Facts About 14 Quintessential Macho Actors That Prove They're Tougher Than Leather

While serving in the military, Clint Eastwood boarded a US Navy airplane from Fort Ord in California to Seattle, WA, to visit his family. He was a lifeguard at Fort Ord and was the lone passenger aboard the aircraft. By some accounts, he was actually in the cargo hold because the plane wasn't equipped to take on passengers.

Regardless, the craft began experiencing technical problems. Soon after, the engine failed, sending Eastwood, the pilot, and the plane into the water below. Neither the pilot, identified only as “Anderson,” nor Eastwood were hurt, so they began swimming toward the shoreline. Once it got dark, Eastwood lost sight of Anderson. The future actor and director recalled:

I didn’t know whether he was alive or where the hell he was. And I wasn’t about to start yelling, because it wastes a lot of energy. I went through jellyfish schools and all kinds of things, and they became fluorescent at night. It was like some science-fiction deal. By this time, you know, your mind is - talking about hallucinating… I kind of worked my way into that - just partly luck, because everywhere the water was very rough. And I got into this spot and had a really rough time climbing out. 

Both men made it safely to shore. Again, from Eastwood:

Finally we made it in. He thought I had drowned and I thought he had drowned because we lost touch with each other because of the waves. I started hiking and ended in a relay station up on a cliff near Bolinas, California.

The men were reunited at a US Coast Guard station nearby. 

Years later, Eastwood said the experienced influenced him during the filming of Sully:

I definitely did think about it when I was shooting this… I’m probably the only director who’s actually been in a water landing.

On a night when Burt Reynolds was dining with Dinah Shore at Nicky Blair's restaurant in Los Angeles, Frank Sinatra enjoyed a meal close by. After the singer seemed to indicate he wanted Reynolds and Shore to come over to talk to him, Reynolds balked and decided to wait until he was done eating. Sinatra was not pleased, but waited nonetheless.

When Reynolds and Sinatra did finally come face-to-face, the crooner invited the actor to a poker game in the kitchen of the restaurant. Reynolds took Sinatra up on the offer and, as they - plus several other associates of Sinatra's - got ready to play five-card stud, a busboy named Hector dropped a tray of glasses. 

When Nicky, the restaurant owner, yelled at Hector, Sinatra stepped in and asked, “How much do those glasses cost?” Nicky replied “a few bucks apiece.” At that point, Sinatra had one of his handlers pull out cash to buy $3,000 worth of glasses.

When they arrived, Sinatra told Hector to break them, before looking at Nicky to say, “If I ever come in and don't see Hector, I'll never come back again. Understand?” Nicky agreed and Reynolds got up to leave. When Sinatra asked him “Where the hell are you going?” Reynolds simply looked at him and said, “Home… I got my Sinatra story.”

Sam Elliott’s father, Henry, had a long-lasting positive influence on his son, especially when it came to Henry’s job with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. As Elliott told NPR in 2017:

I was outdoors a lot in my lifetime. And I was with my dad… and his peers, who were all men's men and outdoorsmen. All had incredible work ethics and were all good men. And they were really the ones I think that I learned what kind of a man I wanted to be when I grew up.

Sam wanted to be like his father, but also had a passion for acting. When his father passed, Sam was just 18. According to the actor, Henry died thinking his son was a “total idiot… he said 'you have a snowball's chance in hell of having a f*cking career in that town [Hollywood].'"

Henry never understood why his son wanted to be an actor, and didn't approve of the career choice. For his part, Sam said, “I didn't get to know him near as well as I would love to have,” and always just wanted to make his father proud.

Born in Ehrenfeld, PA, Charles Buchinsky was the son of Lithuanian immigrants. He later took the stage surname Bronson, but only after having lived his childhood surrounded by poverty. 

According to the actor, his family was so poor that there weren't enough clothes to go around. As a result, the 11th out of 15 children wore hand-me-downs. As he recalled:

Because the kids just older than me in the family were girls, sometimes I had to wear my sisters' hand-me-downs. I remember going to school in a dress. And my socks, when I got home sometimes I'd have to take them off and give them to my brother to wear into the mines.

That wasn't the only unique experience the future actor had when he was a kid:

There was this girl, 6 years old. I gave her some strawberry pop. I gave her the pop because I didn't want it; I had taken up chewing tobacco and I liked that better. I didn't start smoking until I was nine.

Among the many things Sylvester Stallone is known for is his distinct speech pattern. The actor, director, and producer grew up with a facial difference and slurred speech pattern due to how and where he was born. 

Because his mother Jackie was too poor to give birth in a hospital, she delivered her son at a charity ward in New York City. Complications led to nerve damage which, in turn, left the young Stallone paralyzed on the left side of his face. He later said that he felt like “Mr. Potato Head with all the parts in the wrong place.”

When Stallone tried to enter the world of acting, he found that “nobody, nobody… would give me a break.” As a result, he wrote a project for himself - Rocky.

After meeting Bob Barker as a contestant on Truth or Consequences, Chuck Norris and the game show host became friends. Barker later trained with Norris and, over the course of eight years, learned what he called “the Chuck Norris version of the Tang Soo Do karate style.”

This training proved beneficial when Barker needed to hone his fighting moves for Happy Gilmore, but there was pain along the way. On one occasion, Norris unintentionally broke two of Barker's ribs. As the longtime The Price Is Right host recalled:

Chuck was over at my house, and we were sparring. He kicked me in the side. It hurt, and it continued to hurt. 

But it didn't end there. Again, from Barker:

A few days later his brother, Aaron, came over. We were sparring, and he punched me in the other side with his fist. That hurt, too, and continued to hurt. 

When Barker finally visited his doctor about the pain, X-rays revealed he had two cracked ribs on each side of his torso.