Actors can develop reputations for how they behave off-screen as well as based on the roles they take. Typecasting aside, some actors have definitely become synonymous with masculine energy. Or, simply put, they’re macho.
These men may fight, talk sh*t, drive fast, and boast big muscles – but they’re not always action stars, per se. They often protect and defend others, stand up to injustice, and present a bravado that’s both impressive and intimidating. We know them when we see them, and we kind of count on them to bring manliness to any role – whether they want to or not.
Actors like Burt Reynolds and Sean Connery have long been considered macho. Nostalgic favorites like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis have, too. And performers with relatively short resumes continue to fall under that label all the time. When it comes to the most macho actors we could think of, the guys on this list definitely qualify. And, finding out more about them may have puffed up our chests a bit, too.
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lint Eastwood Survived A Plane Crash In 1951 By Swimming To Safety
While serving in the military, Clint Eastwood boarded a US Navy airplane from Fort Ord in California to Seattle, WA, to visit his family. He was a lifeguard at Fort Ord and was the lone passenger aboard the aircraft. By some accounts, he was actually in the cargo hold because the plane wasn’t equipped to take on passengers.
Regardless, the craft began experiencing technical problems. Soon after, the engine failed, sending Eastwood, the pilot, and the plane into the water below. Neither the pilot, identified only as “Anderson,” nor Eastwood were hurt, so they began swimming toward the shoreline. Once it got dark, Eastwood lost sight of Anderson. The future actor and director recalled:
I didn’t know whether he was alive or where the hell he was. And I wasn’t about to start yelling, because it wastes a lot of energy. I went through jellyfish schools and all kinds of things, and they became fluorescent at night. It was like some science-fiction deal. By this time, you know, your mind is – talking about hallucinating… I kind of worked my way into that – just partly luck, because everywhere the water was very rough. And I got into this spot and had a really rough time climbing out.
Both men made it safely to shore. Again, from Eastwood:
Finally we made it in. He thought I had drowned and I thought he had drowned because we lost touch with each other because of the waves. I started hiking and ended in a relay station up on a cliff near Bolinas, California.
The men were reunited at a US Coast Guard station nearby.
Years later, Eastwood said the experienced influenced him during the filming of Sully:
I definitely did think about it when I was shooting this… I’m probably the only director who’s actually been in a water landing.
Burt Reynolds Got Invited To Play Poker With Frank Sinatra After Defying The Famous Singer
On a night when Burt Reynolds was dining with Dinah Shore at Nicky Blair’s restaurant in Los Angeles, Frank Sinatra enjoyed a meal close by. After the singer seemed to indicate he wanted Reynolds and Shore to come over to talk to him, Reynolds balked and decided to wait until he was done eating. Sinatra was not pleased, but waited nonetheless.
When Reynolds and Sinatra did finally come face-to-face, the crooner invited the actor to a poker game in the kitchen of the restaurant. Reynolds took Sinatra up on the offer and, as they – plus several other associates of Sinatra’s – got ready to play five-card stud, a busboy named Hector dropped a tray of glasses.
When Nicky, the restaurant owner, yelled at Hector, Sinatra stepped in and asked, “How much do those glasses cost?” Nicky replied “a few bucks apiece.” At that point, Sinatra had one of his handlers pull out cash to buy $3,000 worth of glasses.
When they arrived, Sinatra told Hector to break them, before looking at Nicky to say, “If I ever come in and don’t see Hector, I’ll never come back again. Understand?” Nicky agreed and Reynolds got up to leave. When Sinatra asked him “Where the hell are you going?” Reynolds simply looked at him and said, “Home… I got my Sinatra story.”
Sam Elliott’s Father Never Thought His Son Would Make It As An Actor
Sam Elliott’s father, Henry, had a long-lasting positive influence on his son, especially when it came to Henry’s job with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. As Elliott told NPR in 2017:
I was outdoors a lot in my lifetime. And I was with my dad… and his peers, who were all men’s men and outdoorsmen. All had incredible work ethics and were all good men. And they were really the ones I think that I learned what kind of a man I wanted to be when I grew up.
Sam wanted to be like his father, but also had a passion for acting. When his father passed, Sam was just 18. According to the actor, Henry died thinking his son was a “total idiot… he said ‘you have a snowball’s chance in hell of having a f*cking career in that town [Hollywood].'”
Henry never understood why his son wanted to be an actor, and didn’t approve of the career choice. For his part, Sam said, “I didn’t get to know him near as well as I would love to have,” and always just wanted to make his father proud.
Sylvester Stallone’s Speech Pattern Is The Result Of Nerve Damage At Birth
Among the many things Sylvester Stallone is known for is his distinct speech pattern. The actor, director, and producer grew up with a facial difference and slurred speech pattern due to how and where he was born.
Because his mother Jackie was too poor to give birth in a hospital, she delivered her son at a charity ward in New York City. Complications led to nerve damage which, in turn, left the young Stallone paralyzed on the left side of his face. He later said that he felt like “Mr. Potato Head with all the parts in the wrong place.”
When Stallone tried to enter the world of acting, he found that “nobody, nobody… would give me a break.” As a result, he wrote a project for himself – Rocky.
Charles Bronson Had To Wear His Sisters’ Clothes To School
Born in Ehrenfeld, PA, Charles Buchinsky was the son of Lithuanian immigrants. He later took the stage surname Bronson, but only after having lived his childhood surrounded by poverty.
According to the actor, his family was so poor that there weren’t enough clothes to go around. As a result, the 11th out of 15 children wore hand-me-downs. As he recalled:
Because the kids just older than me in the family were girls, sometimes I had to wear my sisters’ hand-me-downs. I remember going to school in a dress. And my socks, when I got home sometimes I’d have to take them off and give them to my brother to wear into the mines.
That wasn’t the only unique experience the future actor had when he was a kid:
There was this girl, 6 years old. I gave her some strawberry pop. I gave her the pop because I didn’t want it; I had taken up chewing tobacco and I liked that better. I didn’t start smoking until I was nine.
Playing James Bond ‘Got To Be Too Much’ For Sean Connery
Sean Connery didn’t make a great first impression when he was considered for the part of James Bond. He met producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli for lunch looking somewhat messy in a wrinkled shirt, but managed to charm them by the end of the meal. It didn’t hurt that, in the words of Saltzman, Connery “moved… like a jungle cat.”
Years later, after Connery had played Bond no fewer than seven times, the actor decided that “it just got to be too much.” He explained to Entertainment Weekly:
It was a case of phasing out and getting on to other things… Also, they started getting into all this space stuff. They kept upping the physical hardware. I mean, that car going through the alley on its side in Diamonds Are Forever…
Connery’s fellow James Bond alum and friend Roger Moore put it this way:
I think there was a time when he was bored of being Bond.
Chuck Norris Broke Two Of Bob Barker’s Ribs
After meeting Bob Barker as a contestant on Truth or Consequences, Chuck Norris and the game show host became friends. Barker later trained with Norris and, over the course of eight years, learned what he called “the Chuck Norris version of the Tang Soo Do karate style.”
This training proved beneficial when Barker needed to hone his fighting moves for Happy Gilmore, but there was pain along the way. On one occasion, Norris unintentionally broke two of Barker’s ribs. As the longtime The Price Is Right host recalled:
Chuck was over at my house, and we were sparring. He kicked me in the side. It hurt, and it continued to hurt.
But it didn’t end there. Again, from Barker:
A few days later his brother, Aaron, came over. We were sparring, and he punched me in the other side with his fist. That hurt, too, and continued to hurt.
When Barker finally visited his doctor about the pain, X-rays revealed he had two cracked ribs on each side of his torso.
Alice Cooper Used To Babysit Keanu Reeves
When thinking about Keanu Reeves and his career, picturing him in the dark clothing Neo wore in The Matrix may quickly rise to the top of mind. In John Wick, the actor doesn’t exactly wear bright colors either. Considering who Reeves’s childhood babysitter was, maybe he’d been in line for that type of persona longer than anyone really thought.
As he explained in 2017,
I grew up in Toronto and I lived on a street called Hazleton and there was a recording studio Nimbus 9 and my mother was in costume design. She was in rock and roll and she was in the business and they had friends and he had friends and Alice Cooper, I’m told, babysat me. I mean I don’t know how that could possibly happen, but it did.
His time spent with the shock rocker – who was early in his career – included a few shocks of its own. For some reason, one Reeves couldn’t fully explain, “there was fake poo in the fridge” when he was under Cooper’s watchful eye.
For his part, Cooper appeared to confirm the story. He reportedly said he babysat “Kee” while staying “in the top bedroom in this old Victorian house… [alongside] the Hawaiian grandmother and this black-haired kid.”
Steve McQueen Narrowly Escaped The Manson Family In 1969
Steve McQueen’s first wife, actress Neile Adams, was aware that her husband had affairs. She was open about the fact that they hurt, but also revealed that McQueen’s wandering eye likely saved his life in 1969.
By that point, he was a rising star who spent a lot of time partying and taking illicit substances. He befriended hairdresser Jay Sebring (born Thomas John Kummer), who was also close with Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. On the night of August 8, 1969, McQueen was supposed to go to a dinner party with Sebring at Tate’s home.
On his way there, according to Adams, her husband “ran into a chickie and decided to go off with her instead.” Because he didn’t go to the party, he was not one of the individuals killed by followers of Charles Manson. Sebring, Tate, and two additional people, however, lost their lives.
Adams explained how the event changed her husband:
Going off with that girl saved his life. After that, he became more paranoid and wouldn’t let me go anywhere without a gun.
John Wayne Only Took Acting Seriously After His Football Prospects Disappeared
John Wayne (born Marion Robert Morrison) liked to play football. He even received a football scholarship to the University of Southern California in 1925, where he played for the first two years.
During his time away from school, Wayne had some small parts in movies, but was a dedicated student. Unfortunately, when he and some friends went body surfing one day, he reportedly dislocated his right shoulder when a wave knocked him to the sea floor.
At first, Wayne kept using his shoulder as if nothing had happened. In pain and unable to repair the damage, he wasn’t able to stay on the football team.
At that point, he lost his scholarship and took several jobs to make ends meet. After college, Wayne became an extra and a prop man. This helped him build the knowledge and skills needed in Hollywood, which ultimately helped him make connections that landed him his first leading role in 1930.
Bruce Lee Was Afraid Of Water And Never Learned To Swim
Despite aphorisms about water, Bruce Lee did not like the stuff. At all.
He did his best to avoid water after an experience he had as a child. When he and his sister, Phoebe, were at a swimming pool, Bruce pushed her in and, after she recovered, she grabbed her brother. Phoebe then held his head underwater until he swore he would never prank her again. As a result, he never learned how to swim.
In addition to being a non-swimmer, Bruce could not ride a bike either. This was because he had fallen a few times while trying and, in the words of his brother, Robert, “knew his limitations.”
At One Point In His Life, Tom Hardy Would ‘Have Sold My Mother’ For Drugs
When he was a teenager, Tom Hardy coped with his mental health by using drugs. He said he was addicted to both alcohol and crack cocaine and was “out of control.” He elaborated, “I would have sold my mother for a rock of crack.”
Hardy entered treatment in 2003 after an incident he described bluntly:
I did something particularly heinous that allowed me to wake up. I had to lose something. Sometimes you have to lose something that is worth more to you than your drinking.
The actor also called himself “a shameful suburban statistic” but that he was “f*cking lucky” to be alive.
Timothy Olyphant Turned Down One Of The Lead Roles In ‘The Fast and the Furious’
At the turn of the century, Timothy Olyphant was an actor on the rise. Appearances in movies like Go (1999) and Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) brought increased attention to the performer. This was especially clear when director Rob Cohen received the script for The Fast and the Furious (2001).
Producer Neal H. Moritz offered insight into what happened next. Both Cohen and actor Paul Walker liked the script, so they approached executives at Universal Pictures. The company was on board with one condition, and involved casting for Dominic Toretto:
If you can get Timothy Olyphant to play that role, we will greenlight the movie…
Olyphant was asked about the part but didn’t take it. According to Moritz:
The luckiest thing that ever happened to us is Tim Olyphant turned us down.
After Olyphant declined, Universal suggested Vin Diesel, who had recently appeared in Pitch Black. He accepted the role and made it famous.
Bruce Willis Almost Bought An Entire Town In Idaho
When Bruce Willis and his then-wife Demi Moore moved to Hailey, ID, they turned the town into a refuge from the chaos of life in Hollywood. During the late 1980s and through the mid-1990s, Hailey became a tourist destination and, thanks to Willis’s efforts, numerous new businesses, like The Mint Bar, came to fruition.
By 1998, however, he began disassociating from the town. Establishments were closed, employees lost their jobs, and resentment escalated. While it had seemed as though Willis and Moore wanted to buy the whole town at one point, their withdrawal of money and interest was more or less complete when Willis sold his residence in Hailey in 2018. Prior to that, he had sold or donated all of his other holdings in the town.
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