Clint Eastwood became a Hollywood icon for his acclaimed roles in countless Westerns, but to play the lead in his Best Picture-winning masterpiece Unforgiven, he waited 10 years to be old enough. While many will know Eastwood for his breakout role as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy, this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his back catalog of playing cowboys, gunslingers, and outlaws. While roles in classics like High Plains Drifter and Two Mules for Sister Sara, Unforgiven remains Eastwood’s magnum opus as both a star and director.

As an actor and filmmaker who has continued working well into his 90s, Eastwood transformed from the gritty, witty outlaw we meet in A Fistful of Dollars into the aged former rodeo star of Cry Macho, yet right in the middle of these two career points, Eastwood blew audiences away with his complex performance as William Munny in Unforgiven. As a film that deconstructed the tropes and clichés of the Western genre and presented them back onto itself, Eastwood made the right call by waiting a decade to be old enough to get the most out of the role.

Clint Eastwood Delayed Making Unforgiven Until He Was Old Enough For The Part

Eastwood Bought David Webb Peoples’ Script In 1981, And It Was Released In 1992

Unforgiven saw Clint Eastwood portray the aged outlaw William Munny, a farmer with an incredibly violent past who takes on one last job years later. As a role that not only examined the hypocrisies of the myth of the Old West but was also informed by Eastwood’s lifetime of work in the Western genre, Munny represented the brutality and unforgiving nature of those who embraced violence and bloodshed in the lawless environment of the American frontier. As a movie exploring notions of heroism, morality, and redemption, Munny’s aged wisdom was central to the film’s impact.

This was why Eastwood was conscious not to make Unforgiven before he was old enough to portray Munny with a maturity that the part required. In a speech for the 40th anniversary of the AFI, Eastwood spoke about why he delayed making Unforgiven for more than 10 years and explained that even though he purchased the script in 1981, the movie was not released until 1992. Eastwood said that even though he “absolutely fell in love” with the script, he “figured maybe I should be just a little bit older to do this character.”

This meant that Unforgiven languished in a drawer for a full decade before Eastwood realized, “I ought to take it out and look at it before I get too old to do it.” Eastwood’s love for the film had not diminished one bit in the intervening years, and with the aged maturity needed to accurately portray Munny with the gravitas the role deserved, Unforgiven began filming in Alberta, Canada. The results were so outstanding that Eastwood ᴀsserted the movie would be his last traditional Western, as any future film would simply be rehashing the past.

Clint Eastwood Also Wanted To Steer Away From Westerns

There’s Far More To Eastwood’s Talents Than Just Westerns

In the years prior to Unforgiven, Eastwood made plenty of all-time great Western movies and didn’t want to be pigeonholed into any particular genre. This was part of the reason he shelved Unforgiven for years (via NJ), although he also felt compelled to return to it, as he described it as the only Western he had ever read that was the equivalent of his classic movie The Outlaw Josey Wales from 1976.

The moral complexity of William Munny and Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett summed up practically everything there was to say about the violent excesses of the Wild West, and continually playing aged outlaws in derivative Westerns was not of interest to Eastwood. Instead, Eastwood focused on moving away from the Western genre and explored mystery in Mystic River, sports in Million Dollar Baby, and socially conscious drama in Gran Torino.

The emotional intensity of Million Dollar Baby proved Eastwood could be just as good outside the Western genre, and he won his second Academy Award for Best Picture with that acclaimed sports movie. With Hilary Swank as the aspiring boxer Maggie Fitzgerald and Eastwood as her gruff trainer, audiences would be forgiven for thinking that this was simply yet another underdog sports story or a female spin on Rocky. However, much like Unforgiven before it, Eastwood used the movie as an opportunity to unpack the tropes of sports films and deliver a complex story about redemption, determination, and euthanasia.

Why Clint Eastwood Was Right To Delay Making Unforgiven

Unforgiven Would Not Have Been As Impactful If Clint Had Starred In It 1981

A major reason that Unforgiven was such a success was that it came with the baggage of Clint Eastwood’s entire career and legacy. We believe William Munny is an aged outlaw with a violent past because we had already watched Eastwood shoot his way through the Wild West for decades. With a jaded Eastwood in his early 60s in the role of Munny, it’s clear this outlaw-turned-farmer has had a lot of time to stew on the depravity of his murderous history and is forced to reckon with his status as a cold-blooded killer in his later life.

Eastwood said he connected with the script of Unforgiven because at first he “didn’t know who the hero was” and that even the villains “had a point of view.” While Westerns can often feel almost cartoonish in their depiction of over-the-top violence, there was a sense of realism to this older man being lured back into his violent ways in a quest for vengeance. There’s a realistic darkness to Unforgiven that was missing from even Eastwood’s most violent movies during the 1970s, and it’s understandable why he considered it “the best Western that I ever had the pleasure of doing.”

As Eastwood’s very best movie, it makes sense that he wants Unforgiven to act as his definitive statement on the genre. With a repeated vow to never make another traditional Western movie again, Eastwood has stuck to his promise, although his most recent acting role in Cry Macho stood as a partial return to the genre with a neo-Western that explored much different topics than Unforgiven. As a complex, mature, and thoughtful movie that was released at the exact right point, Unforgiven was a revisionist story that remains the benchmark by which all other modern Westerns are judged.

Source: AFI, NJ