Clint Eastwood Was Offered James Bond, But One Reason Made Him Turn It Down

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Sean Connery was basically irreplaceable as James Bond, so when he did leave the franchise, longtime producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were faced with one heck of a dilemma. How do you replace the man who, in global audiences' collective mind, was James Bond? Well, how about drafting in the Man with No Name? It seems Broccoli and his fellow producer reached out to none other than Clint Eastwood, who happened to share a lawyer with Broccoli. Sadly for the Bond producers, Eastwood couldn't bring himself to take on the role because, like every fan the world over, he still saw the part as belonging to his predecessor.

After Connery stepped away from the Bond role following 1967's "You Only Live Twice," the property's producers reached out to several actors. Burt Reynolds turned down the role of James Bond because he thought the character should always be played by an Englishman, though it's unclear whether he was offered the part before his buddy Clint Eastwood.

Either way, it seems Eastwood wasn't concerned with whether Bond was played by a Yank or not — at least at first. In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he revealed that he was offered "pretty good money" to don the tux. "This was after Sean Connery left," he explained. "My lawyer represented the Broccolis and he came and said, 'They would love to have you.' But to me, well, that was somebody else's gig. That's Sean's deal. It didn't feel right for me to be doing it."

Clint Eastwood was being offered pretty much every big role at the time he was approached for James Bond. At one point, he was even offered the lead role in Richard Donner's seminal 1978 effort "Superman." Eastwood also rejected the best war movie ever made when he turned down an offer to appear in "Apocalypse Now." So, in that sense, it's not surprising that Albert Broccoli reached out to the actor for Bond — though it would be surprising if he did so following "You Only Live Twice." 

At that time, Eastwood was known for his lead role on CBS's Rawhide, but in 1967, he was still establishing himself on the big screen. His "Dollars" trilogy had proved popular in Europe and had started to gain some traction stateside, yet he was hardly a bankable star. In fact, he took a major risk with the 1968 film "Hang 'Em High," his first American Western and a low-budget effort that was far from a sure thing. That risk did pay off, and Eastwood spent the rest of the 1960s and early '70s cementing his standing as one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

It's unclear, then, when Broccoli actually reached out to Eastwood. It could have been following "You Only Live Twice," but given Eastwood's aforementioned career trajectory, it would make more sense if it happened after 1971's "Diamonds Are Forever." This was the film that welcomed Connery back to the James Bond franchise, only for him to depart once more after the movie debuted. By that point (fresh off "Dirty Harry"), Eastwood was the biggest movie star in the world.

Throughout his impressive career, Clint Eastwood has played everything from laconic loner to chimpanzee-owning truck driver in his controversial comedy "Any Which Way but Loose." But James Bond might have been a step too far for him. Like John Wayne before him, Eastwood was a quintessentially American hero, even if he did get his start in European Westerns. As such, audiences would have almost certainly had a hard time adjusting to this archetypal gunslinger delivering one-liners as England's greatest spy.

Indeed, according to a 2021 article by the Express, Eastwood later claimed to have turned down Bond due to his own nationality. "I thought James Bond should be British," he said. "I am of British descent but by that same token, I thought that it should be more of the culture there and also, it was not my thing."

Eastwood did end up making what was essentially his Bond movie in 1975's "The Eiger Sanction," a spy thriller that saw its star play an assassin-turned-art history professor. Though it was more Bond parody than anything else, Eastwood seemed to take his role seriously, giving us a small glimpse of what he might have done as 007, even if he didn't intend to. As the actor once told journalist Paul Nelson (via "Conversations with Clint") "I didn't try to play it James Bond. I tried to play it more at a serious level." In so doing, he unwittingly predicted the way in which future 007 actors would portray the spy as a more serious, dour figure, starting with Timothy Dalton in 1987's "The Living Daylights." Still, it's probably for the best we never did see him in the role officially.