Bill Murray has a pretty diverse filmography in the grand scheme of things. He has an abundance of hits early on in the comedy world. Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day remain classics to this day. That's not to mention any of his various work in Wes Anderson movies or the times he flexes his dramatic chops. Lost in Translation almost landed him an Oscar had Sean Penn not taken the award for Best Actor that year.
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How could you have too many regrets when you're Bill Murray? Apparently, there's been one role from a director that he still wishes he took the time to play. Recently, he went on the Howard Stern Show to promote his recent movies Riff Raff and The Friend. Additionally, he thinks about the expansive career he's had and opens up about "one of the few regrets" he has in his career: passing on a Clint Eastwood flick.
This is around the time he starred in the 1981 army comedy Stripes. Afterward, Bill was watching various Clint Eastwood movies and knew he had to finagle his way into one of his films. "A long time ago I was watching the Clint Eastwood movies of the day," Murray recalls. "I thought: 'His sidekick gets killed, and he avenges, but the sidekick gets like a great part, a great death scene.'"
Bill Murray Opens Up About Passing on a Clint Eastwood Film
Consequently, the SNL alum reaches out to Eastwood. The actor/director immediately gives Murray a sales pitch on his next project. However, it operates in a similar way to Stripes and Bill doesn't want to be repetitive in his choices. So ,unfortunately, he passes in the end. So I called him out of the blue, and he said, 'Would you ever want to do another service comedy?'" he recalls.
"Because I just made Stripes and he had this great idea for an enormous Navy thing. And when he said, 'Would you ever want to do another service comedy,' like jeez, 'Would I become like Abbott and Costello?' I had to do like military movies? And I said, 'Well, God, I guess maybe I shouldn't,'" Murray adds.
With how he describes the film, it sounds an awful like Eastwood's 1986 military comedy Heartbreak Ridge. In hindsight, the scale and the final result make Murray deeply regret passing on it. "But it's one of the few regrets I have is that I didn't do it. Because it was a big-scale thing, and I would have gotten a great - I don't know if I'd have gotten a great death scene, it was more of a comedy that one - but it was great," Murray says. "He had access to World War II boats and he could have like made a flotilla and stuff, and there was some cool stuff in it."
