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Clint Eastwood

1993 Oscar Nominations: When Marisa Tomei and Clint Eastwood Were More Surprising Than ‘The Crying Game’

Every year, the Oscars nominate and award the best of each year’s given films. Looking back at past years’ Oscar nominees provides a time capsule of Hollywood in a given era, whether the films won or not. So, let’s take a look back at 1993’s Oscar nominations, just for fun. These reflect the year when Clint Eastwood became acclaimed, Marisa Tomei broke through, and more.
1993 Oscar nominee Clint Eastwood with two Oscars

Oscar nominations 1993: Clint Eastwood’s triumph

When Clint Eastwood directed and starred in 1992’s Unforgiven, its box office success and critical acclaim already represented a transition in his career. The film’s several nominations, including Best Picture and Eastwood for Best Director, only solidified this transition.

It’s hard to imagine, but before 1992, Eastwood was sort of a popcorn entertainment star. His Dirty Harry movies were subversive, but ultimately a Hollywood franchise, especially towards the end of the ’80s. He also had the crowd pleasers Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can with Clyde the orangutan.

Eastwood cut his teeth on westerns, with the TV series Rawhide and Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name trilogy. Eastwood continued with many American westerns. You should seek out Two Mules for Sister Sara. His chemistry with Shirley MacLaine is outstanding. But Unforgiven took a look at the legacy of those westerns and questioned the outlaw violence. It remains Eastwood’s last word on westerns.

He had directed many before Unforgiven too, but after his Oscar win, Eastwood directing a movie became a sign of pedigree. Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima and American Sniper also earned him directing and picture nominations, and Million Dollar Baby won him another pair.

Oscar nominations 1993: Marisa Tomei

In 1993, Maria Tomei won Best Supporting Actress for My Cousin Vinny. She had been working since 1984 and did a year on the soap opera As the World Turns and the sitcom A Different World. She played Stallone’s daughter in the comedy bomb Oscar, but My Cousin Vinny was her breakthrough.

1993 Oscar nominees Marisa Tomei and Gene Hackman holding Oscars

Tomei played Vinny (Joe Pesci)s girlfriend Mona Lisa, who plays a pivotal role in his case. Pesci probably should have been nominated too for the memorable comedy. However, on the heat of Vinny and the Oscar, Tomei did a string of romantic comedies and dramas. She became such an icon that Seinfeld devoted an episode to her. She continues to take interesting roles today, and she’s Tom Holland’s Spider-Man’s Aunt May.

The Crying Game was another 1992 phenom. It was nominated for Best Picture. Actors Stephen Rea and Jaye Davidson also earned nominations for Best Actor and Supporting Actor, the latter of which is a spoiler for the movie. However, Unforgiven overpowered them. Both great movies though.

Other 1993 nominees

Al Pacino won his only Oscar for Scent of a Woman in 1993. He’d secured prior nominations for The Godfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, …and Justice for All and Dick Tracy. He even had a supporting nomination the same year for Glengarry Glen Ross but it was the Hoo-ah that won.

Worth noting that Robert Downey, Jr. was nominated for playing Charlie Chaplin that year, one of his greatest roles. Denzel Washington also had a nomination for playing Malcolm X. Gene Hackman won Best Supporting Actor as part of Unforgiven’s sweep. Emma Thompson would win for Howard’s End.

The 1993 films nominated in 1994

The films released in 1993 would get Oscar nominations the following year. That was a big year for Schinder’s List, finally earning Spielberg’s first Oscar. It was also Tom Hanks first of two Oscar wins in a row, for Phildadelphia before Forrest Gump.

Steven Spielberg holding 2 Oscars

Leonardo DiCaprio earned his first nomination for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which he should have won, but Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive was more popular. It was a tough year for supporting actors, with John Malkovich for In the Line of Fire and Ralph Fiennes for Schindler’s List in the category.

Holly Hunter in The Piano would beat Angela Bassett as Tina Turner and last year’s winner Thompson for The Remains of the Day. Anna Paquin became the youngest Oscar winner for The Piano.

Clint Eastwood

The Dollars Trilogy Hides the Most Disgusting Clint Eastwood Secret in Plain Sight

Clint Eastwood has been known around the world as a veteran director beyond all means. Eastwood, however, started his journey as an actor portraying several iconic and notable roles over the years.
Starring in Sergio Leone’s The Dollars Trilogy, Clint Eastwood starred in a genre of movies called Western spaghetti. Portraying the role of The Man with No Name, Eastwood’s dedication to the role is both commendable and a bit disgusting as he reportedly never washed his character’s cape over the course of three years!
Clint Eastwood in a still from The Mule

Clint Eastwood in a still from The Mule
Clint Eastwood Wore An Unwashed Serape For Three Years!
Back in 1964, Italian director Sergio Leone released the iconic film A Fistful of Dollars. Portraying the story of an unknown riding into town with two opposing factions, the movie was essentially a cowboy movie with plenty of action scenes for people to enjoy.
In the movie, Clint Eastwood portrayed the role of The Man with No Name. Wearing a serape around his neck and carrying pistols in his holster, Eastwood’s character became notoriously famous from the movie. A year later, Leone released For a Few Dollars More, a sequel to the 1964 film, and Clint Eastwood reprised his role of The Man with No Name.
Finally, in 1966, Sergio Leone released The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, thus completing The Dollars Trilogy. As per a report by Outsider.com, Eastwood never washed his iconic cape throughout the shooting of The Dollars Trilogy. Alleging that the cape was a memorabilia of how far the character had come throughout these movies, Eastwood wore the same cape for three years without washing it once!
Sergio Leone Talked About Working With Clint Eastwood
Although it was Leone’s movies that made Eastwood famous in Hollywood, the director has had some complaints with the veteran actor. Comparing him to Robert de Niro, Sergio Leone revealed in an interview with American Film that Eastwood was like a block of marble!
“Robert De Niro throws him­self into this or that role, putting on a personality the way someone else might put on his coat, naturally and with ele­gance, while Clint Eastwood throws himself into a suit of armor and lowers the visor with a rusty clang.”
He further continued,
“[Clint] East­wood moves like a sleepwalker between explosions and hails of bullets, and he is always the same — a block of marble. Bobby [Robert De Niro], first of all, is an actor. Clint, first of all, is a star. Bobby suffers, Clint yawns.”
Despite whatever the director and Clint Eastwood had between them, the two went their separate ways at the end of The Dollars Trilogy. Eastwood went on to become an iconic actor with his portrayal of action characters and then later became a veteran director with a unique take on movies.

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Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood once explained why we are living in a “pussy generation”

Some stars of Hollywood cinema are indelibly linked to American culture, with the likes of John Wayne, James Stewart, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks having made some of the medium’s most patriotic flicks. The actor and director Clint Eastwood is very similar, taking the reins of the western genre from Wayne in the late 20th century, thanks to such hits as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Rising to popularity in the early 1960s, largely thanks to his role in the TV series Rawhide, where he starred with Eric Fleming, Eastwood later found success on the silver screen, taking the lead role in Sergio Leone’s ‘Dollars’ spaghetti western trilogy, where he played the iconic and mysterious ‘Man With No Name’. By the end of the decade, he was well and truly an established star of contemporary Hollywood.
In the 21st century, with four Academy Awards and 11 nominations under his belt, Eastwood is considered a veteran of the industry who was born in a different time in Hollywood when the studio system era was slowly coming to an end. Much has indeed changed since the time the actor rose to fame, with the movie industry now far more complex due to the rise of streaming, whilst social values have also changed, thankfully becoming far more tactful and accepting of other races and sexual identities.
Yet, speaking in an interview with Esquire back in 2016, it doesn’t appear that Eastwood considers these changes particularly positive.
“Everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up,” the actor stated in response to how his hardy characters remain relevant in society.
Continuing, he added: “That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist”.
Clearly, a little upset that ‘things aren’t like they used to’, despite the clear social progress of contemporary life, Eastwood goes on to further define his thoughts on the “pussy generation”, exclaiming: “All these people that say, ‘Oh, you can’t do that, and you can’t do this, and you can’t say that.’ I guess it’s just the times”.
Naturally, this conversation led to the subject of Donald Trump, who was, at the time, about to win the 2016 Presidential Election. “What Trump is onto is he’s just saying what’s on his mind. And sometimes it’s not so good. And sometimes it’s…I mean, I can understand where he’s coming from, but I don’t always agree with it,” the actor says of the former President before adding that he doesn’t endorse him.
Take a look at the trailer for Gran Torino, starring Eastwood, a film that deals with political correctness, generational changes and modern-day racism, below.

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Clint Eastwood

Juror No. 2: J.K. Simmons Joins the Cast of Clint Eastwood’s Courtroom Thriller Movie

Per Deadline, Simmons has been tapped to play a juror in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming courtroom thriller. He’s joining an ensemble cast that includes Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Gabriel Basso, Zoey Deutch, Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Bibb, and Chris Messina.

Simmons has been professionally acting since the 1990s. In the world of comic book movies, Simmons played J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies and James Gordon in the DCEU. He won an Oscar in 2015 for playing Fletcher in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, while he was also nominated for another in 2022 for Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos.
He’s additionally starred in 2007’s Juno, 2008’s Burn After Reading, 2009’s Jennifer’s Body, 2016’s The Accountant, 2019’s Klaus, and more, along with a number of television roles in shows such as Law & Order, Oz, The Closer, The Legend of Kora, and Ultimate Spider-Man.
What is Juror No. 2 about?
“Family man Justin Kemp who, while serving as a juror in a high profile murder trial, finds himself struggling with a serious moral dilemma…one he could use to sway the jury verdict and potentially convict or free the wrong killer,” the synopsis reads.”

With a script written by Jonathan Abrams, Juror No. 2 was officially announced in April 2023 from Warner Bros. Production on the movie began in June 2023; however, it was delayed one month later because of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike. Filming has since resumed in Atlanta, Georgia.
In addition to directing, Eastwood is also producing the movie with Tim Moore, Jessica Meier, Adam Goodman, and Matt Skiena. Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jeremy Bell, and David M. Bernstein serve as executive producers.
Juror No. 2 does not yet have an official release date from Warner Bros.

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