8. HE LANDED THE ROLE OF HARRY CALLAHAN BECAUSE FRANK SINATRA COULDN’T HOLD A GUN.
Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen were in the running to play San Francisco detective Harry Callahan in Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971), but Sinatra was deemed their man. Then Eastwood received a phone call asking if he was still interested in starring in the movie. When he asked what happened to Sinatra, Eastwood was told that Sinatra had a hand issue and couldn’t hold a gun. “That sounded like a pretty lame excuse,” Eastwood admitted, “but it didn’t matter to me. I said, ‘I’ll do it.’”
9. HE FILLED IN FOR CHARLTON HESTON AT THE 1973 OSCARS. AND IT WAS AWKWARD.
Charlton Heston was already running late to the 1973 Academy Awards when he got a flat tire on the way to the ceremony. So Eastwood was asked to fill in for him and read Heston’s bit during the opening segment, which was full of references to Heston’s films. To everybody’s relief, Heston arrived to save Eastwood from having to finish the speech.
10. HE DID HIS OWN MOUNTAIN CLIMBING STUNTS FOR THE EIGER SANCTION.
For The Eiger Sanction (1975)—which Eastwood directed and starred in—he trained in Yosemite National Park, where he climbed the 1200-foot Lost Arrow Spire. But the Eiger’s “White Spider” section was one of the most dangerous climbs in the world, so Eastwood and a crew of professional climbers were transported to a 12,000 foot elevation first, then lowered onto the rock face by tether lines. Sadly British rigger David Knowles, who had climbed the Eiger before, was killed in a rockslide on the second day of filming.
11. HE HAS PRACTICED TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS.
Eastwood first revealed, to the laughter of some in the studio audience, that he had been meditating for “three or four years” on a 1975 episode of The Merv Griffin Show, on which the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was also a guest. Eastwood credited his daily practice of transcendental meditation with helping him press on with filming The Eiger Sanction following Knowles’ tragic death. In 2013, Eastwood told GQ that he has been meditating twice a day for the last 40 years, explaining that, “I believe in whatever self-help you can give yourself, whether you believe in Buddha or whatever. I used to be much more of an agnostic. I’m not really a person of an organized religion. But I’m now much more tolerant of people who are religious, because I can see why they got there. I can sympathize.”
12. HE TURNED DOWN PLAYING JAMES BOND, SUPERMAN, AND JOHN MCCLANE.
After Sean Connery left the 007 franchise, Eastwood was offered the iconic role, but he declined. The president of Warner Bros. asked him to play Superman, but he declined that, too. “I was like, ‘Superman? Nah, nah, that’s not for me,’” Eastwood explained. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s for somebody, but not me.”Francis Ford Coppola asked him to play Martin Sheen’s character in Apocalypse Now (1979), but he didn’t want to go the Philippines for 16 weeks. Eastwood owned the movie rights to Nothing Lasts Forever, the book Die Hard (1988) was based on, with the intent to star in the film version.
13. HE WAS MAYOR OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA FROM 1986 TO 1988, AND BROUGHT ITS RESIDENTS ICE CREAM.
Eastwood felt disrespected by the seaside town’s administration after his plan to build a small building was automatically rejected. He won an out-of-court settlement that allowed him to get it built anyway, but the incident motivated him to run for office. Eastwood got 72.5 percent of the vote over the two-term incumbent mayor Charlotte Townsend. During his term he made it easier to build or renovate property, got a tourist parking lot constructed, opened a library annex for children, and repealed a weird law on the books that prohibited the selling and eating of ice cream on public streets. Some residents didn’t like all of the new tourists that arrived after he took office, and Eastwood didn’t seek reelection.
14. AS A DIRECTOR, HE ONLY LIKES TO SHOOT ONE TAKE.
When Eastwood directs, he doesn’t storyboard, rehearse, change the script after it’s finished, or listen to test screening results. He doesn’t say “action” because “even the horses get nervous.” He says “Let’s move on” instead of “Cut.” When Matt Damon once asked him for a second take, Eastwood said, “Why, so you can waste everybody’s time?” When Kevin Costner took his time coming out of his trailer during shooting on A Perfect World (1993), Eastwood just had an extra pretend to be Costner’s character in a shot of him walking through a field, with the camera up close so his image was blurred. Costner was not happy.
15. HE OWNED THE COUNTRY’S LARGEST HARDWOOD TREE.
Eastwood was the proud owner of a blue gum eucalyptus, thought to be the largest hardwood in America in 2000. In 2002, the National Register of Big Trees announced that another blue gum eucalyptus 200 miles north of Carmel was nearly 49 feet around and 141 feet tall, and the new champion.
Less than two months after his tree was dethroned, Eastwood was sworn in as a state parks commissioner at the Big Basin Redwood State Park, California’s oldest state park.