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When your dad is Clint Eastwood, being a nepo baby can apparently only get you so far. Scott Eastwood may have made his on-screen debut in his father’s film “Flags of Our Fathers,” but the actor hasn’t worked with the prolific elder Eastwood in a number of years. In interviews, Scott Eastwood has frequently admitted to auditioning for bigger parts in his father’s films, but he’s also admitted that he never tends to get those roles.
“I was 18 years old when I called him and wanted to audition for ‘Flags of Our Fathers,'” the younger Eastwood told The Independent back in 2015. “I was a young actor trying to make something of myself, working two jobs and hustling and he said: ‘Well, we’ll see. I’ll give you a shot to audition.'” Though he didn’t disclose which part he tried out for, Scott Eastwood said he “auditioned for one of the bigger roles” in the 2006 movie about the Battle of Iwo Jima. “Obviously didn’t happen,” he told the outlet, but he did get hired “to do a couple of lines in the film.”
While I’m sure it’s tough on the younger Eastwood to get rejected by his dad on a professional level, it’s also a little bit funny to imagine Clint Eastwood, famously a tough, no-nonsense man, refusing to give into the long-standing Hollywood tradition of giving your kid a job they might not deserve. “That’s how it rolls with him on every project,” Scott Eastwood told The Independent. “I’ve auditioned for a lot of the bigger roles in his films and never got them.” In the same article, he admitted that Eastwood also turned him down for “American Sniper,” the polarizing 2014 war film starring Bradley Cooper.
Clint Eastwood has rejected his son for several roles
Warner Bros.
That rejection may have been a blessing in disguise, Scott Eastwood said at the time, because it allowed him to make “The Longest Ride,” a Nicholas Sparks adaptation that saw him step into the role of romantic lead. The actor also spoke to Variety in 2015 about working with his father, saying, “I’ve auditioned for pretty much every one of my father’s movies.” That outlet reported that he failed to earn a part in “J. Edgar,” the Leonardo DiCaprio-led biopic Clint Eastwood directed in 2011, with Scott Eastwood adding that he doesn’t always hear back after losing out on parts in his dad’s movies. “You don’t get a phone call,” he told Variety. “It’s nothing personal.”
To date, the younger Eastwood has only made it into three of the elder’s films, playing a side character’s date in “Gran Torino,” a soccer player in “Invictus,” and a private in the U.S. marines in “Flags of Our Fathers.” He also popped up in the Clint Eastwood-produced movie “Trouble with the Curve,” which his father starred in. Outside of the family filmography, Scott Eastwood has had roles in franchise flicks like “Fast X,” “Pacific Rim: Uprising,” and “Suicide Squad,” plus movies including David Ayer’s “Fury” and Oliver Stone’s “Snowden.” Swifties also know the actor as Taylor Swift’s beau in her “Wildest Dreams” music video. Whether the two Eastwoods will ever work together again remains to be seen (“Juror #2” could apparently be Clint Eastwood’s final film as a director), but we don’t blame Scott Eastwood if he stopped auditioning for his dad after all those rejection letters — or lack thereof.