Clint Eastwood is an icon in Hollywood, a former Western star who became an Oscar-winning director, but ironically, he has admitted he only admired one other actor who came before him. Eastwood began his acting career with a mixture of appearances in war and Western movies, but the Western genre made him a star. In 1964, he appeared in A Fistful of Dollars by director Sergio Leone, and his Man With No Name became an icon in spaghetti Western history. However, Eastwood didn’t just stick with Westerns.

In 1971, he appeared as Harry Callahan in the police thriller Dirty Harry. This movie became his most successful franchise and rivaled even his Westerns in terms of his acting career. The first movie in the franchise, directed by Don Siegel, even allowed Clint Eastwood to honor the only actor who came before him whom he openly admired. This happened in one particular scene, resulting in one of the most quoted moments in the Dirty Harry franchise. However, it wasn’t what he said that paid homage to the great James Cagney. It was what Clint Eastwood was doing.

Dirty Harry Includes A Reference To James Cagney

Dirty Harry Paid Homage To James Cagney By Eating In A Gunfight

In White Heat, Cagney plays Arthur “Cody” Jarrett, the leader of the Jarrett gang, and the movie shows his rise and tragic, explosive fall. Throughout the film, Cody kills a lot of people and shoots anyone who crosses his path. There is one point in White Heat where Cody is eating a chicken leg, and then he takes his gun and shoots someone in the trunk of a car without stopping eating. This is something that Clint Eastwood paid tribute to in Dirty Harry (via Entertainment Weekly):

“When he comes out in White Heat eating a chicken leg and blasting a guy in the trunk of a car, you go, ‘Yeah, that’s offsetting, but in a nice way.’ The scene in Dirty Harry where I’m eating a H๏τ dog in that shootout, that’s a steal.”

This was one of the franchise’s most popular scenes when Harry Callahan delivered the line asking if the robber knows how many bullets he fired and if he “feels lucky.” Dirty Harry doesn’t use a chicken leg. Instead, he uses a H๏τ dog. Harry is eating in a diner when he realizes a bank robbery is happening across the street. When the alarm goes off, he knows he can’t wait for backup. He goes out and gets into a gunfight with the bank robbers. He guns them all down and never stops eating his H๏τ dog.

It Makes Perfect Sense That James Cagney Is Clint Eastwood’s Favorite Actor

Clint Eastwood & James Cagney Portrayed Men Who Played By No Rules

James Cagney was the prototypical gangster actor in movies in the 1930s, alongside James G. Robinson (Little Caeser) and Paul Mini (Scarface). Cagney had roles in some of the best gangster movies in Hollywood history, including The Public Enemy, G-Man, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Roaring Twenties, and White Heat. It might seem strange that a man known mostly for his Westerns would love Cagney so much, but the two men had much more in common than one might think.

According to Eastwood (via Clint Eastwood: Interviews), James Cagney is the only actor he admired. He said, “I was never a fan of any one particular actor outside of James Cagney.” Eastwood praised Cagney’s fearlessness and lack of care for his image when it comes to what he is asked to do in a movie.

Throughout his career, Eastwood showed that he would do almost anything asked of him in his roles. Whether he was the brutal killer like the Man with No Name or the ruthless police officer who shoots first and asks questions later, Clint Eastwood had no problem being a good guy who does bad things and a bad guy who sometimes crosses the same line. Dirty Harry is a perfect example, built with the same template that Cagney designed for his gangster – a man held back by no rules or laws who would do anything to achieve his ultimate goals.