Marcia Gay Harden - Harden Embarrassed By Eastwood Meeting

Actress MARCIA GAY HARDEN was left red-faced after meeting her idol CLINT EASTWOOD - because she acted like a star-struck teenager.

The Oscar-winner was delighted to land a role alongside the Dirty Harry star on his 2000 film Space Cowboys.

But she spent the whole shoot cringing following her embarrassing first meeting with Eastwood.

Harden, 50, tells the New York Daily News, "On my first day (on the set of Space Cowboys), he came into the hair and make-up trailer, and the 13-year-old girl in me took over. I flung myself across the trailer and hugged him - and I hugged him hard. I said 'Hi, I'm Marcia Gay Harden!' and he said, 'I know, I cast you.' I had let out a high-pitched laugh so hard, I bit a hole in my tongue just to shut myself up.

"I had heard that Clint only likes to do one or two takes... but that day, he did about 10 with me saying, 'It's going to be a wonderful space mission' with a lisp - because of the hole I had bitten in my tongue."