20 Movies and TV Shows That Made Actors QUIT Genres

With the Dollars Trilogy, namely A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it's a widely held opinion that Clint Eastwood starred in a perfect series, with the three films arguably getting better each time.

A quarter of a century later, after a career built on starring in and directing westerns, Eastwood made his last. 1992's Unforgiven was met with almost universal critical acclaim and took home four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and Best Director for Eastwood himself.

It wouldn't have been particularly surprising had the man stayed in that world for the rest of his career, but no. As he told Esquire in a 2008 interview, the picture summed up perfectly everything he felt about the genre, and so he shut the door on that chapter of his professional life.

Though ultimately he went back on his word one last time for Cry Macho in 2021, 30 years after swearing off westerns, it's understandable since he had been attached to the project since the late 1980s. Finally believing himself to be old enough for the role of Mike Milo, something that proved to be an insurmountable obstruction to get past in 1988, this was clearly one last box that needed checking from before Unforgiven.