From cowboy and hard-edged cop to inter-galactic messianic superhero in one easy step. What Happened? Just as he did with the opportunity to play James Bond in You Only Live Twice, the still working director confessed that he had turned down Superman. At the time he cited scheduling conflicts, but he has subsequently gone further to explain that he simply wasn't interested in the role:
"This was when they first started to think about making it. was like, Superman? Nah, nah, thats not for me. Not that theres anything wrong with it. Its for somebody, but not me. I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality."
And reality has been kind to Eastwood, no matter how tantalising the prospect of seeing him spread his wings (or cape) might have been. Would He Have Worked? He would have been great cast in the 1970s, even if became a lot cooler 20 or 30 years later to imagine him playing an aged Batman. In playing cowboys at the end of the genre's success, Eastwood knew exactly what it meant to play complex characters marked by internal conflict and by an inherent doubleness in their appearance. And he remains one of the finest actors in selling a character on the most minimal of outward performance; instead he has that intangible, irresistible ability to inhabit roles entirely without effort, like Philip Seymour Hoffman. So, Superman would have been in great hands. If anything would be amiss, it would be that his persona tended to lend itself to gruffer characters (hence the link to Batman), but that could have led to a more layered Superman performance.
