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Clint Eastwood teamed up with Sergio Leone to make three of the greatest Westerns of all time: A Fistful of Dollars<\/em>,\u00a0For a Few Dollars More\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Good, The Bad and the Ugly<\/em>.<\/p>\n He would go on to star in a number of other Westerns and even star and direct in his own hit Unforgiven<\/em>, but there was a time when he needed a break from the genre \u2013 and the director who helped jumpstart his career.<\/p>\n In attempting to establish his career outside of the old West, Eastwood turned down two Leone pictures.<\/p>\n Every 10 years Sight and Sound<\/em>\u00a0asks a group of directors to name the “Greatest Films of All Time<\/a>” with the latest ranking coming from a total of 480 directors. The latest ranking had Once Upon a Time in the West<\/em> as the greatest Western from the group.<\/p>\n While the film didn’t need him to be successful, Eastwood revealed he turned down the iconic Western.<\/p>\n “But he talked to be about doing\u00a0Once Upon a Time In the West\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Duck, You Sucker!<\/em>, but they were just repeats of what I’d been doing. I didn’t want to play that character anymore,”\u00a0he admitted<\/a>. “So I came back and did a very small-budget picture, called\u00a0Hang ’em High<\/em>, which had a little more character.”<\/p>\n Eastwood claimed he needed to do some “American” films after studios started thinking about him as an Italian actor following the success of the Man With No Name trilogy.<\/p>\n Eastwood’s <\/a>Hang ’em High<\/em><\/a> owns a strong 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, but Once Upon a Time in the West<\/em> sits even higher at 96%<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the end, he established himself as one of the greatest actors \u2013 and directors \u2013 of his time.<\/p>\n Related: 1978 Hit, A Rock Legend’s Signature Song, Named Among Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time – And It Still Rocks<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by <\/em>Men’s Journal<\/em><\/a> on Jul 12, 2026, where it first appeared in the <\/em>News<\/em><\/a> section. Add Men’s Journal as a <\/em>Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clint Eastwood teamed up with Sergio Leone to make three of the greatest Westerns of all time: A Fistful of Dollars,\u00a0For a Few Dollars More\u00a0and\u00a0The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. He would go on to star in a number of other Westerns and even star and direct in his own hit Unforgiven, but there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2499618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[318260,378827,379289],"class_list":["post-2499617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-clint-eastwood","tag-once-upon-a-time-in-the-west","tag-sergio-leone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1968-Classic-Named-Greatest-Western-of-All-Time-Was-Turned.com2Fen2Fmen_s_journal_7182Fd528410b08f8f3363bb8b39b228a15c8.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2499619,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499617\/revisions\/2499619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2499618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Clint Eastwood Turned Down ‘Greatest Western of All Time’<\/h2>\n