29-03-2025
Bill Murray Says There's One Director He Wishes He Had Worked With: ‘It's One of the Few Regrets I Have'
Bill Murray has few regrets over his eventful career, but there was one potential role he says he wishes he hadn't turned down.
The former 'Saturday Night Live' star told Howard Stern that he missed the chance to do a movie with Clint Eastwood — possibly out of fear of being typecast.
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'I was watching the Clint Eastwood movies of the day, like 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot' or whatever the hell the movies he was making then, and I thought: 'His sidekick gets killed, and he avenges, but the sidekick gets like a great part, a great death scene,'' he told Stern earlier this week.
Murray was coming off of making the 1981 hit comedy 'Stripes,' and decided to call Eastwood and let him know he was interested.
'I was like, I got to call this guy. So I called him out of the blue, and he said, 'Would you ever want to do another service comedy?' Because I just made 'Stripes' and he had this great idea for an enormous Navy thing,' added Murray. 'And when he said, 'Would you ever want to do another service comedy,' like jeez, 'Would I become like Abbott and Costello?' I had to do like military movies? And I said, 'Well, God, I guess maybe I shouldn't.''
A few years later, Eastwood made the war film 'Heartbreak Ridge,' in which Eastwood played Marine Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway.
'It's one of the few regrets I have is that I didn't do it. Because it was a big-scale thing, and I would have gotten a great – I don't know if I'd have gotten a great death scene, it was more of a comedy, that one – but it was great,' he said. 'He had access to World War II boats and he could have like made a flotilla and stuff, and there was some cool stuff in it.'
He continued, 'When I see him, I'm like: 'I'm sorry, I wish I'd done that Clint, I'm really sorry.' He's certainly well over it. He's a very resilient fella.'
Stern went on to point out that 'Stripes' was originally written for Cheech and Chong, but their agent didn't want them to do it. 'They could have had fun with it, there were lots of stoner scenes in it,' Murray said. With Ivan Reitman directing and Murray starring with John Candy, 'Stripes' ended up as the fifth-highest grossing film of the year at the box office.
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