Eastwood and Johnson have been extremely careful with their choice of roles for most of their career, trying to protect the image they have created on the big screen. As a result, both actors avoid playing negative roles. Nonetheless, Eastwood has far darker and more understandable reasoning behind his choice of not playing the villain, and here is what he had to say.
Clint Eastwood and Dwayne Johnson Refrain From Playing the Villains
Clint Eastwood gained fame for his performance as the Man With No Name in the Dollars trilogy. He became a cultural icon for his hyper-masculine characters, receiving two Academy Award nominations for his acting. While Eastwood has played some characters with negative shades, he has never outright played a villain.
Similarly, actor Dwayne Johnson has had a commercially successful career, even if his performances haven’t always received positive reactions. Nonetheless, like Eastwood, Johnson has also been extremely careful about crafting his big screen persona as the stereotypical hero, refraining from playing the bad guy.
Johnson started his career playing the antagonist in The Mummy Returns, only for his character to be portrayed in a slightly more positive light in the spin-off solo film The Scorpion King. Since then, Johnson has played characters with grey shades but mostly plays clean-cut heroes, which is a part of the reason he has been a major box-office draw over the years.
Clint Eastwood Has a Darker Reasoning For Never Playing the Bad Guy
During an interview with Esquire, Eastwood spoke about his reluctance to play outright villains in movies. The Oscar-winner explained that his characters often kill people in his movies, albeit never for the wrong reasons, making them heroic. He said:
Maybe it’s some kind of catharsis. Or maybe it’s some sort of sadistic pleasure. Or maybe it’s nothing at all.
From Eastwood’s words, it is evident that the veteran actor has a rather stoic take on the concept of a hero, which is reflected in the type of roles he chooses to portray on the big screen.
At the same time, Eastwood added that his characters’ heroism does not stem from their violent actions. Instead, it is reflective of them bearing the cost of killing, making his definition of the “good guy” far more darker and complex, compared to the characters Johnson plays in his films.
Eastwood, who turned 94 this year was last seen in the 2021 neo-Western drama film, Cry Macho, which he also directed. The veteran actor-director will return to the big screen with the upcoming thriller film, Juror No. 2, which he is directing but not starring in.
