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Clint Eastwood once helped edit a Rawhide script that made Rowdy Yates seem like a ''petty little boy''
Eastwood took care of his characters.
There are actors who take on a character role as though it's simply a job, and there are actors who take on a new character like it's a newfound extension of themselves. Clint Eastwood seemed to fall into the latter category of actors, as he seemed to play a character like Rowdy Yates as a version of himself.
"You could say I know Rowdy pretty well," he said of the Rawhide character during an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News. "He is a lot like me."
So much so was Eastwood taken with the character that he intervened in the scriptwriting process when he felt that certain character decisions were being made that he felt didn't reflect Rowdy's true personality.
"There was one show where I thought Rowdy's role seemed pretty adolescent," Eastwood said. "He seemed pretty adolescent. He seemed to act out of petty jealousy." While these kinds of flaws are natural for any person to have from time to time, Eastwood wanted to ensure that the character remained three-dimensional and didn't succumb to his more unseemly traits.
"I thought some other dimensions should be added to keep him from being a bad, petty little boy," Eastwood said. Luckily, the writers were on board with his decision. "The changes were made with everybody staying happy."
While Eastwood was happy to play a ranchman who was close to his own heart, he was still willing to acknowledge that at times, heavy was the head that wore the cowboy hat.
"Sure, it gets tiresome playing the same role all the time," he said. "But I'm certainly not stifling. I'd like to be able to do something else once in a while, and I'm sure I will eventually."
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