Whether Clint Eastwood is a better actor or a director has become a frequent debate over his legendary career, since he is one of the many actors who have developed into a prolific director. His acting career goes way over six decades, as his first breakthrough was in 1959 when he starred in Rawhide, an hour-long western TV series, which awarded him the opportunity to participate in his first of three collaborations with Italian director Sergio Leone. Eastwood gained worldwide fame through the Western genre and continued to get involved in action roles, such as Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry in 1971. That same year, Eastwood released his directorial debut Play Misty for Me, a new role that would change the course of his admirable career.
During the 1970s and the 1980s, Eastwood directed and starred mainly in action and Western films that gave him a name in the industry. However, his big breakthrough as a director happened in 1992 with Unforgiven. Over the past three decades, Eastwood has gained further recognition as a director and, even though that hasn’t prevented him from starring in some of his films, it has begged the question of what his strongest field of expertise is: acting or directing. Taking a look into Clint Eastwood’s best films and approaching them as objectively as possible, an interesting statistic may have the answer to that question.
Clint Eastwood Has Won The Best Director Oscar Twice (But Has Never Won Best Actor)
When examining the Oscars as a fine indicator of strengths within the film industry but not as the undisputed truth on quality and worth, the actor-director’s history with the Academy is important to take into consideration regarding Clint Eastwood’s career. In the first place, before directing, he was never nominated for an Academy Award. He received his first Oscar nomination in 1993 when he was nominated not once but three times for Unforgiven, in the acting, producing, and directing categories. In addition to winning Best Picture for Unforgiven, Eastwood won the award for Best Director that year. However, he lost the award for Best Actor to Al Pacino, who won for his performance in Scent of a Woman.
Since 1993, he has been nominated for an Oscar eight more times. Of those eight nominations, only one was for his acting performance, in 2004’s Best Picture winner Million Dollar Baby. On the other hand, three of those nominations were for Best Director: one for Million Dollar Baby, which he won; one for Mystic River; and one for Letters from Iwo Jima. So, to sum up, he has won two Oscars for directing and hasn’t won any for acting. Furthermore, many of Eastwood’s best performances are in films he directed. That stat might indicate that he is indeed a better director than he is an actor. However, this conclusion is supported by far more than just prestigious award wins.
Why Clint Eastwood Is A Better Director Than Actor
When considering the Oscars statistics as more of a symptom, it is proper to think of the reasons behind Clint Eastwood’s greater success within the Academy’s directing category. In the first place, when discussing Eastwood’s acting career, he has often shown clear limitations by portraying a similar archetypal tough man. Even though Clint Eastwood truly commits to his roles, and he delivers natural, touching, and compelling performances worthy of Oscar nominations, the range of roles he can engage in is rather limited. When directing, on the other hand, Eastwood has not only proven to be brilliant but extremely versatile.
Eastwood’s qualities as a director go beyond doing a great job with the actors, the narrative, and the camera work. It only takes a glance at Eastwood’s filmography as a director to notice that they are all brilliant movies and, at the same time, very different from each other despite being tainted by his personal touch, which every good director must have. Eastwood has directed one-of-a-kind Westerns such as Unforgiven; heartbreaking romantic dramas such as The Bridges of Madison County; suspense thrillers like Mystic River; sports dramas like Million Dollar Baby or Invictus; and emotional war stories like Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, or American Sniper.
It’s Surprising Clint Eastwood Doesn’t Have More Oscar Nominations
Clint Eastwood’s new movie Juror No. 2 is reportedly his final film as a director (via THR), which is a reminder of the numerous occasions on which the filmmaker should have been nominated for Oscars but was snubbed. Eastwood is ninety-three years old and still acting and directing. Keeping in mind his acting career started back in 1955, and how iconic he has become through his many stages, only two Oscar nominations for Best Actor seem few. Despite the fact that many of his greatest roles have been limited to the Western or action genres and the realization that many talented actors only get nominated once in a lifetime, Clint Eastwood’s almost seventy years in the industry and more than sixty films as an actor indicate that the Academy might have turned its back on him on more than one occasion.