Clint Eastwood appears in every movie in Sergio Leone’s iconic Dollars Trilogy, but he isn’t the only one. 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars marked the first collaboration between the one-time Rawhide star and the legendary master of the spaghetti Western genre. Eastwood and Leone then teamed up for two more movies in the same vein, completing the loosely-connected Dollars Trilogy.

Introduced in the first film as a character nicknamed “Joe,” Eastwood progressed through the follow-ups For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, playing essentially the same nameless antihero figure, but taking on a more-and-more mythic dimension with each pᴀssing film. Eastwood and Leone became forever joined in cinematic lore thanks to this collaboration, but a handful of other lesser-known actors also stuck with Leone for the same three-movie ride, putting their own stamps on the director’s history-making trio of Western classics following the Man With No Name.

4 Other Actors Appear In Every Dollars Trilogy Movie Aside From Clint Eastwood

They Were All Villain Types With Memorable Faces

The first two Dollars Trilogy movies saw Mario Brega playing ill-fated henchmen. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly then provided the actor a beefier role, casting him as Angel Eyes’ right-hand-man, Corporal Wallace, who memorably beats the name of the cemetery where the gold is hidden out of Tuco, before dying by Tuco’s own hand while transporting “Il Brutto” to his execution.

Stuntman Benito Stefanelli also gave off strong henchman vibes for director Leone, who cast him in Fistful as Rojo brothers gang member Rubio, one of the men gunned down by “Joe” in the movie’s classic finale. Stefanelli got to die again as Hughie in FAFDM, then went unnamed as one of Angel Eyes’ thugs in TGTBATU.

Lorenzo Robledo starred in 32 spaghetti Westerns in the course of his long career. He played an unnamed henchman of Sheriff John Baxter in Fistful, then graduated to named character status, playing Tomaso in Dollars and Clem in TGTBATU. The only other actor to complete the Dollars trifecta, Aldo Sambrell, made his greatest impact as For a Few Dollars More‘s Cuchillo, the unfortunate El Indio thug who is framed for murder, and memorably sH๏τ down by his boss after being given a chance to flee.

Is Clint Eastwood’s “The Man With No Name” Really The Same Character In Each Movie?

His Look And Atтιтude Remain Consistent

Leone produced A Fistful of Dollars, a remake of Kurosawa’s samurai classic Yojimbo, as a standalone Western centered on Eastwood’s mysterious gunslinger. For a Few Dollars More made no effort to continue the story from Fistful, but served as a spiritual sequel, retaining certain of the first film’s key elements, again casting Eastwood as a morally ambiguous antihero. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly completed the three-film run that later came to be seen as a trilogy, taking the spaghetti Western into epic territory.

Though it’s possible to read the trilogy as telling the story of a single character’s adventures across many years, there’s no evidence that this was ever Leone’s intention, and indeed, the movies make no attempt at establishing continuity. Eastwood’s character remains consistent across the three films, retaining the same iconic accessories – revolver, poncho, and cigarillo – and air of laconic coolness, thus creating the impression of being the same person.

But the three films that came to be dubbed the Dollars Trilogy are not narratively unified in any meaningful way, remaining only loosely connected, in the manner of George Miller’s later Mad Max films. Eastwood’s characters can be taken as one person with no name or backstory, but can just as readily be seen as three distinct characters built from the same archetypal elements, intended as a representation of the mythic Western hero, and not as the same literal person living through a series of events.