Clint Eastwood Movies

Want to know the best Clint Eastwood movies?  How about the worst Clint Eastwood movies?  Curious about Bill Murray’s box office grosses or which Clint Eastwood movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Clint Eastwood movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Clint Eastwood is one of my favorite movie stars. Eastwood started appearing in movies in the mid 1950s, he gained his first notoriety playing Rowdy Yates on the television show Rawhide from 1959 to 1964. During a break from Rawhide, Eastwood agreed to star in a low budget western that was being filmed in Italy called A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The movie was a huge hit overseas, as result Eastwood became a star playing the “The Man With No Name”. He returned in two more spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Leone. My favorite Eastwood movie, the classic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) was the last of the trilogy.

In 1971 Eastwood played Detective Harry Callahan in the hit Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry turned Eastwood into a mega superstar. He would end up playing Harry Callahan in four sequels. During the 1970s and 1980s, Eastwood appeared in hit movie after hit movie. Having established himself as a solid investment, he talked Warner Brothers into letting him direct the movie Play Misty For Me (1971). The low budget movie turned into a success and the career of Clint Eastwood the director was launched. As Clint approached the age of 60, his movies were not receiving much box office success. Things looked like they were slowing down for him, when he starred, produced, and directed Unforgiven 1992. Unforgiven earned Eastwood his first Oscar® nomination for Best Actor, and Oscar® wins for Best Director and Best Picture.

Over the last forty years, Eastwood has appeared in less movies and concentrated on directing. In 2004 he starred, produced and directed Million Dollar Baby. This female boxing movie earned Eastwood his second-Best Actor nomination and won two more Oscars® for Best Director and Best Picture.  His IMDb page shows over 90 acting and directing credits since 1955. This page will rank Clint Eastwood movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, uncredited roles, cameos, and a handful of his pre-A Fistful of Dollars were not included in the rankings.

Clint Eastwood as "Dirty Harry" in 1983's Sudden Impact
Clint Eastwood as “Dirty Harry” in 1983’s Sudden Impact

Clint Eastwood Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Newsweek photo

Clint Eastwood Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Clint Eastwood movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Clint Eastwood movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Clint Eastwood movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Clint Eastwood movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Clint Eastwood movie received.
  • Sort Clint Eastwood movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Clint Eastwood Adjusted World Wide Box Office Grosses

My Personal Top Ten Clint Eastwood Movies in Alphabetical Order

1. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)….the movie that turned a television supporting player into a superstar movie actor

2.  The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966)….the last and best of the Sergio Leone spaghetti western trilogy

3.  In The Line of Fire (1993)….I re-watch this one about every other year….Clint and John Malkovich get better with each passing year

4. Kelly’s Heroes (1970)….this is closing in on 50 years old…but it is still a fun and entertaining movie to watch

5.  The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)…the first time Clint demonstrated that he could direct a classic movie

6. Paint Your Wagon (1967)…..I am not much of a musical person…..but I love watching his Clint/Lee Marvin musical

7. Play Misty For Me (1971)…. Clint made Fatal Attraction years before Michael Douglas did

8. Space Cowboys (2000)…Clint, Tommy Lee Jones, the late great James Garner and a Kelly Heroes’ reunion with Donald Sutherland…what more could you want from a movie?

9.  Sudden Impact (1983)….gotta include a Dirty Harry movie in this list…..my favorite of the 5 Dirty Harry movies

10. Unforgiven (1992)…. Clint’s masterpiece….gets better with each new viewing

Check out Clint Eastwood‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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156 thoughts on “Clint Eastwood Movies”

  2. Happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday Dear Clint Eastwood happy birthday to you. May you have many of them.

    Reply

    1. Hey Tanna….I think he has been blessed…Happy 88th Birthday to Mr. Eastwood. Eastwood has recently announced he is making a new movie in front of the cameras….The Mule….88 and still starring in movies….we should all be so lucky!

      Reply

  4. Hi Bob, excellent comment. Thanks for the review, generous rating, billing info, comparison and observation, much appreciated. Happy you enjoyed the posters and stills.

    I wanted to make this a top 40 but there were too many well known movies to leave out and had to switch to a top 50. I would have liked to include more stills but it would have made the video too long and I didn’t want to cut down on the movie posters, those are the video’s raison d’être!

    Looking at my files there were 59 of Eastwood’s starring and directed films altogether, I didn’t count his early bit roles, some of which Bruce has included on his chart. So 9 films had to be given the boot, not all of them low scorers. I had to balance out the popular with the not so popular in the bottom 30.

    47 films out of 50 scoring 6 and over, well done Clint!

    Seven of Clint’s films scored 10 from my sources – the Dollars trilogy, Unforgiven, Dirty Harry, Million Dollar Baby and Changeling. There were five films scoring 9 – Mystic River, Where Eagles Dare. In the Line of Fire, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers.

    The highest rated Eastwood film at IMDB is The Good the Bad and the Ugly with 8.9, which is pretty impressive. Leone’s western classic is still very popular.

    Reply

  5. 1 HI STEVE. Clint’s career started off of course in the classic era with his “spaghetti” westerns but he has also been one of the biggest stars of the modern era for several decades now and whilst his heyday as a superstar may be over if his record since 2008 is anything to go by he seems to be able to carry on churning out hits with director/producer assignments

    2 He always seemed almost more comfortable in stand-alone movies than in those with other major co-stars, but he could generate hits in either category of movie. I place him in the bracket of the likes of Shirley Temple, Joan Crawford, Betty Grable, Deanna Durbin and Elvis Presley in the classic era as a star who ‘owned’ most of the films that he made – that is his flicks were largely undeniably “Clint Eastwood” movies.

    3 Once he hit his heyday he like Elvis before him was normally billed alone above the title. I think that Clint acted in 40 of the 50 movies you have selected and I counted a staggering 29 of those where he was billed solo above the title – beat that if you can fans of Myrna Loy! Even when he shared his billing he insisted on being named first as for example he refused to allow his pal Burt Reynolds to be billed first in JUST the cast lists for the 1984 City Heat despite Burt’s apparent pleas in the matter. A solitary exception was when Clint took 2nd billing to Kevin Costner in the 1993 A Perfect World because he was very keen to have Kev in that movie as Costner was then at his peak. Clint still didn’t come up too short though because as director as well as a star of that one he was prominently mentioned twice in the credits!

    3 Some great stuff in this video well justifying its unusual length and pleasing me to the point of earning a 97.5% rating.. Among the marvellous posters are Joe Kidd, J Edgar, Gauntlet, Coogan’s Bluff, Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter. However good though these were Play Misty for Me and Fistful of Dollars were spellbinders in my eyes and indeed deserve a round of applause.

    4 Well done too in providing a clutch of 1st class stills. Best for me were Clint with chum Burt in City Heat, the Space Cowboys quartet, with his trusty Magnum [I presume, not being a firearms expert] with Burton in Where Eagles Dare, and with a big fave of mine Morg Freeman in Unforgiven

    5 You and Bruce agree on 4 of Clint’s Top 5, with WH including in the 5 the Million Dollar Baby instead of your Fistful of Dollars. I agree with Bruce as I thought ‘Baby’ was Clint’s most touching movie. However it is hair splitting as WH still gives Fistful a very high rating and ranks it at No 9. Indeed Clint’s CV is packed with so much great things that it must have been hard for you guys to make fine-tuned distinctions. A superb tribute to a unique multi-talented pernnial superstar who has straddled both the classic and modern eras of movies.

    Reply

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