We're About to Enter the Year of Scott Eastwood
Eastwood earlier this year (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images for IWC)
Every once in a while, certain actors go from occasionally appearing onscreen to suddenly showing up in what feels like every movie on the release schedule.
That happened last year with Alicia Vikander, who starred in multiple films that came out in quick succession, including Ex Machina, Testament of Youth, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., then capped it all off with an Academy Award in February for her work in The Danish Girl. Jessica Chastain and Jude Law have also experienced similar feasts of film roles in their careers. Looking ahead at the coming months, there’s one actor who seems primed to join them in the Suddenly Ubiquitous Hall of Fame: Scott Eastwood.
Like Vikander, Chastain, and Law, Eastwood, 30, is not exactly an unknown quantity. The son of Clint Eastwood — in case that’s not abundantly obvious from taking one look at the guy — and Jacelyn Reeves, a flight attendant with whom the elder Eastwood had a relationship in the 1980s, the actor has scored small roles in several films over the years, including some directed by his dad like Flags of Our Fathers and Invictus. But he really emerged in his own right in 2015, when he played the leading man in the Nicholas Sparks romance The Longest Ride as well as the leading man in the Taylor Swift romance known as the music video for “Wildest Dreams.”
Related: The Nicholas Sparks Countdown: We Rank All the Movie Romances
Watch the Taylor Swift video below:
Given the rugged, handsome, classic movie star thing he’s got going on, it’s not surprising that Eastwood is finally starting to pop. This year alone, he is slated to star in the comedy Walk of Fame, due in June; play a key, still-unidentified role in the much-buzzed-about Suicide Squad in August; appear as an NSA agent alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, and Nicolas Cage in Oliver Stone’s Snowden, due in September; and appear in a French thriller called Overdrive whose release date has not yet been determined. That doesn’t count the movies he has coming in 2017, including major roles in Ben Affleck’s Live by Night and, as recently announced, the Fast and the Furious sequel Fast 8.
He may not follow in Vikander’s footsteps and wind up with an Oscar in his hand in less than a year. But certainly between now and then, he’ll likely have reached household name-level, which is pretty good considering that just a couple of years ago, he was rejected by his own father for a role in American Sniper.
In an interview last year with the U.K.’s Independent, Eastwood admitted he has auditioned for major roles in most of his dad’s movies and never landed them; instead, he usually got smaller parts that allowed him to deliver a few lines. Despite his direct connection to such an important filmmaker, Eastwood says he’s still had to struggle like any young actor does.
“Until recently, I was still bartending in L.A. and San Diego and working as an actor,” he told the British newspaper. “I was working multiple jobs and did it all — construction, car-parking valet. About five years ago, I was like, ‘I’ll give it till the end of the year and see’ … A couple of times I was about to throw in the towel. Then I got a role, made some money and gained momentum.”
He’s certainly got plenty of momentum now and, presumably, no reason to return to bartending anytime in the near future.
Watch Eastwood in ‘The Longest Ride’ trailer: