Man with No Name
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The Man with No Name is a stock character in western films, but the term usually applies specifically to the character(s) played by American actor Clint Eastwood in the "spaghetti westerns" films of Sergio Leone.
In three of Leone's most popular films, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the character is obviously the same man, with the same mannerisms and wearing the same poncho and hat. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly plays as a prequel to the earlier two--Eastwood's character gradually acquires the clothing that he wears throughout the others.
Occasionally, the character actually has a name. For instance, in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, he is credited in the script as "Joe," although he is never referred to in the film by that name. The other characters in the film call him "Blondie" (Blondie is Mexican slang for a white person). In the first film, he is addressed three times as "Joe," and in the second, the characters call him "Manco" (this may be because "manco" is Mexican slang for someone who doesn't use his or her left hand; the character does not use his left hand until the final showdown.)
"The Man with No Name," as personified by Eastwood, embodies the archetypical characteristics of the American movie cowboy – toughness, self-reliance, and skill with a gun – but departed from the original archetype in his moral ambiguity. Unlike the traditional cowboy persona, exemplified by actors John Wayne, Alan Ladd, and Randolph Scott, The Man with No Name will fight dirty and shoot first, if required by his own self-defined sense of justice.
He is generally portrayed as an outsider, or even an outlaw. He is characteristically soft-spoken and speaks only when necessary, with as few words as possible.
Other films featuring a Man with No Name character include Leone's later Once Upon a Time in the West featuring Charles Bronson in a role very similar to Eastwood's, and Eastwood's own films, High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider.
The Man with No Name was the inspiration for Roland of Gilead, the protagonist of Stephen King's epic seven-volume Dark Tower series. The Man With No Name is also the inspiration for the main charcter in Red Dead Revolver.
The Man with No Name is also a pseudonym for British trance DJ Martin Freeland.