One Ride Was Enough
Some actors practically lived in the saddle, but others rode into the Western only once and made the opportunity count. From Oscar winners to comedy legends, these stars stepped far outside their usual territory for a single traditional Western or Western-flavored adventure, delivering some of the most memorable performances of their careers. (Above: Jack Lemmon in Cowboy (1958))
Columbia Pictures/Getty Images
Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly's lone Western was certainly a good one. In Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), she played Amy Fowler Kane, the pacifist bride of Gary Cooper's embattled Marshal Will Kane. Kelly was only 22, and although she later criticized her own performance, Zinnemann felt her reserved quality suited the character perfectly.
Trailer screenshot, Wikimedia Commons
Audrey Hepburn
Few actresses seemed further removed from dusty frontier life than Audrey Hepburn, yet John Huston cast her opposite Burt Lancaster in The Unforgiven (1960). Hepburn played Rachel Zachary, whose suspected Kiowa ancestry tears apart her frontier community. Audie Murphy, Lillian Gish, John Saxon, and Charles Bickford completed the unusually formidable cast.
Screenshot from The Unforgiven, Amazon MGM Studios (1960)
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren's only trip to the American West was appropriately unconventional. George Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights (1960) cast her as Angela Rossini, leading lady of a theatrical troupe touring frontier towns. Anthony Quinn, Steve Forrest, Margaret O'Brien, and Ramon Novarro co-starred in the colorful Louis L'Amour adaptation, which emphasized show business over traditional gunplay.
Screenshot from Heller in Pink Tights, Paramount Global (1960)
Sean Connery
Fresh from his first run as James Bond, Sean Connery strapped on a six-shooter for Edward Dmytryk's Shalako (1968). Playing a former Army scout protecting European aristocrats from danger in Apache territory, Connery shared the screen with Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Woody Strode, and his Goldfinger co-star Honor Blackman. It remained his only traditional Western.
Screenshot from Shalako, StudioCanal (1968)
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman wasn't an obvious Western hero, which made Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) such inspired casting. Hoffman played Jack Crabb across an extraordinary span of his life, eventually becoming a 121-year-old survivor recalling his experiences in the Old West. Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George, Martin Balsam, and Richard Mulligan joined him in the revisionist epic.
Screenshot from Little Big Man, Paramount Global (1970)
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire spent most of his career dancing rather than riding, but he eventually became an aging gunfighter in the 1970 TV Western The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again. Directed by George McCowan, it cast Astaire as the Baltimore Kid alongside Western veterans Walter Brennan, Edgar Buchanan, Andy Devine, and Chill Wills. It was Astaire's only Western film adventure.
Screenshot from The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again, ABC (1970)
Rex Harrison
Rex Harrison seemed more at home in a drawing room than a frontier town, making his appearance in Raoul Walsh's The King and Four Queens (1956) especially unusual. Harrison played smooth-talking adventurer Dan Kehoe opposite Western veteran Clark Gable, with Eleanor Parker, Jo Van Fleet, Jean Willes, and Barbara Nichols completing the female-dominated household he infiltrates.
John Springer Collection, Getty Images
Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder brought his nervous comic energy to the frontier in Robert Aldrich's The Frisco Kid (1979). He played Avram Belinski, a Polish rabbi trying to reach San Francisco, who falls in with Harrison Ford's bank robber Tommy Lillard. The unlikely Wilder-Ford partnership turned the film into a warm buddy comedy wrapped inside a Western adventure.
Screenshot from The Frisco Kid, Warner Bros. Discovery (1979)
James Dean
James Dean's third and final movie was also his closest encounter with the Western. George Stevens's sprawling Giant (1956) cast him as ranch hand Jett Rink opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. Dean's transformation from impoverished outsider into embittered oil tycoon became one of the defining performances of his painfully short career.
Screenshot from Giant, Warner Bros. Discovery (1956)
Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon traded sophisticated comedy for cattle drives in his only Western, Delmer Daves's Cowboy (1958). He played idealistic hotel clerk Frank Harris, who talks trail boss Tom Reece, played by Glenn Ford, into taking him west. Brian Donlevy and Dick York co-starred as Lemmon's tenderfoot discovered cowboy life wasn't particularly romantic.
Screenshot from Cowboy, Sony Pictures Entertainment (1958)
Patrick Swayze
Patrick Swayze looked so natural as legendary cowboy Pecos Bill that it's surprising Tall Tale (1995) was his only traditional Western. Directed by Jeremiah S Chechik, the Disney adventure teamed Swayze with Nick Stahl, Oliver Platt, Roger Aaron Brown, and Scott Glenn in an affectionate fantasy built around larger-than-life American folklore.
Screenshot from Tall Tale, The Walt Disney Company (1995)
Jodie Foster
Richard Donner's Maverick (1994) gave Jodie Foster an opportunity to have considerably more fun than many of her dramatic roles allowed. Opposite Mel Gibson's gambler Bret Maverick and James Garner's Marshal Zane Cooper, Foster played charming con artist Annabelle Bransford, matching both men trick for trick in the lavish comic Western.
Screenshot from Maverick, Warner Bros. Discovery (1994)
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger's only traditional Western was about as strange as you'd expect. In Hal Needham's The Villain (1979), also released as Cactus Jack, he played the impossibly wholesome Handsome Stranger opposite Kirk Douglas's disaster-prone outlaw. Ann-Margret co-starred in a live-action Western constructed largely around Wile E. Coyote-style physical comedy.
Screenshot from The Villain, Sony Pictures Entertainment (1979)
Steve Martin
Steve Martin helped write Three Amigos! (1986) with Lorne Michaels and Randy Newman, then starred as Lucky Day alongside Chevy Chase and Martin Short. John Landis directed the story of three silent-film stars mistaken for genuine gunfighters in Mexico. The movie lovingly parodied Western conventions while still functioning surprisingly well as one itself.
Screenshot from Three Amigos!, Warner Bros. Discovery (1986)
John Candy
John Candy's only traditional Western became tragically significant. In Peter Markle's Wagons East! (1994), Candy played drunken wagon master James Harlow, hired by fed-up settlers who want to abandon the West and return east. Richard Lewis, John C McGinley, Ellen Greene, and Ed Lauter co-starred. Candy died during production at only 43.
Screenshot from Wagons East!, TriStar Pictures (1994)
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep's only traditional Western role is small but memorable. Tommy Lee Jones directed her in The Homesman (2014), casting Streep as Altha Carter, the minister's wife awaiting a group of troubled frontier women in Iowa. Hilary Swank, Jones, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, and Hailee Steinfeld populated the film's bleak frontier world.
Screenshot from The Homesman, Saban Films (2014)
Will Smith
Barry Sonnenfeld's Wild Wild West (1999) may be infamous, but Will Smith threw himself into playing gunslinger and government agent James West. Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek, and Ted Levine joined him in a deliberately outrageous mixture of Western, comedy, science fiction, and steampunk spectacle. Smith's charismatic West deserved a better movie around him.
Screenshot from Wild Wild West, Warner Bros. Discovery (1999)
Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman got a rare opportunity to play a straightforward romantic leading man in Simon Wincer's Australian Western Quigley Down Under (1990). As ruthless rancher Elliott Marston, however, Rickman was firmly back in villainous territory opposite Tom Selleck's American sharpshooter Matthew Quigley and Laura San Giacomo's troubled Cora. Rickman made Marston deliciously detestable.
Screenshot from Quigley Down Under, Amazon MGM Studios (1990)
Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon entered the traditional Western late in his extraordinary career with Kevin Costner's Open Range (2003). Gambon played ruthless rancher Denton Baxter, whose attempts to dominate an isolated Montana town put him against free-grazers Charley Waite and Boss Spearman, played by Costner and Robert Duvall. Annette Bening and Diego Luna co-starred.
Screenshot from Open Range, The Walt Disney Company (2003)
Lucy Liu
Just before Charlie's Angels (2000) accelerated her movie career, Lucy Liu appeared in Tom Dey's Shanghai Noon (2000). She played Princess Pei-Pei, whose kidnapping sends Jackie Chan's Chon Wang and Owen Wilson's Roy O'Bannon across the American West. Liu brought enough presence to the role that it's surprising she never returned to the genre.
Screenshot from Shanghai Noon, The Walt Disney Company (2000)
Sharon Stone
Sam Raimi gave Sharon Stone the Western role she'd seemingly been waiting for in The Quick and the Dead (1995). As the mysterious gunfighter known simply as the Lady, Stone entered a deadly quick-draw tournament alongside Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and a young Leonardo DiCaprio. Her cool, haunted gunslinger remains one of the movie's defining performances.
Screenshot from The Quick and the Dead, Sony Pictures Entertainment (1995)
Charlize Theron
The movie received a rough reception, but Charlize Theron emerged as one of its brightest spots. In Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), she played Anna, the capable wife of Liam Neeson's outlaw Clinch Leatherwood. MacFarlane, Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, and Neil Patrick Harris co-starred.
Screenshot from A Million Ways to Die in the West, NBCUniversal (2014)
Tom Hanks
It took Tom Hanks four decades of screen acting to finally saddle up for a traditional Western. Paul Greengrass's News of the World (2020) cast him as Confederate veteran Jefferson Kyle Kidd, who escorts a young girl across Reconstruction-era Texas. German actress Helena Zengel proved a formidable young co-star in the intimate frontier drama.
Screenshot from News of the World, NBCUniversal (2020)
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons made a wonderfully polished Western villain in Ed Harris's Appaloosa (2008). As rancher Randall Bragg, Irons brought urbane menace to a frontier town protected by lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, played by Harris and Viggo Mortensen. Renée Zellweger completed the principal cast in Robert B Parker's tale of loyalty and corruption.
Screenshot from Appaloosa, Warner Bros. Discovery (2008)
They Should Have Returned
The fun of these performances is wondering what might have happened if their stars had stayed in the saddle. Some appeared in masterpieces, others elevated imperfect movies, and a few approached the Western from comedy or fantasy. Either way, they demonstrated that you don't need a shelf full of cowboy pictures to leave your mark on the genre.
Screenshot from Three Amigos!, Warner Bros. Discovery (1986)
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