Long before Bruce Willis was cast as Die Hard's John McClane, Clint Eastwood was approached but he rejected the screenplay for a strange reason.
Die Hard was reworked to make McClane younger, but in the novel, he was a retired detective. He's also willing to play the character as being in serious pain due to the many injuries he incurs, and even cries when he believes he'll never escape the building. Outside of Eastwood, the part was offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Burt Reynolds, James Caan and many more. He was coming to visit his daughter, not his wife, and while the book has many of the same setpieces, it was more somber. Die Hard made Bruce Willis an instant movie star, but the path to his casting was surprisingly convoluted. [Willis' McClane - whose casting was weirdly controversial](https://screenrant.com/die-hard-bruce-willis-john-mcclane-controversial-casting-moonlighting/) - being written as an everyman hero, every major action star of the time was approached.
Most people know Clint Eastwood became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood by making Spaghetti Westerns in Spain and Italy with filmmaker Sergio Leone.
They're just used to so much more exposition and I was throwing that out." ["Yojimbo,"](https://www.slashfilm.com/580633/yojimbo-at-60/) which was itself an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's crime novel "Red Harvest" (though, despite clear plot similarities, the filmmaker claimed he was inspired by the author's "The Glass Key"). In any event, while Eastwood's instincts proved impeccable, Leone didn't give up on his scripted vision of the character without a fight. He just shows up in a town dominated by two corrupt, warring factions, and goads both sides into massacring each other. Most people know Clint Eastwood became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood by making Spaghetti Westerns in Spain and Italy with filmmaker Sergio Leone. Most of these people probably figure Eastwood's Man with No Name was a man of few words at the behest of the director, due likely to a language barrier of some sort.