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Clint Eastwood was once fired for “having a big Adam’s Apple”

There's nothing fun about being fired, but Clint Eastwood was once reportedly let go from an acting job for the most absurd reason possible

Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry

There’s nothing fun about being fired, but Clint Eastwood was once reportedly let go from an acting job for the most absurd reason. According to Burt Reynolds, in his memoir But Enough About Me, Eastwood was fired for having a big Adam’s Apple.

“Clint Eastwood and I were fired on the same day,” Reynolds wrote. “They told him his Adam’s apple stuck out too far, he talked too slow and he had to get that chipped tooth fixed. I then said, ‘Why are you firing me?’ And they said, ‘You can’t act!’”

As the pair left the set, Reynolds claims he turned to Eastwood and joked.”‘You’re in a hell of a lot of trouble. I’ll eventually learn to act. You’ll never get rid of that Adam’s apple.” Thankfully whoever fired the pair turned out to be very wrong. Eastwood, of course, made his name starring in westerns and went on to direct, while Reynolds would get his big break appearing in the thriller movie Deliverance and was eventually nominated for an Oscar.

The pair would eventually work together on the comedy movie City Heat. Bringing together Eastwood and Reynolds seemed like a license to print money, but the film ended up being a flop.

Reynolds’ performance in City Heat earned him a Razzie nomination. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the Smokey and the Bandit star said he knew from the beginning the film was a stinker.

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“Ten days after the shooting began, I knew I was going to take the fall,” Reynolds said. “Clint was playing formula Clint that always worked for Clint. I was playing Jack Lemmon in this strange film where people were getting blown away. I never read a review of the film because I knew I was going to get killed by the critics.”

“The public wanted Boom Town or to see us in a contemporary film,” he continued. “They didn’t want Dirty Harry vs the Wimp. It’s regrettable the material wasn’t there because Hollywood or maybe just Warner Bros. will never let Clint and I act together again.”