby") also won best picture. Before he became an award-winning director, he was a movie star known for Westerns. Some younger audiences may not realize it, but one of his first major roles was actually on TV — beginning in 1959, he played ramrod Rowdy Yates in the iconic series "Rawhide," on which Eastwood also had a second role as a stuntman. It was that show that got him interested in directing.

"We were shooting a stampede on location, three thousand head of cattle, and I was riding right in the middle of it, dust flying, really dramatic looking," Eastwood said during a 1976 interview published in Film Comment. According to the actor, he had his own ideas on how to get the perfect shot, ideas that the director wasn't taking advantage of. "I went to the director and said, 'Look, give me a camera. There's some great stuff in there that you're not getting because you're way out here on the periphery.'" 

Frustrated that nobody was willing to take chances or try anything new, Eastwood forced his way into the director's chair, getting his first opportunity helming episode trailers, but he soon gave up on his dream of directing full episodes. "I was so disappointed with the whole damn thing that I let it drop," he said. Eastwood got his first real shot at directing the following decade, helming the 1971 film "Play Misty for Me," which earned him a lot of praise. In his review of the film, veteran critic Roger Ebert wrote that Eastwood "must have learned a lot during seventeen years of working for other directors."

By the early 1970s, Clint Eastwood was a major Hollywood star, having come to fame with flicks like "A Fistful of Dollars," "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and "Where Eagles Dare." Eastwood's greater goal at the time was to get behind the camera, and the only way he could get studios to let him sit in the director's chair was to agree to star in the film. "When I started directing, I had to be in the picture to get it made," he told Film Comment in 2005. "And then I kept doing it because the people I wanted weren't available or had passed away."

As time went on, Eastwood earned enough clout in Tinseltown to make films without having to star in them. This allowed him to concentrate fully on his directorial duties and led to him discovering a new appreciation for the acting craft. "I had a great experience directing ['Mystic River'] without being in it," Eastwood revealed. "I'm always amazed looking at other actors when they're conquering the difficulties of different sequences." However, he still appears on screen from time to time — Eastwood was 90 when he directed and starred in 2021's "Cry Macho."