10 Completely Unexpected Films By Famous Directors

6. The Bridges Of Madison County - Clint Eastwood's Middle-American Romance

"This romantic stuff is really tough. I can't wait to get back to shooting and killing." Clint Eastwood there on 1995's The Bridges Of Madison County, a film he directed seemingly after he lost some kind of Hollywood bet, because there's basically nothing tough or otherwise traditionally Clint Eastwood about it.

Starring Meryl Streep as a lonely housewife and Eastwood as the visiting photographer wooing her into an affair, The Bridges Of Madison County is basically the antithesis of every other Clint Eastwood movie. Achingly romantic and lovingly lensed where the likes of Unforgiven, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby are gritty, murky and generally full of death, Madison County is so uncharacteristically thoughtful you question whether Clint Eastwood is really a natural gun-slinging man's man at all.

Like a secretly sensitive jock ashamed for revealing his feminine side, Eastwood returned to making macho films in 1997 with the thriller Absolute Power and never looked back.

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Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1