Clint Eastwood doesn’t strike us as the type of person who’s effusive with praise, but we imagine he’s a fair person. That lines up with what Robert Patrick – the villain in the best Terminator movie, T2 – said about Eastwood during a recent interview with Michael Rosenbaum on the Inside You podcast.
During the conversation about working with Eastwood on Flags of Our Fathers, Patrick shared an anecdote about meeting the western icon who directed the war movie. [Clint Eastwood] came up to me,” he said. “And I’ve never really met him, and he says to me and Neil [McDonough] and said, ‘Yeah, I’ve never really been able to do those monologues like that. I really admire you guys. It’s not easy. You did a nice job.”
The praise definitely meant a lot to Patrick, who admitted he felt nervous about the scene. “We were doing the outline of the parameters of the invasion of Iwo Jima,” Patrick explained. “It was a lot of dialogue, and I had just done a lot of dialogue for David Mamet the day before on my TV show The Unit.”
“So it was like double duty with two monologues, he continued. “So I was a little concerned..some of the stuff was bleeding into the other stuff, and there were numbers, and there are all these extras. That was probably the most anxious I’ve ever been.”
Clearly, the nerves didn’t get to Patrick too much, though, if he earned a compliment from Eastwood, but what do you expect from the man who played the T-1000? We sat down with Patrick recently to discuss his most iconic role and if he’s interested in returning to the action movie series.
“I’m on the record as saying no, and then I’m on the record as saying yes. Right now, anything is possible,” he told us. “I would never say never to anything,” Patrick said. “I would wonder how I would approach it now. I’ve got almost 170 [credits] now. There’s a lot of work, and I’ve grown as an actor now.”
If you love Robert Patrick, check out our list of the best robot movies, or we have a guide on Peacemaker season 2.