Eastwood had already cast friends Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman in the Western and he thought movie great Harris would be perfect for the film, so he tracked him down to his vacation retreat in the Bahamas.

Clint tells The Hollywood Reporter, "I asked him to play British Bob... and he says, 'Who is this calling?' And I says, 'Richard, it’s Eastwood...' He says, 'Is this Al? Is this Joe...? You guys are pulling a damn (prank)'. The reason he said that is because he was downstairs in his basement watching High Plains Drifter."

And Harris didn't need much convincing to sign on: "I said, 'Would you like to come do this and I'll send a script out to you?' He said, 'Oh, you don’t need (to send) a script... I'll be there'."

Eastwood had a similar odd experience years later when Steven Spielberg exited American Sniper and he was offered the film - as he was reading Chris Kyle's book.

He explains, "All of a sudden the studio calls me up and said, 'Would you direct American Sniper?' I go, 'What are you talking about?' And they said... 'We'd all love it for you to come over there'. And so I said, 'Well let me finish the next 30 pages of this book here and then I'll give you a call'. So I read the rest of it and then I read the screenplay they had and had a few comments on that, but I said, 'Yeah, by and large, I'll do it, so count me in'."