What could have been.
Bill Murray once had the chance to star in a movie with Clint Eastwood – and he still regrets turning the legendary actor down to this day.
Murray, 74, opened up about the missed opportunity on Tuesday, March 25, during an interview on “The Howard Stern Show.”
“Have you ever watched a film and said I want to act with this guy so bad?” Stern, 71, asked the “Caddyshack” star during their sit-down.
“A long time ago I was watching the Clint Eastwood movies of the day, like ‘Thunderbolt and Lightfoot’ or whatever the movies he was making then,” Murray responded, “and I thought: ‘His sidekick gets killed, and he avenges, but the sidekick gets like a great part, a great death scene.’”
“I was like, I got to call this guy,” he continued. “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.”
“And when he said, ‘Would you ever want to do another service comedy,’ like jeez, ‘Would I become like Abbott and Costello?’” Murray quipped. “I had to do like military movies? And I said, ‘Well, God, I guess maybe I shouldn’t.’”
The movie in question is most likely the 1986 dark comedy “Heartbreak Ridge.” It came out a few years after Murray’s 1981 hit “Stripes” and stars Eastwood as Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway – a career United States Marine assigned to train a group of undisciplined recruits.
According to Murray, he still regrets turning Eastwood down all these years later.
“But it’s one of the few regrets I have is that I didn’t do it,” the “Ghostbusters” star admitted to Stern. “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 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.”
The “Groundhog Day” actor regrets the decision so much that he still brings it up when he sees Eastwood, 94, around Hollywood.
“And when I see him, I’m like: ‘I’m sorry, I wish I’d done that Clint, I’m really sorry,’” Murray concluded. “He’s certainly well over it. He’s a very resilient fella.”
Murray’s interview with Stern dropped after the “Lost in Translation” star broke his silence about Gene Hackman’s shocking death. The legendary actor died at age 95 last month.
Murray, who starred in director Wes Anderson’s 2001 film “The Royal Tenenbaums” alongside Hackman, said he was “really good” but also “really difficult” to work with.
“He was a tough nut, Gene Hackman,” the comedian said. “But he was really good.”
“And he was really difficult, we can say it now, but he was a tough guy,” Murray continued. “Older, great actors do not give young directors much of a chance. They’re really rough on them, and Gene was really rough on Wes. I used to kind of step in there and just try to defend my friend.”
Hackman passed away inside his Santa Fe, Mexico, home days after his wife’s tragic passing.
