Bill Murray Reveals Actor/Director He “Regrets” Turning Down For Movie Role

Although Bill Murray has plenty of hit films to his name, there’s one role he wishes he didn’t turn down.

The Oscar nominee recently revealed “one of the few regrets” he has in his career after his attempt to work with Clint Eastwood in a film, following the success of his own 1981 army comedy Stripes.

“A long time ago I was watching the Clint Eastwood movies of the day, like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot or whatever the movies he was making then, and I thought: ‘His sidekick gets killed, and he avenges, but the sidekick gets like a great part, a great death scene,’” he recalled on The Howard Stern Show.

“I was like, I got to call this guy. So I called him out of the blue, and he said, ‘Would you ever want to do another service comedy?’ Because I just made Stripes and he had this great idea for an enormous Navy thing,” added Murray. “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.’”

The film was likely Heartbreak Ridge (1986), a dark comedy directed by and starring Eastwood as Marine Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Murray added, “And when I see him, I’m like: ‘I’m sorry, I wish I’d done that Clint, I’m really sorry.’ He’s certainly well over it. He’s a very resilient fella.”