Bill Murray gets honest about one regret in career

Bill Murray has a celebrated career but said there is one regret he still has.

He appeared on The Howard Stern Show, recalling rejecting the chance to work with Clint Eastwood.

“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 shared.

The 74-year-old continued, “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 [the military comedy] Stripes and he had this great idea for an enormous Navy thing.”

“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,'" Bill added.

“But it’s one of the few regrets I have is that I didn’t do it,” the actor admitted, referring to the film in question, Heartbreak Ridge, in 1986. 

“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 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," the veteran actor added.

In the discussion, Bill also said he apologized to Clint after passing on the role.

“When I see him, I’m like: ‘I’m sorry, I wish I’d done that Clint, I’m really sorry,’” he concluded. “[But] he’s certainly well over it. He’s a very resilient fella.”