Clint Eastwood voted the coolest actor of all time

I had to laugh at this rather tongue-in-cheek story which appeared last week in the LAD BIBLE. It’s not the first time of course, and it’s never strange to see the usual suspects spoken in the same breath, such as McQueen, Newman and Dean. These polls have been appearing as far back as I can remember. However, times have certainly changed, especially when it comes to the competition…

"Do you feel lucky, well, do you?"

Yes, Clint Eastwood has delivered a host of easily memorable, quotable lines in his time, and it's for that reason that the 87-year-old has been voted the coolest actor of all time.

Ranker has been doing what Ranker does best, which is ranking things, and the website has compiled a list of how cool viewers' think various actors from throughout the ages are.

The Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven star, who also directed both films, came out on top, beating Tom Hanks in second place. Tom Hanks seems a strange choice as the world's second coolest actor. It's not that he isn't cool (I've seen that Carly Rae Jepsen video), just that he's made a career out of being Johnny Everyman, in some cases Johnny Everyman who is decidedly uncool. In Forest Gump he could barely talk, yet implausibly managed to reveal the Watergate Scandal.

Hanks beat Bullitt star Steve McQueen, while the rest of the list was comprised of Paul Newman, James Dean, Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro.

Amazingly, Samuel L. Jackson, who ha more or less only played cool characters in the last 20 years, was only ranked 21, a place above Robert Downey Jr. Meanwhile, way down at 100 was Alec Guinness, better known as Obi Wan Kenobi, three places behind Patrick Swayze.

Yup, the coolest Jedi of all time was three places behind the guy from Dirty Dancing. Eastwood certainly deserves his standing as the world's most cooler-than-being-cool actor. Aside from his veritable acting credits, the actor once survived a plane crash on a Douglas AD bomber, when the plane ran out of fuel and plummeted into the ocean. Eastwood and the pilot managed to use a life raft and swim two miles to safety.

He has starred in or directed (or both) films such as Gran Torino, Flags Of Our Fathers, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Where Eagles Dare, as well as being Oscar-nominated on 12 occasions (winning four awards).

However, his coolest and greatest achievement is undeniably his appearance in 1969's Paint Your Wagon alongside fellow Hollywood tough guy Lee Marvin.

Set in a mining camp in Gold Rush-era California, it saw Eastwood blend his macho persona with some song and dance action, and put to bed once and for all the notion that cigar-chomping, tough-as-nails cowboys couldn't also belt out a thunderously good song and dance number when and wherever they felt like it.

Hmmm, ‘Paint your Wagon’ – ‘his coolest and greatest achievement’? – Hey, I love Paint your wagon, but come on, who writes this stuff? And not a single mention of Dirty Harry?