Clint Eastwood, at 96 years old, has quietly released a list of the five greatest co-stars he ever worked with across a career spanning more than seven decades, and every single one of them is dead.

The revelation comes not as a formal press release but as a deeply personal accounting from a man who has outlived nearly every actor he ever stood opposite on a dusty set. Eastwood named the performers in a recent interview, and the order he gave them carries the weight of a final roll call.

Gene Hackman sits at number five. Eastwood praised Hackman’s performance as Little Bill Daggett in the 1992 film “Unforgiven,” a role that earned Hackman his second Academy Award. Hackman died in February 2025 at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, alongside his wife Betsy Arakawa, a loss that shook Hollywood.

Number four is Richard Harris, who played English Bob in the same film. Eastwood recalled with delight how Harris initially thought the phone call offering the role was a prank. Harris died in 2002 after a battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leaving behind a late-career renaissance that included playing Albus Dumbledore.

Eli Wallach ranks third for his iconic turn as Tuco in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Eastwood presented Wallach with an honorary Oscar in 2010. Wallach died in 2014 at age 98, one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s golden era.

Robert Duvall is number two for his role as Frank Harlan in “Joe Kidd.” Duvall died in February 2026 at age 95, prompting tributes from across the industry. Eastwood praised Duvall’s ability to make quiet cruelty look like good manners.

Topping the list is Lee Marvin, for playing Ben Rumson in the 1969 musical “Paint Your Wagon.” Marvin died in 1987 at age 63. Eastwood credited Marvin’s recommendation with steering him toward director Don Siegel, a partnership that defined much of his career.

The list is not a ranking of talent, Eastwood suggested, but a settling of accounts with the ghosts of his own career. Three of the five names have died within the last few years alone.

Hackman’s death in particular hit hard. Eastwood had to persuade Hackman to take the role in “Unforgiven,” reframing the film as a dismantling of the myth of the Old West gunslinger. Hackman’s performance remains a masterclass in layered menace.

Harris brought a theatrical flair to English Bob that Eastwood trusted completely. The jailhouse confrontation between Harris and Hackman is one of the film’s most devastating scenes. Harris died just a decade after that performance.

Wallach nearly stole “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” from Eastwood’s own iconic Man With No Name. Filming in Spain was dangerous, with Wallach dragged by a horse and nearly hit by a train. He kept working into his nineties.

Duvall’s restrained menace in “Joe Kidd” became his signature for five decades, carrying him through “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” and an Oscar-winning lead in “Tender Mercies.” His death in February 2026 closed out two of the five names in the same brutal month.

Marvin’s performance in “Paint Your Wagon” is the reason the film still has life, Eastwood said. Marvin was reportedly drunk through much of the production, yet his rendition of “Wanderin’ Star” hit number one on the UK charts.

Eastwood’s list tells you more about what he values in an actor than any awards speech ever could. It was never about who could draw fastest or scowl hardest. It was about Hackman’s ability to make menace feel reasonable, Harris’s willingness to let a false legend crumble, Wallach’s gift for finding humanity inside a scoundrel, Duvall’s talent for making quiet cruelty look like good manners, and Marvin’s knack for turning a drunken wreck into someone you’d want standing next to you at the end of the world.

Every one of them is gone now. Eastwood, at 96, is one of the last living men who actually watched all of it happen in real time, camera rolling, dust in the air, a genre he helped define and redefine across seven decades slowly emptying out around him one old friend at a time.

This particular list matters more than the dozens of other rankings and interviews Eastwood has given across his long career. It is not really a countdown. It is closer to a roll call, the kind an old soldier gives at a reunion when he realizes he is the last one left standing who remembers everyone’s real name.

Eastwood did not need to make this list flashy or controversial. He simply told the truth about who impressed him most, in the order they came to mind, and let the weight of losing every single one of them speak for itself.

There is something almost unbearably poignant about a man who spent sixty years playing gunfighters who never seemed to feel anything, quietly naming the five performances that moved him the most, only to realize, by the time he says the last name out loud, that he is the only one left who can still tell the story.

Westerns were always about survival, about the last man standing at the end of a long, dusty road when the smoke finally clears. Clint Eastwood has become that man in real life now too, not because he outdrew anyone but simply because time worked the way it always does.

What he has chosen to do with that position is not boast about his own legacy. He spends a little of his remaining time making sure five other names get said out loud, clearly, with real respect attached, before it is too late for anyone to say them at all.

The industry is still absorbing the loss of Hackman and Duvall within the same year. Eastwood’s list, delivered with the quiet authority of a man who has seen everything, now reads as a memorial rather than a ranking.

Hackman’s path to “Unforgiven” was long. He lied about his age to join the Marines at sixteen, drifted through odd jobs, and was voted least likely to succeed by his acting classmates. He proved them spectacularly wrong with an Oscar for “The French Connection.”

Harris originally dreamed of playing rugby before tuberculosis derailed that ambition. He built a reputation as a serious dramatic actor, then lived as hard as his characters, developing a reputation for drinking alongside Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole.

Wallach came from Brooklyn, the son of Jewish immigrants. He earned a degree from the University of Texas before training at the Actors Studio. His Tuco nearly stole the entire film from Eastwood, a fact Eastwood has never resented.

Duvall trained alongside Dustin Hoffman at the Neighborhood Playhouse, sharing a cramped apartment when neither could afford much. His screen debut as Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird” left audiences shattered.

Marvin was wounded during the invasion of Saipan in World War II, an injury he rarely discussed. He stumbled into acting almost by accident, working as a plumber’s assistant before filling in for an ailing actor in a local theater production.

Eastwood’s list is a reminder that the golden age of the American West on film is now a memory, preserved only in the stories of the few who lived it. The truths behind these old films deserve to be remembered long after the actors who made them are gone.

For now, Clint Eastwood remains, a 96-year-old man quietly settling accounts with the ghosts of his own career, one name at a time.