When you talk about big-time movie icons, then you better mention Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds in the same breath. Both of these actors would become box-office hit magnets. There was a time when the movies they appeared in were sure-fire winners. Well, things didn’t start out that way. Before making it on the big screen, both of them were contract actors with Universal Pictures.
OK, so there was apparently very little the movie studio could see in using Eastwood and Reynolds. As we will point out, this was way before they would both find movie success. Yep, before Eastwood became the “Man with No Name” or Reynolds would play football in The Longest Yard. Why in the world would a big studio make that one decision to let these guys go? Wait until you see what Reynolds said about the move.
Clint Eastwood Reportedly Had Too Big Of An Adam’s Apple For Studio
“We were fired exactly the same day,” Reynolds said in a 1984 interview about Clint Eastwood. “Man stood across from me and said to Clint, ‘You talk too slow and you’ve got this chip on your tooth, which you refuse to get fixed. And your Adam’s apple sticks out, it sticks way out here. You know, it’s ridiculous, it’s terrible.’ So he said, ‘You know, sorry, we have to let you go.’
“And I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, what is it that I do badly?’” Reynolds said about himself. “He said, ‘You can’t act.’ So we left there and Clint, you know, I’ve known Clint forever. Clint maybe speaks 8, 9, 12 words a year, you know. And so, we were walking up the street and I said, ‘You know, Clint, you’re really in trouble.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I can learn to act. But you’re never going to be able to get rid of that Adam’s apple.’ Somehow, we both survived.”
Boy, did they survive! Through the 1970s, Reynolds seemingly could not make a movie that didn’t succeed. After some rough times, though, the actor would find renewed success thanks to the TV show Evening Shade. Eastwood, of course, had his turn on TV as Rowdy Yates in the Western show Rawhide.
But his movie career might have even gotten a bigger boost when him playing James Bond. He would turn down the role. Why? In 2010, he talked about the reasons according to an article from the Daily Mail. “I was offered pretty good money to do James Bond if I would take on the role,” Clint Eastwood said. “But to me, well, that was somebody else’s gig. That’s Sean’s [Connery] deal. It didn’t feel right for me to be doing it.”