Clint Eastwood is known for his gentle filmmaking style, famously never shouting “action” or “cut” on set – and Laura Linney, who has worked with the director three times, has shared insight into why this is.
Ozark star Linney has been in three Eastwood films – Absolute Power (1997), Mystic River (2003) and Sully (2016) – and they’ve been pleasant experiences for the Oscar-nominated actor.
She told The Independent in new interview series Life in Pictures that the 95-year-old’s hesitancy to shout on sets stems from his experiences working on westerns, including the 1960s TV show Rawhide, where making too much noise would alarm the horses on set.
“I learnt an invaluable lesson from – how to relax on set. He only does one take, he works with same crew, you come on set, it’s pre-lit – it’s done – and he goes ‘OK, are you ready to go? OK, go ahead.’ He talks in that level voice. He stands next to the camera, watches the scene, goes, ‘OK you can stop. Did you feel good about that? I felt good about that. Were we in focus? OK, we can move on.’
Linney continued: “That’s how he rolls. The reason he doesn’t yell ‘action’ or ‘cut’ is because of the westerns he made. Because if someone yelled, the horse would jump and get scared, so everybody’s quiet on set.
“Because we all have nervous systems and it’s true – when someone screams ‘action’, particularly if it’s a scene where you have to concentrate, it takes a little time to recover from that.”
Watch the full Life in Pictures interview below:
Speaking about his past experience, Eastwood previously said during an Actor’s Studio interview: “It came to my attention that actors are not like horses, but they do have a central nervous system, and they’re sitting there with a certain amount of anxiety about the scene, depending on their experience level, but they have a certain kind of… approach they’re ready to take.”
Eastwood shot to fame on Rawhide in the 1960s, before starring in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western Dollars trilogy, which included The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He directed his first film – Play Misty for Me – in the 1970s, and in the following six decades, released films including Unforgiven, Changeling, Gran Torino, American Sniper and The Mule.
His latest film, legal drama Juror No 2, was released in 2025.
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Elsewhere in her Life in Pictures interview, Linney reflected on her career to date, claiming that she starred in one of the “great bad movies of our time”. The actor can currently be seen in MGM+ series American Classic.