In the time Maggie admitted to wed Eastwood, he was a brand-new father. Before fulfilling Maggie, Eastwood, based on biographerPatrick McGilligan, was in a serious relationship with a specific girl in Seattle. That girl would become pregnant with his kid. But then came Maggie and Eastwood needed to proceed to another one. Clint Eastwood has had numerous casual and long-term relationships of varying length and intensity since he was 14 years old. He was first married to Margaret 'Maggie' Johnson in 1953, but while dating Johnson, he had another relationship that allegedly resulted in.
- What Happened To Maggie Eastwood Now
- Maggie Eastwood Today
- What Happened To Maggie Eastwood Movie
Eastwood in 2011 |
Mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea |
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In office 1986–1988 |
Preceded by | Charlotte Townsend[1] |
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Succeeded by | Jean Grace[2] |
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Personal details |
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Born | May 31, 1930 (age 89) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
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Political party | Republican (1952-present) Libertarian (2009-present) |
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Other political affiliations | Independent (Mayoralty,1986-1988) |
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Spouse(s) | Maggie Johnson (m. 1953; div. 1984)
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Domestic partner | Sondra Locke (c. 1975; sep. 1989) Frances Fisher (c. 1990; sep. 1995) |
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Children | 8 [n 1][n 2] including |
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Occupation | - Actor
- director
- producer
- composer
- businessman
- politician
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Net worth | US$375million[18][19] |
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Military career |
Allegiance | United States of America |
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Service/branch | United States Army |
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Unit | Fort Ord |
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Recorded December 2009 from the BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row (22 seconds) |
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This article is part of a series about Clint Eastwood |
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Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, filmmaker, musician, and politician. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, he rose to international fame with his role as the Man with No Name in Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the 1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.[20][21]
For his work in the Western film Unforgiven (1992) and the sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. Eastwood's greatest commercial successes have been the adventure comedy Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and its sequel, the action comedy Any Which Way You Can (1980), after adjustment for inflation.[22] Other popular films include the Western Hang 'Em High (1968), the psychological thriller Play Misty for Me (1971), the crime film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), the Western The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the action film Firefox (1982), the suspense thriller Tightrope (1984), the Western Pale Rider (1985), the war films Where Eagles Dare (1968), Kelly's Heroes (1970), and Heartbreak Ridge (1986), the action thriller In the Line of Fire (1993), the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and the drama Gran Torino (2008).
In addition to directing many of his own star vehicles, Eastwood has also directed films in which he did not appear, such as the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations, the drama Changeling (2008), and the South African biographical political sports drama Invictus (2009). The war drama biopic American Sniper (2014) set box-office records for the largest January release ever and was also the largest opening ever for an Eastwood film.
Eastwood received considerable critical praise in France for several films, including some that were not well received in the United States. Eastwood has been awarded two of France's highest honors: in 1994, he became a recipient of the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2007, he was awarded the Legion of Honour medal. In 2000, Eastwood was awarded the Italian Venice Film FestivalGolden Lion for lifetime achievement. Since 1967, Eastwood's Malpaso Productions has produced all but four of his American films. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, a non-partisan office.
Early life[edit]
Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California, the son of Clinton Eastwood (1906–1970) and Ruth (Runner) Wood (1909–2006). Ruth later took the surname of her second husband, John Belden Wood (1913–2004), whom she married after the death of Clinton Sr.[23] Eastwood was nicknamed 'Samson' by the hospital nurses because he weighed 11 pounds 6 ounces (5.2 kg) at birth.[24][25] He has a younger sister named Jeanne Bernhardt (born 1934),[26] and is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry.[27] He is descended from Mayflower passenger William Bradford, and through this line is the 12th generation of his family born in North America.[28][29][30] During the 1930s, his family moved often as his father worked at jobs along the West Coast.[31][32] Contrary to what Eastwood has indicated in media interviews, they did not move between 1940 and 1949.[33][34] Settling in Piedmont, California, the Eastwoods lived in an affluent area of the town, had a swimming pool, belonged to a country club, and each parent drove their own car.[35]
Eastwood attended Piedmont Middle School,[36] where he was held back due to poor academic scores, and records indicated he also had to attend summer school.[33] From January 1945 until at least January 1946, he attended Piedmont High School, but was asked to leave for writing an obscene suggestion to a school official on the athletic field scoreboard, and for burying someone in effigy on the school lawn, on top of other school infractions.[37] He transferred to Oakland Technical High School and was scheduled in January 1949 to graduate midyear, although it is not clear if he did.[34] 'Clint graduated from the airplane shop. I think that was his major,' joked classmate Don Kincade.[34] Another high school friend, Don Loomis, echoed 'I don't think he was spending that much time at school because he was having a pretty good time elsewhere.'[34] 'I think what happened is he just went off and started having a good time. I just don't think he finished high school,' explained Fritz Manes,[34] a boyhood friend two years younger than Eastwood, who remained associated with him until their falling out in the mid-1980s. Biographer Patrick McGilligan notes that high school graduation records are a matter of strict legal confidentiality.[34]
Eastwood held a number of jobs, including as a lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy.[38] Eastwood tried to enroll at Seattle University in 1951, but was drafted instead.[39]
Military service[edit]
Eastwood was drafted in 1951 by the United States Army during the Korean War[40] and assigned to Fort Ord, California. He was given duty as a lifeguard and projectionist.[41] To supplement his $67 a month salary, he got a part-time job on the loading dock at the Spreckels Sugar Refining Company.[42] On 30 September 1951, Eastwood was returning from a tryst with a girlfriend in Seattle[43] as a passenger in the radar operator's compartment of a Douglas AD-1Q dive bomber. During the flight, the rear door would not stay closed, the oxygen system proved inoperable, and the navigation systems and intercom failed. The plane ran out of fuel and the pilot ditched the aircraft in the sea several miles off Point Reyes.[n 3][44][45][n 4]
Both Eastwood and the pilot were uninjured. Eastwood swam to shore using a life raft.[46] Eastwood made his way to a bright light that turned out to be the KPHRCA receiving station.[44] The station operator initially did not understand Eastwood's description of the plane crash, but finally called the Coast Guard. Eastwood was reunited with the pilot who had drifted further north. Eastwood was transported to the San Francisco Presidio and told that he would likely have to testify in an inquiry, which did not take place. Eastwood later wrote, 'I thought I might die. But then I thought, other people have made it through these things before. I kept my eyes on the lights on shore and kept swimming.'[47][44] A search was begun in 2018 to locate the submerged wreck of the plane.[48][49] During his military service Eastwood became friends with future successful TV actors Richard Long, Martin Milner and David Janssen.[50]
Career[edit]
Eastwood was discharged from the Army in the spring of 1952. He moved to Seattle where he worked as a lifeguard. He didn't make much money and had few friends, so he moved to Los Angeles.[51] He managed an apartment house in Beverly Hills by day and worked at a Signal Oil gas station at night.[52][53] In June 1953, Eastwood met 22-year-old secretary Margaret Neville Johnson on a blind date. They married shortly before Christmas 1953 in South Pasadena with friend Harry Pendleton as his best man, and honeymooned in Carmel, near where Eastwood had served at Ft. Ord.[52][54] Eastwood briefly attended Los Angeles City College and held several jobs digging foundations for residential swimming pools,[53] which he continued between his early films.[55]
1950s: Early career struggles[edit]
According to the CBS press release for Rawhide, the Universal (known then as Universal-International) film company was shooting in Fort Ord when an enterprising assistant spotted Eastwood and invited him to meet the director.[56] According to Eastwood's official biography, the key figure was a man named Chuck Hill, who was stationed in Fort Ord and had contacts in Hollywood.[56] While in Los Angeles, Hill became reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to sneak Eastwood into a Universal studio, where he introduced him to cameraman Irving Glassberg.[56] Glassberg arranged for an audition under Arthur Lubin, who, although very impressed with Eastwood's appearance and stature, then 6'4' (193 cm), disapproved initially of his acting skills, remarking, 'He was quite amateurish. He didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything'.[57] Lubin suggested that he attend drama classes and arranged for Eastwood's initial contract in April 1954, at $100 per week.[57] After signing, Eastwood was initially criticized for his stiff manner and delivering his lines through his teeth, a lifelong trademark.[58]
In May 1954, Eastwood made his first real audition for Six Bridges to Cross but was rejected by Joseph Pevney.[59] After many unsuccessful auditions, he was eventually given a minor role by director Jack Arnold in Revenge of the Creature (1955), a sequel to the recently released Creature from the Black Lagoon.[60] In September 1954, Eastwood worked for three weeks on Arthur Lubin's Lady Godiva of Coventry, won a role in February 1955, playing 'Jonesy', a sailor in Francis in the Navy and appeared uncredited in another Jack Arnold film, Tarantula, where he played a squadron pilot.[61][62] In May 1955, Eastwood put four hours' work into the film Never Say Goodbye and had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand (his first western film) in August 1955 with Law Man, also known as Star in the Dust.[63] Universal presented him with his first television role on July 2, 1955, on NBC's Allen in Movieland, which starred comedian Steve Allen, actor Tony Curtis and swing musician Benny Goodman.[64] Although he continued to develop as an actor, Universal terminated his contract on October 23, 1955.[65]
Eastwood played 'Tom' in (1956) Star in the Dust with Richard Boone. Eastwood joined the Marsh Agency, and although Lubin landed him his biggest role to date in The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) and later hired him for Escapade in Japan, without a formal contract Eastwood was struggling.[66] Upon the advice of Irving Leonard, his financial advisor, he changed talent agencies to the Kumin-Olenick Agency in 1956 and Mitchell Gertz in 1957. He landed several small roles in 1956 as a temperamental army officer for a segment of ABC's Reader's Digest series, and as a motorcycle gang member on a Highway Patrol episode.[66] In 1957, Eastwood played a cadet in West Point series and a suicidal gold prospector on Death Valley Days.[67]
In 1958, he played a Navy lieutenant in a segment of Navy Log and in early 1959 made a notable guest appearance as Red Hardigan on Maverick opposite James Garner as a cowardly villain intent on marrying a rich girl for money.[67] Eastwood had a small part as an aviator in Lafayette Escadrille and played a major role as an ex-renegade of the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass, a film which Eastwood viewed disastrously and professes to be the lowest point of his career.[68][69][70]
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In 1958, Eastwood was cast as Rowdy Yates for the CBS hour-long western series Rawhide, the breakthrough in his career he had long been searching for.[71][72] However, Eastwood was not especially happy with his character; Eastwood was almost 30, and Rowdy was too young and too cloddish for Eastwood to feel comfortable with the part.[73] Filming began in Arizona in the summer of 1958.[74] It took just three weeks for Rawhide to reach the top 20 in TV ratings and although it never won an Emmy, it was a major success for several years, and reached its peak at number six in the ratings between October 1960 and April 1961.[75] The Rawhide years (1959–65) were some of the most grueling of Eastwood's career, often filming six days a week for an average of twelve hours a day, yet he still received criticism by some directors for not working hard enough.[75][76] By late 1963, Rawhide was beginning to decline in the ratings and lacked freshness in the script; it was canceled in the middle of the 1965–66 television season.[77] Eastwood made his first attempt at directing when he filmed several trailers for the show, although he was unable to convince producers to let him direct an episode.[78] In the show's first season Eastwood earned $750 an episode. At the time of Rawhide's cancellation, he received $119,000 an episode as severance pay.[79]
1960s[edit]
Publicity photo for Rawhide, 1961
In late 1963, Eastwood's co-star on Rawhide, Eric Fleming, rejected an offer to star in an Italian-made western called A Fistful of Dollars, which was directed in a remote region of Spain by the then relatively unknown Sergio Leone.[80]Richard Harrison suggested Eastwood to Leone because Harrison knew Eastwood could play a cowboy convincingly. Eastwood thought the film would be an opportunity to escape from his Rawhide image. Eastwood signed a contract for $15,000 in wages for eleven weeks' work, with a bonus of a Mercedes automobile upon completion.[81][82] Eastwood later spoke of the transition from a television western to A Fistful of Dollars: 'In Rawhide I did get awfully tired of playing the conventional white hat. The hero who kisses old ladies and dogs and was kind to everybody. I decided it was time to be an anti-hero.'[83] Eastwood was instrumental in creating the Man with No Name character's distinctive visual style and, although a non-smoker, Leone insisted Eastwood smoke cigars as an essential ingredient of the 'mask' he was attempting to create for the loner character.[84]
A Fistful of Dollars proved a landmark in the development of spaghetti Westerns, with Leone depicting a more lawless and desolate world than traditional westerns, and challenging American stereotypes of a western hero with a morally ambiguous antihero. The film's success made Eastwood a major star in Italy[85] and he was re-hired to star in For a Few Dollars More (1965), the second of the trilogy. Through the efforts of screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni, the rights to For a Few Dollars More and the final film of the trilogy (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) were sold to United Artists for about $900,000.[86]
In January 1966, Eastwood met producer Dino De Laurentiis in New York City and agreed to star in a non-Western five-part anthology production named Le Streghe ('The Witches') opposite De Laurentiis' wife, actress Silvana Mangano.[87] Eastwood's nineteen-minute installment took only a few days to shoot, but his performance did not please the critics, one writing that 'no other performance of his is quite so 'un-Clintlike'.'[88] Two months later Eastwood began work on the third Dollars film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, again playing the mysterious Man with No Name. Lee Van Cleef returned as a ruthless fortune seeker, with Eli Wallach portraying the cunning Mexican bandit Tuco Ramirez. The storyline involved the search for a cache of Confederate gold buried in a cemetery. During the filming of a scene in which a bridge was blown up, Eastwood urged Wallach to retreat to a hilltop. 'I know about these things,' he said. 'Stay as far away from special effects and explosives as you can.'[89] Minutes later confusion among the crew over the word 'Vaya!' resulted in a premature explosion that could have killed Wallach.[89]
I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement. It was just the kind of character I had envisioned for a long time, keep to the mystery and allude to what happened in the past. It came about after the frustration of doing Rawhide for so long. I felt the less he said, the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience.
— Eastwood, on playing the Man with No Name character[90]
As the Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
The Dollars trilogy was not released in the United States until 1967, when A Fistful of Dollars opened on January 18, followed by For a Few Dollars More on May 10, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on December 29.[91] All the films were commercially successful, particularly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which eventually earned $8 million in rental earnings and turned Eastwood into a major film star.[91] All three films received bad reviews, and marked the beginning of a battle for Eastwood to win American film critics' respect.[92]Judith Crist described A Fistful of Dollars as 'cheapjack,'[93] while Newsweek considered For a Few Dollars More as 'excruciatingly dopey.'[92]Renata Adler of The New York Times said The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was '..the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre.'[94]Time magazine drew attention to the film's wooden acting, especially on the part of Eastwood, though a few critics such as Vincent Canby and Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised Eastwood's coolness in playing the tall, lone stranger.[95] Leone's cinematography was widely acclaimed, even by critics who disparaged the acting in the film.[92]
Stardom brought more roles for Eastwood. He signed to star in the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High (1968), featured alongside Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Ed Begley, Alan Hale, Ben Johnson, Bruce Dern, and James MacArthur,[96] playing a man who takes up a Marshal's badge and seeks revenge as a lawman after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead.[97] The film earned Eastwood a fee of $400,000 and 25 percent of its net box-office takings.[96] Using money earned from the Dollars trilogy, accountant and Eastwood advisor Irving Leonard helped establish Eastwood's own production company, Malpaso Productions, named after Malpaso Creek on Eastwood's property in Monterey County, California. As recently as a month prior to the film's release, 38-year-old Eastwood was still a relative unknown; in July 1968, syndicated columnist Dorothy Manners noted 'The proverbial man in the street is still asking, 'Who's Clint Eastwood?'[98] Leonard arranged for Hang 'Em High to be a joint production with United Artists;[99] when it opened in August 1968, it had the largest opening weekend in United Artists' history. Hang 'Em High was widely praised by critics, including Archer Winsten of the New York Post, who described it as, 'a western of quality, courage, danger and excitement.'[30]
Before the release of Hang 'Em High, Eastwood had already begun working on Coogan's Bluff, about an Arizona deputy sheriff tracking a wanted psychopathic criminal (Don Stroud) through the streets of New York City. He was reunited with Universal Studios for it after receiving an offer of $1 million – more than double his previous salary.[100]Jennings Lang arranged for Eastwood to meet Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who later became Eastwood's close friend, forming a partnership that would last more than ten years and produce five films.[101] Shooting began in November 1967, before the script had been finalized.[102] The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence.[103][104]Coogan's Bluff also became the first collaboration with Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin, who would later compose the jazzy score to several Eastwood films in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Dirty Harry films.[citation needed]
Eastwood was paid $750,000 in 1968 for the war epic Where Eagles Dare,[105] about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the alpine mountains. Richard Burton played the squad's commander, with Eastwood as his right-hand man. Eastwood was also cast as Two-Face in the Batman television show, but the series was canceled before filming began.[106]
Eastwood then branched out to star in the only musical of his career, Paint Your Wagon (1969). Eastwood and Lee Marvin play gold miners who buy a Mormon settler's less favored wife (Jean Seberg) at an auction. Bad weather and delays plagued the production, and the film's budget eventually exceeded $20 million, which was extremely expensive for the time.[107] The film was not a critical or commercial success, although it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.[108]
1970s[edit]
In 1970, Eastwood starred with Shirley MacLaine in the western Two Mules for Sister Sara, directed by Don Siegel. The film follows an American mercenary, who gets mixed up with a prostitute disguised as a nun, and ends up helping a group of Juarista rebels during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico.[109][110] Eastwood once again played a mysterious stranger – unshaven, wearing a serape-like vest, and smoking a cigar.[111] Although it received moderate reviews,[112][113][114] the film is listed in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.[115] Later the same year, Eastwood starred as one of a group of Americans who steal a fortune in gold from the Nazis, in the World War II film Kelly's Heroes, with Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas. Kelly's Heroes was the last film Eastwood appeared in that was not produced by his own Malpaso Productions.[116] Filming commenced in July 1969 on location in Yugoslavia and in London.[117] The film received mostly a positive reception and its anti-war sentiments were recognized.[116] In the winter of 1969–70, Eastwood and Siegel began planning his next film, The Beguiled, a tale of a wounded Union soldier, held captive by the sexually repressed matron (played by Geraldine Page) of a Southern girls' school.[118] Upon release the film received major recognition in France and is considered one of Eastwood's finest works by the French.[119] However, it grossed less than $1 million and, according to Eastwood and Lang, flopped due to poor publicity and the 'emasculated' role of Eastwood.[120]
Eastwood's career reached a turning point in 1971.[121] Before Irving Leonard died, he and Eastwood had discussed the idea of Malpaso producing Play Misty for Me, a film that was to give Eastwood the artistic control he desired, and his debut as a director.[122] The script was about a jazz disc jockey named Dave (Eastwood), who has a casual affair with Evelyn (Jessica Walter), a listener who had been calling the radio station repeatedly at night, asking him to play her favorite song – Erroll Garner's 'Misty'. When Dave ends their relationship, the unhinged Evelyn becomes a murderous stalker.[123] Filming commenced in Monterey in September 1970 and included footage of that year's Monterey Jazz Festival.[124] The film was highly acclaimed with critics, such as Jay Cocks in Time magazine, Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice, and Archer Winsten in the New York Post all praising the film, as well as Eastwood's directorial skills and performance.[125] Walter was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Actress Award (Drama), for her performance in the film.[citation needed]
I know what you're thinking – 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But, being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?
— Eastwood, in Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry (1971), written by Harry and Rita Fink, centers on a hard-edged New York City (later changed to San Francisco) police inspector named Harry Callahan who is determined to stop a psychotic killer by any means.[126]Dirty Harry has been described as being arguably Eastwood's most memorable character, and the film has been credited with inventing the 'loose-cannon cop' genre.[127][128] Author Eric Lichtenfeld argues that Eastwood's role as Dirty Harry established the 'first true archetype' of the action film genre.[129] His lines (quoted above) are regarded by firearms historians, such as Garry James and Richard Venola, as the force that catapulted the ownership of .44 Magnum revolvers to new heights in the United States; specifically the Smith & Wesson Model 29 carried by Harry Callahan.[130][131]Dirty Harry achieved huge success after its release in December 1971, earning $22 million in the United States and Canada alone.[132] It was Siegel's highest-grossing film and the start of a series of films featuring the character Harry Callahan. Although a number of critics praised Eastwood's performance as Dirty Harry, such as Jay Cocks of Time magazine who described him as '..giving his best performance so far, tense, tough, full of implicit identification with his character,'[133] the film was also widely criticized as being fascistic.[134][135][136]
Following Sean Connery's announcement that he would not play James Bond again, Eastwood was offered the role but turned it down because he believed the character should be played by an English actor.[137] He next starred in the loner Western Joe Kidd (1972), based on a character inspired by Reies Lopez Tijerina, who stormed a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico in June 1967. During filming, Eastwood suffered symptoms of a bronchial infection and several panic attacks.[138]Joe Kidd received a mixed reception, with Roger Greenspun of The New York Times writing that it was unremarkable, with foolish symbolism and sloppy editing, although he praised Eastwood's performance.[139]
In 1973, Eastwood directed his first western, High Plains Drifter, in which he also starred. The film had a moral and supernatural theme, later emulated in Pale Rider. The plot follows a mysterious stranger (Eastwood) who arrives in a brooding Western town where the people hire him to protect them against three soon-to-be-released felons. There remains confusion during the film as to whether the stranger is the brother of the deputy, whom the felons lynched and murdered, or his ghost. Holes in the plot were filled with black humor and allegory, influenced by Leone.[140] The revisionist film received a mixed reception, but was a major box office success. A number of critics thought Eastwood's directing was 'as derivative as it was expressive,' with Arthur Knight of the Saturday Review remarking that Eastwood had '..absorbed the approaches of Siegel and Leone and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society.'[141]John Wayne, who had declined a role in the film, sent a letter to Eastwood soon after the film's release in which he complained that, 'The townspeople did not represent the true spirit of the American pioneer, the spirit that made America great.'[142]
Directing William Holden in Breezy (1973)
Eastwood next turned his attention towards Breezy (1973), a film about love blossoming between a middle-aged man and a teenage girl. During casting for the film Eastwood met Sondra Locke for the first time, an actress who would play major roles in six of his films over the next ten years and would become an important figure in his life.[143]Kay Lenz got the part of Breezy because Locke, at age 29, was considered too old. The film, shot very quickly and efficiently by Eastwood and Frank Stanley, came in $1 million under budget and was finished three days ahead of schedule.[144]Breezy was not a major critical or commercial success and it was only made available on video in 1998.[23]
Once filming of Breezy had finished, Warners announced that Eastwood had agreed to reprise his role as Callahan in Magnum Force (1973), a sequel to Dirty Harry, about a group of rogue young officers (among them David Soul, Robert Urich and Tim Matheson) in the San Francisco Police Department who systematically exterminate the city's worst criminals.[145] Although the film was a major success after release, grossing $58.1 million in the United States (a record for Eastwood), it was not a critical success.[146][147]The New York Times critic Nora Sayre panned the often contradictory moral themes of the film, while the paper's Frank Rich called it 'the same old stuff'.[147]
In 1974, Eastwood teamed up with Jeff Bridges and George Kennedy in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a road movie about a veteran bank robber Thunderbolt (Eastwood) and a young con man drifter, Lightfoot (Bridges). On its release, in spring 1974, the film was praised for its offbeat comedy mixed with high suspense and tragedy but was only a modest success at the box office, earning $32.4 million.[148] Eastwood's acting was noted by critics, but was overshadowed by Bridges who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Eastwood reportedly fumed at the lack of Academy Award recognition for him and swore that he would never work for United Artists again.[148][149]
At a film shoot for The Eiger Sanction (1975)
Eastwood's next film The Eiger Sanction (1975) was based on Trevanian's critically acclaimed spy novel of the same name. Eastwood plays Jonathan Hemlock in a role originally intended for Paul Newman, an assassin turned college art professor who decides to return to his former profession for one last 'sanction' in return for a rare Pissarro painting. In the process he must climb the north face of the Eiger in Switzerland under perilous conditions. Mike Hoover taught Eastwood how to climb during several weeks of preparation at Yosemite in the summer of 1974 before filming commenced in Grindelwald, Switzerland on August 12, 1974.[150][151] Despite prior warnings about the perils of the Eiger the film crew suffered a number of accidents, including one fatality.[152][153] Despite the danger, Eastwood insisted on doing all his own climbing and stunts. Upon release in May 1975 The Eiger Sanction was marginally successful commercially, receiving $14.2 million at the box office, and was received with mixed reviews.[154] Joy Gould Boyum of the Wall Street Journal dismissed the film as 'brutal fantasy'.[154][155] Eastwood blamed Universal Studios for the film's poor promotion and turned his back on them to make an agreement with Warner Brothers, through Frank Wells, that has lasted to the present day.[156]
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), a western inspired by Asa Carter's 1972 novel of the same name,[157] has lead character Josey Wales (Eastwood) as a pro-Confederate guerrilla who refuses to surrender his arms after the American Civil War and is chased across the old southwest by a group of enforcers. The supporting cast included Locke as his love interest and Chief Dan George as an elderly Cherokee who strikes up a friendship with Wales. Director Philip Kaufman was fired by producer Bob Daley under Eastwood's command, resulting in a fine reported to be around $60,000 from the Directors Guild of America – who subsequently passed new legislation reserving the right to impose a major fine on a producer for discharging and replacing a director.[158] The film was pre-screened at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities in Idaho during a six-day conference entitled Western Movies: Myths and Images. Invited to the screening were a number of esteemed film critics, including Jay Cocks and Arthur Knight; directors such as King Vidor, William Wyler, and Howard Hawks; and a number of academics.[159] Upon release in the summer of 1976 The Outlaw Josey Wales was widely acclaimed, with many critics and viewers seeing Eastwood's role as an iconic one that related to America's ancestral past and the destiny of the nation after the American Civil War.[159]Roger Ebert compared the nature and vulnerability of Eastwood's portrayal of Josey Wales with his Man with No Name character in the Dollars westerns and praised the film's atmosphere.[160] The film would later appear in Time's 'Top 10 Films of the Year'.[161]
Eastwood was then offered the role of Benjamin L. Willard in Francis Coppola'sApocalypse Now, but declined as he did not want to spend weeks on location in the Philippines.[162][163] He also refused the part of a platoon leader in Ted Post's Vietnam War film, Go Tell the Spartans[162] and instead decided to make a third Dirty Harry film, The Enforcer. The film had Callahan partnered with a new female officer (Tyne Daly) to face a San Francisco Bay area group resembling the Symbionese Liberation Army. The film, culminating in a shootout on Alcatraz island, was considerably shorter than the previous Dirty Harry films at 95minutes,[164] but was a major commercial success grossing $100 million worldwide to become Eastwood's highest-grossing film to date.[165]
In 1977, he directed and starred in The Gauntlet opposite Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney, and Mara Corday. Eastwood portrays a down-and-out cop assigned to escort a prostitute from Las Vegas to Phoenix to testify against the mob. Although a moderate hit with the viewing public, critics had mixed feelings about the film, with many believing it was overly violent. Ebert, in contrast, gave the film three stars and called it '.. classic Clint Eastwood: fast, furious, and funny.'[166] The following year, he starred in Every Which Way But Loose in an uncharacteristic offbeat comedy role. He played Philo Beddoe, a trucker and brawler who roams the American West searching for a lost love (Locke) accompanied by his best friend, Orville Boggs (played by Geoffrey Lewis) and an orangutan called Clyde. The film proved surprisingly successful upon its release and became Eastwood's most commercially successful film up to that time. Panned by critics, it ranked high among the box office successes of his career and was the second-highest-grossing film of 1978.[167]
Eastwood starred in Escape from Alcatraz in 1979, the last of his films directed by Siegel. It was based on the true story of Frank Lee Morris who, along with John and Clarence Anglin, escaped from the notorious Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in 1962. The film was a major success; Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic praised it as 'crystalline cinema'[168] and Frank Rich of Time described it as 'cool, cinematic grace'.[169]
1980s[edit]
In 1980, Eastwood directed and played the title role in Bronco Billy alongside Locke, Scatman Crothers, and Sam Bottoms.[170] Eastwood has cited Bronco Billy as being one of the most relaxed shoots of his career and biographer Richard Schickel has argued that Bronco Billy is Eastwood's most self-referential character.[171][172] The film was a rare commercial disappointment in Eastwood's career,[173] but was liked by critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that film was '..the best and funniest Clint Eastwood movie in quite a while', and praised Eastwood's directing, intricately juxtaposing the old West and the new West.[174] Later that year, Eastwood starred in Any Which Way You Can, the sequel to Every Which Way But Loose. The film received a number of bad reviews from critics, although Maslin described it as 'funnier and even better than its predecessor'.[173] Released over the Christmas season of 1980, Any Which Way You Can was a major box office success and ranked among the top five highest-grossing films of the year.[175]
Eastwood, 1981
In 1982, Eastwood directed and starred in Honkytonk Man, based on the eponymous Clancy Carlile's depression-era novel. Eastwood portrays a struggling western singer Red Stovall who suffers from tuberculosis, but has finally been given an opportunity to make it big at the Grand Ole Opry. He is accompanied by his young nephew (played by real-life son Kyle) to Nashville, Tennessee, where he is supposed to record a song. Only Time gave the film a good review in the United States, with most reviewers criticizing its blend of muted humor and tragedy.[176] Nevertheless, the film received critical acclaim in France, where it was compared to John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath,[177] and it has since acquired the very high rating of 93percent on Rotten Tomatoes.[178] In the same year Eastwood directed, produced, and starred in the Cold War-themed Firefox. Based on a 1977 novel with the same name written by Craig Thomas, the film was shot before but released after Honkeytonk Man. Russian filming locations were not possible due to the Cold War, and the film had to be shot in Vienna and other locations in Austria to simulate many of the Eurasian story locations. With a production cost of $20 million, it was Eastwood's highest budget film to date.[179]People magazine likened Eastwood's performance to 'Luke Skywalker trapped in Dirty Harry's Soul'.[179]
Eastwood directed and starred in the fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, which was shot in the spring and summer of 1983 and is considered the darkest and most violent of the series.[180] By this time Eastwood received 60 percent of all profits from films he starred in and directed, with the rest going to the studio.[181]Sudden Impact was his final on-screen collaboration with Locke. She plays an artist who, along with her sister, was gang-raped a decade before the story takes place and seeks revenge for her sister's now-vegetative state by systematically murdering the rapists. The line 'Go ahead, make my day' (uttered by Eastwood during an early scene in a coffee shop) has been cited as one of cinema's immortal lines. It was quoted by President Ronald Reagan in a speech to Congress, and used during the 1984 presidential elections.[182][183][184] The film was the second most commercially successful of the Dirty Harry films, after The Enforcer, earning $70 million. It received very positive reviews, with many critics praising the feminist aspects of the film through its explorations of the physical and psychological consequences of rape.[185]
Tightrope (1984) had Eastwood starring opposite Geneviève Bujold in a provocative thriller, inspired by newspaper articles about an elusive Bay Area rapist. Set in New Orleans to avoid confusion with the Dirty Harry films,[186] Eastwood played a divorced cop drawn into his target's tortured psychology and fascination for sadomasochism.[187]Tightrope was a critical and commercial hit and became the fourth highest-grossing R-rated film of 1984.[188] Eastwood next starred in the crime comedy City Heat (1984) alongside Burt Reynolds, a film about a private eye and his partner who get mixed up with gangsters in the prohibition era of the 1930s. The film grossed around $50 million domestically, but was overshadowed by Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop.[189]
Westerns. A period gone by, the pioneer, the loner operating by himself, without benefit of society. It usually has something to do with some sort of vengeance; he takes care of the vengeance himself, doesn't call the police. Like Robin Hood. It's the last masculine frontier. Romantic myth, I guess, though it's hard to think about anything romantic today. In a Western you can think, Jesus, there was a time when man was alone, on horseback, out there where man hasn't spoiled the land yet.
— Eastwood, on the philosophical allure of portraying western loners[190]
Eastwood made his only foray into TV direction with the 1985 Amazing Stories episode Vanessa in the Garden, which starred Harvey Keitel and Locke. This was his first collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who later co-produced Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima.[191] He would revisit the Western genre when he directed and starred in Pale Rider (1985), a film based on the classic 1953 western Shane and follows a preacher descending from the mists of the Sierras to side with the miners during the California Gold Rush of 1850.[192] The title is a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as the rider of the pale horse is Death, and shows similarities to Eastwood's 1973 western High Plains Drifter in its themes of morality and justice as well as its exploration of the supernatural.[193]Pale Rider became one of Eastwood's most successful films to date. It was hailed as one of the best films of 1985 and the best western to appear for a considerable period, with Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune remarking, 'This year (1985) will go down in film history as the moment Clint Eastwood finally earned respect as an artist'.[194]
In 1986, Eastwood co-starred with Marsha Mason in the military drama Heartbreak Ridge, about the 1983 United States invasion of Grenada. He portrays a United States Marine CorpsGunnery Sergeant veteran of the Korean War and Vietnam War who realizes he is nearing the end of his military service. Production and filming were marred by internal disagreements between Eastwood and long-time friend and producer Fritz Manes, as well as between Eastwood and the United States Department of Defense who expressed contempt for the film.[195][196] At the time, the film was a commercial rather than a critical success, and has only come to be viewed more favorably in recent times.[197] The film grossed $70 million domestically.[198]
Eastwood starred in The Dead Pool (1988), the fifth and final film in the Dirty Harry series. It co-starred Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, and a young Jim Carrey who plays Johnny Squares, a drug-addled rock star and the first of the victims on a list of celebrities drawn up by horror film director Peter Swan (Neeson) who are deemed most likely to die, the so-called 'Dead Pool'. The list is stolen by an obsessed fan who, in mimicking his favorite director, makes his way through the list killing off celebrities, of which Dirty Harry is also included. The Dead Pool grossed nearly $38 million, relatively low receipts for a Dirty Harry film. It is generally viewed as the weakest film of the series, though Roger Ebert thought it was as good as the original.[199][200]
Eastwood began working on smaller, more personal projects and experienced a lull in his career between 1988 and 1992. Always interested in jazz, he directed Bird (1988), a biopic starring Forest Whitaker as jazz musician Charlie 'Bird' Parker. Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean and Spike Lee, son of jazz bassist Bill Lee and a long time critic of Eastwood, criticized the characterization of Charlie Parker remarking that it did not capture his true essence and sense of humor.[201] Eastwood received two Golden Globes for the film, the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his lifelong contribution, and the Best Director award. However, Bird was a commercial failure, earning just $11 million, which Eastwood attributed to the declining interest in jazz among black people.[202] Carrey would appear with Eastwood again in the poorly-received comedy Pink Cadillac (1989). The film is about a bounty hunter and a group of white supremacists chasing an innocent woman (Bernadette Peters) who tries to outrun everyone in her husband's prized pink Cadillac. The film failed both critically and commercially,[203] earning barely more than Bird and marking a low point in Eastwood's career.[204]
1990s[edit]
Eastwood directed and starred in White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an adaptation of Peter Viertel's roman à clef, about John Huston and the making of the classic film The African Queen. Shot on location in Zimbabwe in the summer of 1989,[205] the film received some critical attention but with only a limited release earned just $8.4 million.[206] Later in 1990, Eastwood directed and co-starred with Charlie Sheen in The Rookie, a buddy cop action film. Critics found the film's plot and characterization unconvincing, but praised its action sequences.[207] An ongoing lawsuit, in response to Eastwood allegedly ramming a woman's car,[208] resulted in no Eastwood films being shown in cinemas in 1991.[209] Eastwood won the suit and agreed to pay the complainant's legal fees if she did not appeal.[209]
..if possible, he looks even taller, leaner and more mysteriously possessed than he did in Sergio Leone's seminal Fistful of Dollars a quarter of a century ago. The years haven't softened him. They have given him the presence of some fierce force of nature, which may be why the landscapes of the mythic, late 19th-century West become him, never more so than in his new Unforgiven.. This is his richest, most satisfying performance since the underrated, politically lunatic Heartbreak Ridge. There's no one like him.
— Vincent Canby of The New York Times, on Eastwood's performance in Unforgiven[210]
In 1992, Eastwood revisited the western genre in his film Unforgiven, a film in which he directed and starred as an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime. Scripts existed for the film as early as 1976 under titles such as The Cut-Whore Killings and The William Munny Killings but Eastwood delayed the project because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play his character and to savor it as the last of his western films.[209]Unforgiven was a major commercial and critical success; Jack Methews of the Los Angeles Times described it as 'the finest classical western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 The Searchers.[211] The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards,[212] (including Best Actor for Eastwood and Best Original Screenplay for David Webb Peoples) and won four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. In June 2008 Unforgiven was ranked as the fourth-best American western, behind Shane, High Noon, and The Searchers, in the American Film Institute's 'AFI's 10 Top 10' list.[213][214]
Eastwood at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival
Eastwood played Frank Horrigan in the Secret Service thriller In the Line of Fire (1993), directed by Wolfgang Petersen and co-starring John Malkovich and Rene Russo. Horrigan is a guilt-ridden Secret Service agent haunted by his failure to save John F. Kennedy's life.[215] The film was among the top 10 box office performers in that year, earning $102 million in the United States alone.[216] Later in 1993, he directed and co-starred alongside Kevin Costner in A Perfect World. Set in the 1960s,[217] Eastwood plays a Texas Ranger in pursuit of an escaped convict (Costner) who hits the road with a young boy (T.J. Lowther). Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film marked the highest point of Eastwood's directing career,[218] and the film has since been cited as one of his most underrated directorial achievements.[219][220]
At the May1994 Cannes Film Festival Eastwood received France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal,[221] and on March 27, 1995, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 67th Academy Awards.[222] His next film appearance was in a cameo role as himself in the 1995 children's film Casper. Later that same year he expanded his repertoire by playing opposite Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County. Based on the novel by Robert James Waller,[223] the film relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for National Geographic who, while photographing historic covered bridges in Iowa, meets and has an affair with an Italian-born farm wife, Francesca (Streep). Despite the novel receiving unfavorable reviews, The Bridges of Madison County film was a commercial and critical success.[224] Roger Ebert wrote, 'Streep and Eastwood weave a spell, and it is based on that particular knowledge of love and self that comes with middle age.'[225] The film was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture and won a César Award in France for Best Foreign Film. Streep was also nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
In 1997, Eastwood directed and starred in the political thriller Absolute Power, alongside Gene Hackman (with whom he had appeared in Unforgiven). Eastwood played the role of a veteran thief who witnesses the Secret Service cover-up of a murder. The film received a mixed reception from critics.[226]Later in 1997, Eastwood directed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, based on the novel by John Berendt and starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and Jude Law. The film met with a mixed critical response.[227]
The roles that Eastwood has played, and the films that he has directed, cannot be disentangled from the nature of the American culture of the last quarter century, its fantasies and its realities.
— Author Edward Gallafent, commenting on Eastwood's impact on film from the 1970s to 1990s[228]
Eastwood directed and starred in True Crime (1999). He plays Steve Everett, a journalist and recovering alcoholic, who has to cover the execution of murderer Frank Beechum (played by Isaiah Washington). True Crime received a mixed reception, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times writing, 'his direction is galvanized by a sense of second chances and tragic misunderstandings, and by contrasting a larger sense of justice with the peculiar minutiae of crime. Perhaps he goes a shade too far in the latter direction, though.'[229] The film was a box office failure, earning less than half its $55 million budget and was Eastwood's worst-performing film of the 1990s aside from White Hunter Black Heart, which had a limited release.[230]
2000s[edit]
In 2000, Eastwood directed and starred in Space Cowboys alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner. Eastwood played one of a group of veteran ex-test pilots sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite. The original music score was composed by Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus. Space Cowboys was critically well-received and holds a 79 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes,[231] although Roger Ebert wrote that the film was, 'too secure within its traditional story structure to make much seem at risk.'[232] The film grossed more than $90 million in its United States release, more than Eastwood's two previous films combined.[233] In 2002, Eastwood played an ex-FBI agent chasing a sadistic killer (Jeff Daniels) in the thriller Blood Work, loosely based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Michael Connelly. The film was a commercial failure, grossing just $26.2 million on an estimated budget of $50 million and received mixed reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes describing it as, 'well-made but marred by lethargic pacing'.[234] Eastwood did, however, win the Future Film Festival Digital Award at the Venice Film Festival for the film.[citation needed]
Eastwood and actress Angelina Jolie on the red carpet of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for their film Changeling
Eastwood directed and scored the crime drama Mystic River (2003), a film dealing with themes of murder, vigilantism and sexual abuse and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins. The film was praised by critics and won two Academy Awards – Best Actor for Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Robbins – with Eastwood garnering nominations for Best Director and Best Picture.[235] The film grossed $90million domestically on a budget of $30million.[236] In 2003 Eastwood was named Best Director of the Year by the National Society of Film Critics.[237]
Clint is a true artist in every respect. Despite his years of being at the top of his game and the legendary movies he has made, he always made us feel comfortable and valued on the set, treating us as equals.
— Tim Robbins, on working with Eastwood.[25]
The following year Eastwood found further critical acclaim with Million Dollar Baby. The boxing drama won four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Hilary Swank) and Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman).[238] At age 74 Eastwood became the oldest of eighteen directors to have directed two or more Best Picture winners.[239][240] He also received a nomination for Best Actor, as well as a Grammy nomination for his score,[241] and won a Golden Globe for Best Director, which was presented to him by daughter Kathryn, who was Miss Golden Globe at the 2005 ceremony.[242]A. O. Scott of The New York Times lauded the film as a 'masterpiece' and the best film of the year.[243]
In 2006, Eastwood directed two films about World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima. The first, Flags of Our Fathers, focused on the men who raised the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi and featured the film debut of Eastwood's son Scott. This was followed by Letters from Iwo Jima, which dealt with the tactics of the Japanese soldiers on the island and the letters they wrote home to family members. Letters from Iwo Jima was the first American film to depict a war issue completely from the view of an American enemy.[244] Both films received praise from critics and garnered several nominations at the 79th Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay for Letters from Iwo Jima. At the 64th Golden Globe Awards Eastwood received nominations for Best Director in both films. Letters from Iwo Jima won the award for Best Foreign Language Film.[245]
Eastwood at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival
Eastwood next directed Changeling (2008), based on a true story set in the late 1920s. Angelina Jolie stars as a woman reunited with her missing son only to realize he is an impostor.[246] After its release at several film festivals the film grossed over $110 million, the majority of which came from foreign markets.[247] The film was highly acclaimed, with Damon Wise of Empire describing Changeling as 'flawless'.[248]Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine described it as 'emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed' and that the film's characters and social commentary were brought into the story with an 'almost breathtaking deliberation'.[249] For the film Eastwood received nominations for Best Original Score at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, Best Direction at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards and director of the year from the London Film Critics' Circle.[250][251]
Eastwood ended a four-year 'self-imposed acting hiatus'[252] by appearing in Gran Torino, which he also directed, produced and partly scored with his son Kyle and Jamie Cullum. Biographer Marc Eliot called Eastwood's role 'an amalgam of the Man with No Name, Dirty Harry, and William Munny, here aged and cynical but willing and able to fight on whenever the need arose'.[253]Gran Torino grossed almost $30 million during its opening weekend release in January 2009, the highest of his career as an actor or director.[254]Gran Torino eventually grossed over $268 million in theaters worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of Eastwood's career so far (without adjustment for inflation).[255]
Eastwood's 30th directorial outing came with Invictus, a film based on the story of the South African team at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, Matt Damon as rugby team captain François Pienaar and Grant L. Roberts as Ruben Kruger.[256] The film met with generally positive reviews; Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars and described it as a '..very good film.. with moments evoking great emotion,'[257] while Variety's Todd McCarthy wrote, 'Inspirational on the face of it, Clint Eastwood's film has a predictable trajectory, but every scene brims with surprising details that accumulate into a rich fabric of history, cultural impressions and emotion.'[258] For the film Eastwood was nominated for Best Director at the 67th Golden Globe Awards.[250]
2010s[edit]
In 2010, Eastwood directed Hereafter, again working with Matt Damon, who portrayed a psychic. The film had its world premiere on September 12, 2010 at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and had a limited release later in October.[259][260]Hereafter received mixed reviews from critics, with the consensus at Rotten Tomatoes being, 'Despite a thought-provoking premise and Clint Eastwood's typical flair as director, Hereafter fails to generate much compelling drama, straddling the line between poignant sentimentality and hokey tedium.'[261] In the same year, Eastwood served as executive producer for a Turner Classic Movies (TCM) documentary about jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way, to commemorate Brubeck's 90th birthday.[262]
In 2011, Eastwood directed J. Edgar, a biopic of FBI directorJ. Edgar Hoover, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.[263] The film received mixed reviews, although DiCaprio's performance as Hoover was widely praised.[264] Roger Ebert wrote that the film is 'fascinating,' 'masterful,' and praised DiCaprio's performance.[265] David Edelstein of New York Magazine, while also praising DiCaprio, wrote, 'It's too bad J. Edgar is so shapeless and turgid and ham-handed, so rich in bad lines and worse readings'.[266] Eastwood starred in the baseball drama Trouble with the Curve (2012), as a veteran baseball scout who travels with his daughter for a final scouting trip. Robert Lorenz, who worked with Eastwood as an assistant director on several films, directed the film.[267]
Everybody wonders why I continue working at this stage. I keep working because there's always new stories.. And as long as people want me to tell them, I'll be there doing them.
— Eastwood, reflecting on his later career[268]
During Super Bowl XLVI, Eastwood narrated a halftime advertisement for Chrysler titled 'It's Halftime in America'.[269] The advertisement was criticized by several U.S. Republicans, who claimed it implied that President Barack Obama deserved a second term.[270] In response to the criticism, Eastwood stated, 'I am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about job growth and the spirit of America.'[271]
Eastwood next directed Jersey Boys, a musical biography based on the Tony Award-winning musical Jersey Boys. The film told the story of the musical group The Four Seasons, and was released on June 20, 2014.[272] Eastwood directed American Sniper, a film adaptation of Chris Kyle's eponymous memoir, following Steven Spielberg's departure from the project.[273] The film was released on December 25, 2014.[274]American Sniper grossed more than $350 million domestically and over $547 million globally, making it one of Eastwood's biggest movies commercially.[275][276] His next film, Sully, starred Tom Hanks as Chesley Sullenberger, who successfully landed the US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in an emergency landing, keeping all passengers on board alive.[277] Released in the United States in September 2016, it became another commercial success for Eastwood, grossing over $238 million worldwide.[278] In 2018, he directed the biographical thriller The 15:17 to Paris, which saw previously non-professional actors Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos playing themselves as they stop the 2015 Thalys train attack.[279] The film received a generally negative reception from critics, who were largely critical of the acting by the three leads.[280] Eastwood next starred in and directed The Mule, which was released in December 2018. He played Earl Stone, an elderly drug smuggler based on Leo Sharp, Eastwood's first acting role since Trouble with the Curve in 2012.[281]
On May 24, 2019, it was announced that Eastwood's next film will be The Ballad of Richard Jewell a film based on Richard Jewell who was a suspect in the 1996 Olympic bombing. Eastwood will direct and produce the film which had been in development at 20th Century Fox since 2014; however, for various reasons it was never made. In 2019, 20th Century Fox was sold to the Walt Disney Company who passed on making the film. Eastwood will now release the movie through Warner Bros., his tenth straight film with the company. Eastwood hopes to begin shooting the film in late 2019 with casting currently underway. Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio were originally set to star in the film; however, it appears they will now just serve as producers.[282][283]
Directing[edit]
Beginning with the thriller Play Misty for Me, Eastwood has directed over 30 films, including Westerns, action films, and dramas. He is one of few top Hollywood actors to have also become a critically and commercially successful director. The New Yorker's David Denby wrote that, unlike Eastwood,[284]
John Ford appeared in just a few silent films; Howard Hawks never acted in movies. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, Steve McQueen, and Sean Connery never directed a feature. John Wayne directed only twice, and badly; ditto Burt Lancaster. Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Robert De Niro, and Sean Penn have directed a few movies each, with mixed commercial and artistic success.
From the very early days of his career Eastwood was frustrated by directors' insistence that scenes be re-shot multiple times and perfected, and when he began directing in 1970, he made a conscious attempt to avoid any aspects of directing he had been indifferent to as an actor. As a result, Eastwood is renowned for his efficient film directing and ability to reduce filming time and control budgets. He usually avoids actors' rehearsing and prefers to complete most scenes on the first take.[285][286] Eastwood's rapid filmmaking practices have been compared to those of Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, and the Coen brothers. When acting in others' films he sometimes takes over directing, such as for The Outlaw Josey Wales, if he believes production is too slow.[284] In preparation for filming Eastwood rarely uses storyboards for developing the layout of a shooting schedule.[287][288][289] He also attempts to reduce script background details on characters to allow the audience to become more involved in the film,[290] considering their imagination a requirement for a film that connects with viewers.[290][291] Eastwood has indicated that he lays out a film's plot to provide the audience with necessary details, but not 'so much that it insults their intelligence.'[292]
According to Life magazine, 'Eastwood's style is to shoot first and act afterward. He etches his characters virtually without words. He has developed the art of underplaying to the point that anyone around him who so much as flinches looks hammily histrionic.'[293] Interviewers Richard Thompson and Tim Hunter note that Eastwood's films are 'superbly paced: unhurried; cool; and [give] a strong sense of real time, regardless of the speed of the narrative'[294] while Ric Gentry considers Eastwood's pacing 'unrushed and relaxed.'[295] Eastwood is fond of low-key lighting and back-lighting to give his movies a 'noir-ish' feel.[286][296]
Eastwood's frequent exploration of ethical values has drawn the attention of scholars, who have explored Eastwood's work from ethical and theological perspectives, including his portrayal of justice, mercy, suicide and the angel of death.[297]
Awards and honors[edit]
Eastwood has been recognized with multiple awards and nominations for his work in film, television, and music. His widest reception has been in film work, for which he has received Academy Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and People's Choice Awards, among others. Eastwood is one of only two people to have been twice nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for the same film (Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby) the other being Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait and Reds). Along with Beatty, Robert Redford, Richard Attenborough, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson, he is one of the few directors best known as an actor to win an Academy Award for directing. On February 27, 2005, he became one of only three living directors (along with Miloš Forman and Francis Ford Coppola) to have directed two Best Picture winners.[298] At the age of 74, he was the oldest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Director to date. Eastwood has directed five actors in Academy Award-winning performances: Gene Hackman in Unforgiven, Tim Robbins and Sean Penn in Mystic River, and Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby.
On August 22, 1984, Eastwood was honored at a ceremony at Grauman's Chinese theater to record his hand and footprints in cement.[299] Eastwood received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1996, and received an honorary degree from AFI in 2009. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Eastwood into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.[300]
In early 2007, Eastwood was presented with the highest civilian distinction in France, Légion d'honneur, at a ceremony in Paris. French President Jacques Chirac told Eastwood that he embodied 'the best of Hollywood.'[301] In October 2009, he was honored by the Lumière Award (in honor of the Lumière Brothers, inventors of the Cinematograph) during the first edition of the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France. This award honors his entire career and his major contribution to the 7th Art. In February 2010, Eastwood was recognized by President Barack Obama with an arts and humanities award. Obama described Eastwood's films as 'essays in individuality, hard truths and the essence of what it means to be American.'[302]
Eastwood has also been awarded at least three honorary degrees from universities and colleges, including an honorary degree from the University of the Pacific in 2006, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Southern California on May 27, 2007, and an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 22, 2007.[303][304]
On July 22, 2009, Eastwood was honored by Emperor Akihito of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd class, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon for his contributions to the enhancement of Japan–United States relations.[305]
Eastwood won the Golden Pine lifetime achievement award at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Gerald Fried.[306]
Year | Film | Academy Awards | BAFTA Awards | Golden Globe Awards |
---|
Nominations | Wins | Nominations | Wins | Nominations | Wins |
---|
1971 | Play Misty for Me | 1 |
1973 | Breezy | 3 |
1976 | The Outlaw Josey Wales | 1 |
1986 | Heartbreak Ridge | 1 |
1988 | Bird | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
1992 | Unforgiven | 9 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 2 |
1995 | The Bridges of Madison County | 1 | 2 |
2000 | Space Cowboys | 1 |
2003 | Mystic River | 6 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 2 |
2004 | Million Dollar Baby | 7 | 4 | 5 | 2 |
2006 | Flags of Our Fathers | 2 | 1 |
Letters from Iwo Jima | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
2008 | Changeling | 3 | 8 | 2 |
Gran Torino | 1 |
2009 | Invictus | 2 | 3 |
2010 | Hereafter | 1 |
2011 | J. Edgar | 1 |
2014 | American Sniper | 6 | 1 | 2 |
2016 | Sully | 1 |
Total | 40 | 13 | 22 | 1 | 32 | 8 |
---|
Filmography[edit]
Eastwood has contributed to over 50films over his career as actor, director, producer, and composer.[307] He has acted in several television series, including his starring role in Rawhide.[308] He started directing in 1971, and made his debut as a producer in 1982, with Firefox, though he had been functioning as uncredited producer on all of his Malpaso Company films since Hang 'Em High in 1968. Eastwood also has contributed music to his films, either through performing, writing, or composing. He has mainly starred in western, action, and drama films. According to the box office–revenue tracking website Box Office Mojo, films featuring Eastwood have grossed a total of more than $1.81 billion domestically, with an average of $38.6 million per film.[309]
Personal life[edit]
Eastwood has had numerous casual and serious relationships of varying length and intensity over his life, many of which overlapped. Between proposing to and marrying Maggie Johnson in 1953, he had an affair that allegedly resulted in a child who was given up for adoption.[310]:19 He continued having affairs while married to Johnson, including a 14-year-long relationship with actress and stunt woman Roxanne Tunis that produced a daughter, Kimber, in 1964.[311][312] Johnson reportedly tolerated the open marriage with Eastwood, and they had two children, Kyle (born in 1968) and Alison (born in 1972). Johnson and Eastwood eventually divorced. In 1975, actress Sondra Locke began living with Eastwood. She took the relationship seriously and was distraught when she discovered much later that Eastwood continued to have sexual relationships with other women. During that time, Eastwood had two children, Scott (born 1986) and Kathryn (born 1988) with Jacelyn Reeves, a flight attendant.[313] When Locke and Eastwood separated in 1989, Locke filed a palimony lawsuit.[35] In the 1990s, Clint had a relationship with actress Frances Fisher that produced a daughter, Francesca Eastwood (born 1993).[314] Eastwood was married for the second time to news anchor Dina Ruiz in 1996, who gave birth to their daughter Morgan that same year. Ruiz and Eastwood's marriage lasted until 2013.[315] He has been seen with other women since then.
Health and leisure activities[edit]
Eastwood playing golf at a charity fundraising event in 2015
Eastwood has held a lifelong distaste for tobacco and tobacco companies, and only smokes when required to do so by a film role. He has also been conscious of his health and fitness since he was a teenager, and practices healthy eating and daily Transcendental Meditation.[316][317][318]
He opened an old English-inspired pub called the Hog's Breath Inn in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in 1971.[319] Eastwood sold the pub in 1999 and now owns the Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea.[320][321]
He is an avid golfer and owns the Tehàma Golf Club. He is an investor in the world-renowned Pebble Beach Golf Links west of Carmel and donates his time to charitable causes at major tournaments.[320][322][323] Eastwood is an FAA licensed fixed wing and rotary craft private pilot and often flies his helicopter to the studios to avoid traffic.[324][325]
Spiritual beliefs[edit]
In 1973, Eastwood told the film critic Gene Siskel, 'No, I don't believe in God.'[326] As much as anything, Eastwood has found spirituality in nature (as suggested by his 1985 Western, Pale Rider), stating that 'I was born during the Depression and I was brought up with no specific church. We moved every four or five months during the first 14 years of my life, so I was sent to a different church depending on wherever we lived. Most of them were Protestant, but I went to other churches because my parents wanted me to try to figure out things for myself. They always said, 'I just want to expose you to some religious order and see if that's something you like'. So although my religious training was not really specific, I do feel spiritual things. If I stand on the side of the Grand Canyon and look down, it moves me in some way.'[327]
'Of course, it would be wonderful to talk with my parents again, who are, of course, deceased. It makes the idea of death much less scary. But then again, if you think that nothing happens after you die, maybe it makes you live life better. Maybe you're supposed to do the best you can by the gift you're given of life and that alone.'[327]
Other personal interests[edit]
The Hog's Breath Inn in Carmel, once owned by Eastwood
Eastwood has been conscious of his health and fitness since he was a teenager, and practices healthful eating habits. As a young man making a name for himself during the production of Rawhide, Eastwood would be featured in magazines and journals, which often documented his health-conscious lifestyle. In the August 1959 edition of TV Guide, for example, Eastwood was photographed doing push-ups. He gave tips on fitness and nutrition, telling people to eat plenty of fruit and raw vegetables, to take vitamins, and to avoid sugar-loaded beverages, excessive alcohol, and overloading on carbohydrates.[316]
On July 21, 1970, Eastwood's father died of a heart attack at the age of 64.[122] The death, described by Fritz Manes as 'the only bad thing that ever happened to him in his life', came as a shock to Eastwood, since his grandfather had lived to be 92. It had a profound impact on Eastwood's life; from then on he became more productive, working with a greater sense of urgency and with more speed and efficiency on set.[123] Although Eastwood had always been a health and fitness enthusiast, he became more so after his father's death. He abstained from hard liquor, adopted a more rigorous health regime, and sought to stay fit.[123] However, he still favored cold beer and opened a pub called the Hog's Breath Inn in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1971.[319] Eastwood eventually sold the pub and now owns the Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant, also located in Carmel-by-the-Sea.[328]
In 1975, Eastwood publicly proclaimed his participation in Transcendental Meditation when he appeared on The Merv Griffin Show with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation.[329] He has meditated every morning for years.[330]
Politics[edit]
With Louis Gossett Jr. and President Ronald Reagan in July 1987
Eastwood has long shown an interest in politics and is a registered Libertarian.[331] He won election as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in April 1986. In 2001, Governor Gray Davis appointed him to the California State Park and Recreation Commission, where he led opposition to an extension of the toll six-lane 26-kilometre (16 mi) freeway extension of California State Route 241 through San Onofre State Beach.[332] Eastwood endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. He delivered a prime time address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, where he drew attention for a speech he delivered to an empty chair representing President Barack Obama.[333]
Musical interests[edit]
Eastwood is an audiophile and owns an extensive collection of LPs which he plays on a Rockport turntable. He has had a strong passion for music all his life, particularly jazz and country and western music.[334] He dabbled in music early on by developing as a boogie-woogie pianist and had originally intended to pursue a career in music by studying for a music theory degree after graduating from high school. In late 1959 he produced the album Cowboy Favorites, released on the Cameo label,[334][334] which included some classics such as Bob Wills's San Antonio Rose and Cole Porter's Don't Fence Me In. Despite his attempts to plug the album by going on a tour, it never reached the Billboard Hot 100.[334] In 1963, Cameo producer Kal Mann told him that 'he would never make it big as a singer'.[335] Nevertheless, during the off season of filming Rawhide, Eastwood and Paul Brinegar – sometimes joined by Sheb Wooley – toured rodeos, state fairs, and festivals. In 1962, their act, entitled Amusement Business Cavalcade of Fairs, earned them as much as $15,000 a performance.[335] Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers. This deal was unchanged when Warner Music Group was sold by Time Warner to private investors.[336]
Eastwood favors jazz (especially bebop), blues, classic rhythm and blues, classical, and country-and-western music; his favorite musicians include saxophonists Charlie Parker and Lester Young, pianists Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, and Fats Waller, and Delta bluesmanRobert Johnson.[337] He is also a pianist and composer.[334] Jazz has played an important role in Eastwood's life from a young age and, although he never made it as a professional musician, he passed on the influence to his son Kyle Eastwood, a jazz bassist and composer.
As part of his deal with Warner Brothers, Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint Malpaso Records, which has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward. Malpaso Records has also released the album of a 1996 jazz concert he hosted, titled Eastwood after Hours – Live at Carnegie Hall.
Eastwood composed the film scores of Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Grace Is Gone, Changeling, Hereafter, J. Edgar, and the original piano compositions for In the Line of Fire. He wrote and performed the song heard over the credits of Gran Torino[320] and also co-wrote 'Why Should I Care' with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, a song recorded in 1999 by Diana Krall.[336]
The music in Grace Is Gone received two Golden Globe nominations by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for the 65th Golden Globe Awards. Eastwood was nominated for Best Original Score, while the song 'Grace is Gone' with music by Eastwood and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager was nominated for Best Original Song.[338] It won the Satellite Award for Best Song at the 12th Satellite Awards. Changeling was nominated for Best Score at the 14th Critics' Choice Awards, Best Original Score at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, and Best Music at the 35th Saturn Awards. On September 22, 2007, Eastwood was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival, on which he serves as an active board member. Upon receiving the award he gave a speech claiming, 'It's one of the great honors I'll cherish in this lifetime.'[339]
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^It is not clear how many children Eastwood has fathered. When Steve Kroft asked him 'How many do you have?' in a November 16, 1997 segment on 60 Minutes, he said, without further elaboration, 'I have a few.'[3] In a January 14, 2009 interview on Late Show with David Letterman, David Letterman said to Eastwood, 'You have uh–is it seven children?' to which he replied 'Uh, at least.'[4][5] Furthermore, Eastwood's daughter Alison stated in an August 7, 2011 article in The Sunday Times, 'My dad has eight children by six women.'[6] However, until December 2018 (when 8 children were photographed together) only seven children by five women were accounted for.[7]
- ^There have been wide discrepancies in the media as to how many children Eastwood has:
- May 1989 articles from the Los Angeles Times[8] and People magazine,[9] both error-ridden (e.g., Locke's age) cite Eastwood as having only two children.
- A March 1999 People article[10] mentions in passing that Eastwood has five children.
- Only four children are acknowledged in Eastwood's October 2003 episode of Biography. Lack of mention of Eastwood's daughter by Roxanne Tunis and his two children by Jacelyn Reeves was noted in a review by The Dallas Morning News.[11]
- The October 2012 issue of Esquire[12] says Eastwood 'is father to seven children by five different women.'
- In French documentary L'album secret de Clint Eastwood (2012), biographer Patrick McGilligan says on camera, 'We don't know how many children Clint has had with how many women' and proceeds to list seven of Eastwood's offspring before adding, 'I heard of other possibilities. One was while he was still in high school.'[13]
- An October 2013 CNN news report[14] succinctly states 'He's had eight children total by six women.'
- Although a story posted on People's website in September 2013 says Eastwood has eight children,[15] the magazine gave a count of seven in its April 20, 2015 issue.[16] A June 2016 Los Angeles Times article counts eight children.[17]
- ^Accounts of the crash location also differ slightly. Schickel says 'they could see the cliffs at Point Reyes, three or four miles away. Zmijewsky says it was north of Drake's Bay and two miles offshore. The Navy's accident report indicates that it was west of Kehoe Beach.
- ^Different sources report different intended destinations. Schickel says it was Alameda Naval Air Station near Oakland. Zmijewsky says it was Mather Air Force Base at Sacramento. The Navy's accident report says it was San Diego, with a stop at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.
References[edit]
- ^Leyde, Tom (September 10, 2017). 'Monday profile: Charlotte Townsend, the mayor who lost to Clint Eastwood'. Monterey Herald. Retrieved August 18, 2018.
- ^'1980s – A very, very famous mayor'. The Carmel Pine Cone. February 20, 2015. pp. 22–23.
Eastwood opted not to run again for mayor and backed Jean Grace in her successful bid in 1988.
- ^Rebecca Leung (January 27, 2004). 'Clint Eastwood: Improving with Age'. CBS News.
- ^Stated on Late Show with David Letterman, January 14, 2009
- ^Video on YouTube
- ^'What it feels like.. to be Clint Eastwood's daughter'. The Sunday Times. August 7, 2011
- ^'Clint Eastwood Fast Facts'. CNN. May 27, 2013. Archived from the original on April 26, 2016.
- ^'In the Matter of Locke vs. Eastwood'. Articles.latimes.com. May 8, 1989. p. 2. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^'Suing Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke Strikes with Magnum Force'. People. May 15, 1989. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^Tom Gliatto (March 8, 1999). 'Learning Experience'. People. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^'Behind the Scenes with Clint'. Dallas Morning News. October 4, 2003.
- ^Junod, Tom (September 19, 2012). 'Clint Eastwood Interview – Tom Junod Clint Eastwood Profile'. Esquire. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^Stated in L'album secret de Clint Eastwood (2012).
- ^Duke, Alan (October 25, 2013). 'Clint Eastwood's wife files for divorce'. CNN.com. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^'Clint Eastwood's Daughter, Alison, Speaks Out About Her Father's Split'. People. September 6, 2013. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^Jennifer Garcia (April 20, 2015). 'Scott Eastwood Sexiest Son Alive!'. People. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
- ^'For father-daughter duo Clint and Alison Eastwood, directing is a family business'. Los Angeles Times. June 16, 2016. Retrieved June 22, 2017.
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- ^Bacardi, Francesca. 'Clint Eastwood's New Girlfriend Married for Only ONE YEAR Before Divorcing – Inside the 'Hellish' Union', Radar Online, June 30, 2014; retrieved November 7, 2015.
- ^Fischer, Landy & Smith, p. 43.
- ^Kitses, p. 307.
- ^'Clint Eastwood Movie Box Office Results'. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 17, 2014.
- ^ abMcGilligan, p. 231
- ^Amara, Pavan; Sundberg, Charlotte (May 30, 2010). 'Eastwood at 80'. The Independent. London. Archived from the original on April 29, 2019. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^ abDay, Elizabeth (November 2, 2008). 'Gentle Man Clint'. The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on June 24, 2018. Retrieved December 11, 2016.
- ^Eliot, p. 14
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- ^Schickel, p. 27
- ^ abZmijewsky, p. 12
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- ^Leung, Rebecca (February 6, 2005). 'Two Sides of Clint Eastwood: Lesley Stahl Talks To Oscar-Nominated Actor And Director'. CBS Evening News. Archived from the original on July 25, 2013. Retrieved August 10, 2008.
- ^ abMcGilligan, p. 34
- ^ abcdefMcGilligan, p. 40
- ^ abLocke, Sondra (1997). The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly – A Hollywood Journey. William Morrow and Company. ISBN978-0-688-15462-2.
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 123 (interviewer Tim Cahill)
- ^McGilligan, p. 36
- ^Eliot, p. 17
- ^Eastwood, Clint. 'Eastwood: In His Own Words'. ClinteastWood.net. Retrieved July 8, 2014.
- ^Eliot, pp. 18–19
- ^Eliot, p. 23
- ^McGilligan (1999), pp. 48–49
- ^McGilligan (1999), pp. 49
- ^ abcSchickel 1996, pp. 51–55.
- ^'Accident Report: AD-1Q BU#409283 Eastwood'. U.S. Navy. 1951.
- ^McGilligan (1999), p. 50
- ^Zmijewsky (1982), p. 16
- ^Prado, Mark (April 19, 2018). 'Clint Eastwood's downed plane off Point Reyes subject of search'. marinij.com. Marin Independent Journal. Retrieved April 21, 2018.Italic or bold markup not allowed in:
publisher=
(help) (includes text reprint of its original October 1, 1951 newspaper report on the incident) - ^Holm, Walt. 'The Hunt for Clint Eastwood's AD-1 Skyraider'. openexplorer.nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved April 21, 2018.
- ^Schickel 1996, p. 50.
- ^McGilligan (1999), p.54
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- ^ abZmijewsky (1982), p. 17
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- ^Zmijewsky (1982), p. 19
- ^ abcMcGilligan, p. 52
- ^ abMcGilligan, p. 60
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- ^McGilligan, p. 81
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- ^Eliot, p. 36
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- ^ abMcGilligan, p. 159
- ^McGilligan, p. 160
- ^Manners, Dorothy (July 14, 1968). 'Italy Made Eastwood A Hollywood Hero'. The Indianapolis Star. Indianapolis, IN]. p. 117.
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- ^'62nd British Academy Film Awards'. British Academy Film Television Award (BAFTA). Retrieved February 20, 2018.
- ^Turan, Kenneth (December 12, 2008). 'Review: 'Gran Torino''. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 14, 2008. Retrieved December 13, 2008.
- ^Eliot, p. 329
- ^'Clint Eastwood leads box office with 'Gran Torino''. Forbes. Reuters. January 11, 2009. Archived from the original on January 15, 2012.
- ^'Box Office Mojo – Clint Eastwood'. imdb.com. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
- ^Keller, Bill (August 15, 2008). 'Entering the Scrum'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 2, 2013.
- ^Ebert, Roger (December 9, 2009). 'Invictus'. Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on December 13, 2009.
- ^McCarthy, Todd (November 27, 2009). 'Invictus'. Variety. Archived from the original on January 16, 2013.
- ^Punter, Jennie (August 17, 2010). 'Eastwood, Boyle among new Toronto entries'. Variety. Archived from the original on November 6, 2012.
- ^Mercer, Benjamin (October 11, 2010). 'Eastwood's 'Hereafter': Matt Damon Shines, Despite Schmaltz'. The Atlantic. Archived from the original on October 17, 2010. Retrieved March 6, 2017.
- ^'Hereafter Movie Reviews, Pictures'. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 30, 2010.
- ^Mergner, Lee (November 29, 2010). 'In Dave Brubeck's Own Sweet Way'. JazzTimes. Archived from the original on January 4, 2011.
- ^Rosenberg, Adam (June 18, 2010). 'Leonardo DiCaprio To Star in J. Edgar Hoover Biopic'. MTV.com. Archived from the original on October 7, 2010. Retrieved January 21, 2011.
- ^'J. Edgar (2011)'. Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved November 10, 2011.
- ^Ebert, Roger (November 8, 2011). 'J. Edgar'. The Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved January 16, 2018.
- ^Edelstein, David (November 14, 2011). 'First World Problems'. The Movie Review. New York. ISSN0028-7369. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
- ^Breznican, Anthony (October 5, 2011). 'Clint Eastwood may act again in baseball drama'. Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on October 6, 2011. Retrieved October 6, 2011.
- ^The Eastwood Factor (Extended Edition) (DVD). Warner Home Video. June 1, 2010. Event occurs at 1:26:15.
- ^Tina Daunt (February 7, 2012). 'Clint Eastwood's Chrysler Super Bowl Ad: The Untold Obama Connection'. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 10, 2012.
- ^Republicans' Reaction to Super Bowl ad beautiful for Dems', Chicago Sun-Times, February 7, 2012. Archived February 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^'Clint Eastwood On Chrysler Super Bowl Commercial: 'I'm Not Politically Affiliated With Mr. Obama''. The Huffington Post. February 6, 2012.
- ^'Clint Eastwood's Jersey Boys Movie, Starring Tony Winner John Lloyd Young, Sets 2014 Release Date'. Broadway.com. Retrieved November 27, 2014.
- ^Kit, Borys (August 21, 2013). 'Clint Eastwood in Talks to Direct 'American Sniper''. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved November 5, 2013.
- ^Hedelt, Rob. 'King George: Ex-SEAL helping keep film on target'. News.fredericksburg.com. Archived from the original on April 26, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014.http://www.fredericksburg.com/news/king-george-ex-seal-helping-keep-film-on-target/article_8d3a46c4-c195-5ba8-b1ad-d4f7278ad8c8.html
- ^''American Sniper' as Eastwood's biggest film?'. CNBC. Retrieved December 4, 2015.
- ^'American Sniper (2014) – Box Office Mojo'. www.boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved December 4, 2015.
- ^Wilson, Michael (September 7, 2016). 'In 'Sully,' New York Is Clint Eastwood's Latest Star'. The New York Times. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
- ^'Sully (2016)'. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved January 16, 2018.
- ^Jenkins, Aric (February 9, 2018). 'The True Story Behind the Movie The 15:17 to Paris'. Time. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
- ^'The 15:17 to Paris (2018)'. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
- ^Anthony D'Alessandro (September 27, 2018). 'Clint Eastwood's 'The Mule' Kicks Its Way Onto December Release Calendar'. deadline.com. Retrieved November 28, 2018.
- ^Borys Kit (May 24, 2019). 'Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell Movie Moves From Fox to Warner Bros'. hollywoodreporter.com. Retrieved May 26, 2019.
- ^Jeff Sneider (May 24, 2019). 'Disney Drops Clint Eastwood's 'Ballad of Richard Jewell' as WB Saves the Day'. collider.com. Retrieved May 26, 2019.
- ^ abDenby, David (March 8, 2010). 'Out of the West'. The New Yorker. Retrieved September 1, 2012.
- ^Munn, p. 160
- ^ abKapsis and Coblentz, pp. 196–97 (interviewer Peter Biskind)
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 65 (interviewer Ric Gentry)
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 173 (interviewer Denise Abbott)
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 235 (interviewer Pascal Mérigeau)
- ^ abKapsis and Coblentz, pp. 67–68 (interviewer Ric Gentry)
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 91 (interviewer David Thomson)
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 60 (interviewer Ric Gentry)
- ^Fayard, Judy (July 23, 1971). Who can stand 32,580 seconds of Clint Eastwood?. Life. p. 46. ISSN0024-3019. Retrieved March 8, 2011.
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 45 (interviewers Richard Thompson and Tim Hunter)
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 71 (interviewer Ric Gentry)
- ^Kapsis and Coblentz, p. 143 (interviewer Milan Pavolić)
- ^Sara Anson Vaux (2012). The Ethical Vision of Clint Eastwood. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans ISBN978-0802862952OCLC719426752[page needed]
- ^French, Philip (February 25, 2007). 'Interview: Clint Eastwood, 'I figured I'd retire gradually, just ride off into the sunset ..''. The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved December 11, 2016.
- ^Eliot, p. 213
- ^Matier, Phillip; Ross, Andrew (December 6, 2006). 'Eastwood to share top billing in Hall of Fame'. San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on July 8, 2012.
- ^'Eastwood receives French honour'. BBC News Online. February 17, 2007. Archived from the original on February 19, 2007. Retrieved February 17, 2007.
- ^Simmons, Christine (February 25, 2010). 'Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood get White House awards'. USA Today. Archived from the original on March 14, 2012. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Bowen, Rebecca (September 13, 2007). 'Berklee awards Clint Eastwood honorary doctorate'. Paste. Archived from the original on June 16, 2011. Retrieved January 18, 2011.
- ^'An honorary Trojan'. Los Angeles Times. May 12, 2007. Retrieved January 17, 2011.
- ^'Clint Eastwood receives Japanese decoration in LA'. Allvoices. Kyodo News, via Japan Today. July 22, 2009. Archived from the original on June 17, 2014. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ^'Clint Eastwood, Ryuichi Sakamoto And Gerald Fried To Receive Golden Pine Awards For Lifetime Achievement'. ISFMF. October 18, 2013. Retrieved April 25, 2014.
- ^Rowan, Terry (2015). Who's Who In Hollywood!. Lulu.com. p. 105. ISBN978-1-329-07449-1.
- ^Zad, Martie (June 14, 1992). ''Rawhide's' Cattle Drives, Eastwood On Home Videos'. Washington Post. Archived from the original on July 30, 2018. Retrieved July 31, 2018.
- ^'Clint Eastwood Movie Box Office Results'. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 6, 2019.
- ^Munn, Michael (1992). Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner. London: Robson. ISBN978-0-86051-790-0.
- ^McGilligan, p. 139
- ^The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Young, Josh (May 4, 1997). The Independent.
- ^'Clint Eastwood After 70'. Parade. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012.
- ^'Clint Eastwood dated Frances Fisher'. Zimbio. Livingly Media, Inc. auFeminin Group. Retrieved September 26, 2018.
- ^'Clint's wife expecting'. Toronto Star. Reuters. September 6, 1996. Retrieved March 7, 2011.
- ^ abMcGilligan, p. 108
- ^Oates, p. 17
- ^Corliss, Richard (August 10, 1992). 'The Last Roundup'. Time.
- ^ abMcGilligan, p. 204
- ^ abcHeadlam, Bruce (December 10, 2008). 'The Films Are for Him. Got That?'. The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 13, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2017.
- ^'Welcome to Mission Ranch'. Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant. Archived from the original on February 2, 2010. Retrieved August 10, 2009.
- ^Weiss, Kenneth R. (June 14, 2007). 'California rejects Clint Eastwood's Monterey golf course'. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 12, 2008. Retrieved February 11, 2008.
- ^'Clint Eastwood 'Makes Their Day''. The Stroke Association. March 18, 2002. Archived from the original on January 9, 2011.
- ^Schickel, p. 25
- ^Eliot, p. 131
- ^Gene Siskel, 'Clint: The Cynical King who Outdrew the Duke,' Chicago Tribune, January 7, 1973.
- ^ ab'Clint Eastwood on The Fence About God! Director Clint Eastwood Discusses His Religious Beliefs!'. Showbiz Spy. Archived from the original on November 10, 2013. Retrieved May 16, 2019.
- ^'Welcome to Mission Ranch'. Missionranchcarmel.com. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
- ^Oates (1976), p. 17
- ^Corliss, Richard (August 10, 1992). 'The Last Roundup'. Time.
- ^'Clint Eastwood talks to Jeff Dawson'. The Guardian. London. June 6, 2008. Archived from the original on July 2, 2010.
- ^'Governor Schwarzenegger Appointments to the State Park and Recreation Commission'Archived January 4, 2009, at the Wayback Machine – California State Park and Recreation Commission. Retrieved: May 28, 2008.
- ^Andrews, Travis M. (August 4, 2016). 'Clint Eastwood explains – and regrets – his speech to an empty chair'. The Washington Post. Retrieved May 14, 2019.
- ^ abcdeMcGilligan, p. 114
- ^ abMcGilligan, p. 115
- ^ ab'Krall, Eastwood Team For 'crime''. Billboard. AllBusiness.com. March 11, 1999. Archived from the original on November 12, 2007. Retrieved November 12, 2007.
- ^Tosches, Nick. 'Nick Tosches on Clint Eastwood'. Vanity Fair. Retrieved September 8, 2012.
- ^'Hollywood Foreign Press Association 2008 Golden Globe Awards For the Year Ended December 31, 2007'. goldenglobes.org. December 13, 2007. Archived from the original on December 14, 2007. Retrieved January 19, 2011.
- ^'Clint Eastwood Receives Berklee Degree at Monterey Jazz Festival (news release)'. Berklee College of Music. September 24, 2007. Archived from the original on November 20, 2010.
Bibliography[edit]
- Baker, Brian (2006). Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres, 1945–2000. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN978-0-8264-8652-3.
- Baldwin, Louis (1999). Turning Points: Pivotal Moments in the Careers of 83 Famous Figures. McFarland. ISBN978-0-7864-0626-5.
- Canby, Vincent; Maslin, Janet; Nichols, Peter (1999). The New York Times Guide to the Best 1000 Movies Ever Made. New York: Times Books. ISBN0-8129-3001-0.
- Cardullo, Bert (2010). Screen Writings: Genres, Classics, and Aesthetics. Anthem Press. ISBN978-1-84331-837-8.
- Eliot, Marc (2009). American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood. New York: Harmony Books. ISBN978-0-307-33688-0.
- Emery, Robert J. (2003). The Directors: Take 3. Allworth Press. ISBN1-58115-245-0.
- Fitzgerald, Michael G.; Magers, Boyd (2002). Ladies of the Western: Interviews With Fifty-One More Actresses from the Silent Era to the Television Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN0-7864-1140-6.
- Frank, Alan (1982). Clint Eastwood: Screen Greats. New York: Exeter. ISBN0-89673-135-9.
- Frayling, Christopher (1992). Clint Eastwood. London: Virgin. ISBN0-86369-307-5.
- Gallafent, Edward (1994). Clint Eastwood. New York: Continuum. ISBN0-8264-0665-3.
- Hughes, Howard (2009). Aim for the Heart. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN978-1-84511-902-7.
- Johnston, Robert K. (2007). Reframing Theology and Film: New Focus for an Emerging Discipline. Baker Academic. ISBN978-0-8010-3240-0.
- Kapsis, Robert E.; Coblentz, Kathie, ed. (1999). Clint Eastwood: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN1-57806-070-2.
- Kitses, Jim (2004). Horizons West. British Film Institute. ISBN1-84457-050-9.
- Lichtenfeld, Eric (2007). Action Speaks Louder. Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN978-0-8195-6801-4.
- Lloyd, Ann; Robinson, David (1987). The Illustrated History of the Cinema. New York: Macmillan. ISBN0-02-919241-2.
- Locke, Sondra (1997). The Good, the Bad & the Very Ugly – A Hollywood Journey. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN978-0-688-15462-2.
- Mathijs, Ernest; Mendik, Xavier (2004). Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945. Wallflower Press. ISBN978-1-903364-93-2.
- McGilligan, Patrick (2015). Clint: The Life and Legend (updated and revised). New York: OR Books. ISBN978-1-939293-96-1.
- Mercer, Jane (1975). Great Lovers of the Movies. New York: Crescent Books. ISBN0-517-13126-9.
- Munn, Michael (1992). Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner. London: Robson. ISBN978-0-86051-790-0.
- Oates, Bob (1976). Celebrating the Dawn: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the TM Technique. New York: Putnam. ISBN0-399-11815-2.
- O'Brien, Daniel (1996). Clint Eastwood: Film-Maker. London: B.T. Batsford. ISBN0-7134-7839-X.
- Ivy Press (2005). Heritage Vintage Movie Poster Signature Auction 2005 Catalog #624. Heritage Capital Corporation. ISBN978-1-59967-004-1.
- Roberts, James B.; Skutt, Alexander (2006). The Boxing Register: International Boxing Hall of Fame Official Record Book. Ithaca, NY: McBooks Press. ISBN1-59013-121-5.
- Rogin, Michael Paul (1988). Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology. University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-06469-0.
- Schickel, Richard (1996). Clint Eastwood: A Biography. New York: Knopf. ISBN978-0-679-42974-6.
- Slocum, J. David (2001). Violence and American Cinema. AFI film readers. New York: Routledge. ISBN0-415-92810-9.
- Smith, Paul (1993). Clint Eastwood: A Cultural Production: Volume 8 of American Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN0-8166-1960-3.
- Smith, Paul (2004). 'Action Movie Hysteria of Eastwood Bound'. In Fischer, Lucy; Landy, Marcia (eds.). Stars: The Film Reader. London: Routledge. ISBN0-415-27893-7.
- Stillman, Deanne (1981). Getting Back at Dad. Wideview Books. ISBN978-0-87223-725-4.
- Sweeney, Patrick (2004). The Gun Digest Book of Smith & Wesson. Gun Digest Books. ISBN978-0-87349-792-3.
- Verlhac, Pierre-Henri; Bogdanovich, Peter (2008). Clint Eastwood: A Life in Pictures. Chronicle Books. ISBN978-0-8118-6154-0.
- Zmijewsky, Boris; Lee Pfeiffer (1982). The Films of Clint Eastwood. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press. ISBN0-8065-0863-9.
Further reading[edit]
- Cornell, Drucilla (2009). Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity. Fordham University Press. ISBN978-0-8232-3013-6.
- Engel, Leonard (2007). Clint Eastwood, Actor and Director: New Perspectives. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ISBN978-0-87480-900-8.
- Gabbard, Glen O. (2001). Psychoanalysis and Film. International Journal of Psychoanalysis Key Papers Series. London; New York: Karnac Books. ISBN1-85575-275-1.
- Johnstone, Iain (2007). The Man with No Name: The Biography of Clint Eastwood. London: Plexus. ISBN978-0-85965-026-7.
- Thompson, Douglas (2005). Clint Eastwood: Billion Dollar Man. London: John Blake. ISBN978-1-85782-572-5.
External links[edit]
- Clint Eastwood at the Encyclopædia Britannica
- Clint Eastwood on IMDb
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Clint Eastwood on Charlie Rose
- 'Clint Eastwood collected news and commentary'. The Guardian.
- Clint Eastwood at Box Office Mojo
- 'Clint Eastwood collected news and commentary'. The New York Times.
- Clint Eastwood at Rotten Tomatoes
- Clint Eastwood at the TCM Movie Database
- Works by or about Clint Eastwood in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Clint Eastwood collected news and commentary at the Los Angeles Times
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clint_Eastwood&oldid=919541338'
EditJump to:Overview (3) Mini Bio (1) Spouse (2) Trade Mark (22) Trivia (264) Personal Quotes (240) Salary (27)
Overview (3)
Born | in San Francisco, California, USA |
Birth Name | Clinton Eastwood Jr. |
Height | 6' 4' (1.93 m) |
Mini Bio (1)
Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, the son of Clinton Eastwood Sr., a manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood, a housewife turned IBM operator. He had a comfortable, middle-class upbringing in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in music and mechanics, but was an otherwise bored student; this resulted in being held back a grade. Eastwood's parents relocated to Washington state in 1949, and Clint worked menial jobs in the Pacific Northwest until returning to California for a stint at Fort Ord Military Reservation. He enrolled at Los Angeles City College, but dropped out after two semesters to pursue acting. During the mid-'50s he found uncredited bit parts in such B-films as Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955) while simultaneously digging swimming pools to supplement his income. In 1958, he landed his first consequential acting role in the long-running TV show Rawhide (1959) with Eric Fleming. Though only a secondary player for the first seven seasons, Clint was promoted to series star when Fleming departed in its final year, along the way becoming a recognizable face to television viewers around the country.
Eastwood's big-screen breakthrough came as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy of excellent spaghetti westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). The movies were shown exclusively in Italy during their respective copyright years with Enrico Maria Salerno providing the voice for Clint's character, finally getting American distribution in 1967. As the last film racked up phenomenal grosses, Eastwood, 37, rose from undistinguished TV actor to sought-after box office attraction in just a matter of months. Yet again a success was the late-blooming star's first U.S.-made western, Hang 'Em High (1968). He followed that up with the lead role in Coogan's Bluff (1968) (the loose inspiration for the TV series McCloud (1970)), before playing second fiddle to Richard Burton in the World War II epic Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Lee Marvin in the bizarre musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). In Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), Eastwood leaned in an experimental direction by combining tough-guy action with offbeat humor.
1971 proved to be his busiest year in film. He starred as a predatory Union soldier in The Beguiled (1971) to critical acclaim, and made his directorial debut with the classic erotic thriller Play Misty for Me (1971). His role as the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971), meanwhile, gave him cultural icon status and helped popularize the loose-cannon cop genre. Thereafter, Eastwood put out a steady stream of entertaining movies: the westerns Joe Kidd (1972), High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (his first of six onscreen collaborations with then live-in love Sondra Locke), the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force (1973) and The Enforcer (1976), the road adventures Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Gauntlet (1977), and the fact-based prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). He branched out into the comedy genre in 1978 with Every Which Way but Loose (1978), which became the biggest hit of his career up to that time; taking inflation into account, it still is. In short, The Eiger Sanction (1975) notwithstanding, the '70s were an uninterrupted success for Clint.
Eastwood kicked off the '80s with Any Which Way You Can (1980), the blockbuster sequel to Every Which Way but Loose. The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), was the highest-grossing film of the franchise and spawned his trademark catchphrase, 'Make my day.' Clint also starred in Bronco Billy (1980), Firefox (1982), Tightrope (1984), City Heat (1984), Pale Rider (1985) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986), all of which were solid hits, with Honkytonk Man (1982) being his only commercial failure of the period. In 1988 he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988). Although it was a success overall, it did not have the box office punch the previous films had. About this time, with outright bombs Pink Cadillac (1989) and The Rookie (1990), it seemed Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He started taking on low-key projects, directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie Parker that earned him a Golden Globe, and starring in and directing White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an uneven, loose biopic of John Huston. (Both films had a limited release.)
Eastwood bounced back with his dark western Unforgiven (1992), which garnered the then 62-year-old his first ever Academy Award nomination (Best Actor), and an Oscar win for Best Director. Churning out a quick follow-up hit, he took on the secret service in In the Line of Fire (1993), then accepted second billing for the first time since 1970 in the interesting but poorly received A Perfect World (1993) with Kevin Costner. Next up was a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), where Clint surprised audiences with a sensitive performance alongside none other than Meryl Streep. But it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Subsequent films were credible, but nothing really stuck out. Absolute Power (1997) and Space Cowboys (2000) did well enough, while True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002) were received badly, as was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), which he directed but didn't appear in.
Eastwood surprised yet again in 2005, when he returned to the top of the A-list with Million Dollar Baby (2004). Also starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, the hugely successful drama won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Clint. He scored his second Best Actor nomination, too. Eastwood's next starring vehicle, Gran Torino (2008), earned almost $30 million in its opening weekend and was his highest grosser unadjusted for inflation. 2012 saw him in a rare lighthearted movie, Trouble with the Curve (2012), as well as a reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012). Between screen appearances, Clint chalked up an impressive list of additional credits behind the camera. He directed Mystic River (2003) (in which Sean Penn and Tim Robbins gave Oscar-winning performances), Flags of our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), Changeling (2008) (a vehicle for screen megastar Angelina Jolie), Invictus (2009) (again with Freeman), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), Jersey Boys (2014), American Sniper (2014) (2014's top box office champ), Sully (2016) (starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger) and The 15:17 to Paris (2018) (based on the thwarted Thalys train attack of 2015). His latest project, in which he stars as an unlikely drug courier, is The Mule (2018).
Eastwood's individuality outside of work has been extremely convoluted, to put it mildly. He managed to keep his personal life top secret for the first three decades of his celebrity. (To this day the Hollywood kingpin refuses to disclose exactly how many families he's started.) He had a long time relationship with frequent '70s/'80s co-star Locke, who published a scathing memoir in 1997, and has fathered at least eight children by at least six different women. He has only been married twice, however -- with a mere three of his progeny coming from those unions. Clint Eastwood lives in L.A. and owns property in Monterey, northern California, Idaho's Sun Valley and Maui, Hawaii.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Scott- msa0510@mail.ecu.edu
Spouse (2)
Dina Eastwood | (31 March 1996 - 22 December 2014) ( divorced) ( 1 child) |
Margaret Neville Johnson | (19 December 1953 - 19 November 1984) ( divorced) ( 2 children) |
Trade Mark (22)
During the credits at the end of his movies, the camera will move around the location it was filmed in, after which there will be freezeframe for the rest of the credits.
Known on-set as a director for filming very few takes and having an easy shooting schedule. Tim Robbins once said that when working on Mystic River (2003), Eastwood would usually ask for only one take, or two 'if you were lucky', and that a day of filming would consist of starting 'no earlier than 9 a.m. and you leave, usually, after lunch.'
The lead characters in his movie are often outsiders with a dark past they prefer not to remember
Unmistakable authoritative rasping (sometimes hissing) voice
Deadpan delivery of one-liners
Many of his films show at least one variation of sexual assault
His films are often period pieces with a strong attention to detail
Often plays characters who are consumed by regrets over past mistakes and are given one chance to redeem themselves
Recurring pattern of his characters is having an unloaded gun or one that misfires
His films often feature misguided but well meaning younger characters who are mentored by older characters
Actors in his films usually underplay and get emotion across in subtle ways
Many of his films revolve around people struggling with serious trauma that they are unable or unwilling to get help for
Often plays characters with no name, or whose name is revealed in the end
Usually borrows stylistic elements from his 'mentors' Sergio Leone and Don Siegel
His leading ladies are almost never played by an A-list actress
His movies often begin and end with the death of a character
Trivia (264)
Owns the Mission Ranch hotel & restaurant in Carmel, Calif., the exclusive Tehama golf club in Carmel Valley, and is partial owner of the Pebble Beach Golf Country Club in nearby Monterey Peninsula.
Received an honorary Cesar award in Paris, France for his body of work. [February 1998]
Ranked #2 in Empire (UK) magazine's 'The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time' list. [October 1997]
Gained popularity with his first three major films, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) (which weren't released in America until 1967/68). Soon afterwards Jolly Films (which produced A Fistful of Dollars (1964)) came out with a film called 'The Magnificent Stranger', which was actually two episodes of Rawhide (1959) edited together. Eastwood sued and the film was withdrawn.
He wore the same sarape, without ever having washed it, in all three of his 'Man with No Name' Westerns.
Elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. It has often been claimed that Eastwood ran for office as a Republican. In fact, although he was registered as a Republican in California, the position of mayor is non-partisan. [April 1986]
Was apparently such an organized director that he finished Absolute Power (1997) days ahead of schedule.
Got his role in Rawhide (1959) while visiting a friend at the CBS lot when a studio exec spotted him because he 'looked like a cowboy.'
In 1951 and 1952, he was a lifeguard and projectionist of training films for the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Ord in Marina, California. According to former buddy Don Loomis, as told in 'Clint: The Life and Legend' (2002) by Patrick McGilligan, page 49, Eastwood avoided being sent to combat in Korea by romancing one of the daughters of a Fort Ord officer, who might have been entreated to watch out for him when names came up for postings.
Has at least eight children by at least six different women: Laurie Alison Murray (b. February 11, 1954) who was given up for adoption by her biological mother; Kimber Eastwood (b. June 17, 1964) with Roxanne Tunis; Kyle Eastwood (b. May 19, 1968) and Alison Eastwood (b. May 22, 1972) with Maggie Johnson; Scott Eastwood (b. March 21, 1986) and Kathryn Eastwood (b. February 2, 1988) with Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Eastwood (b. August 7, 1993) with Frances Fisher; Morgan Eastwood (b. December 12, 1996) with Dina Eastwood.
It's interesting, given his penchant towards violence, that his name, Clint Eastwood, is an anagram for 'old west action'.
His name is used as the title of the hit Gorillaz song and video 'Clint Eastwood' (2001).
Mentioned in the theme song of the 1980s TV hit The Fall Guy (1981).
Until his pride was displaced by discovery of a larger version of same tree in 2002, Eastwood used to be proud owner of tree believed to be the nation's largest known hardwood - a bluegum eucalyptus.
Sworn in as parks commissioner for state of California at Big Basin Redwood Park, Santa Cruz, 8 June 2002. Holding up his new commissioner's badge, he told the crowd, 'You're all under arrest.'.
Received the Career Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. [August 2000]
Of English, Scottish, Irish, and smaller amounts of German, Dutch, and Welsh, ancestry.
His character's voice was provided by Enrico Maria Salerno in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). For the trilogy's American release, Eastwood redubbed his dialogue in English.
When he directs, he insists that his actors wear as little makeup as possible and he likes to print first takes. As a result, his films consistently finish on schedule and on budget.
When directing, he simply says 'okay' instead of 'action' and 'cut.' (source: Shootout (2003)).
His production company is Malpaso Productions, which he formed in 1968. The company's first feature release was Hang 'Em High (1968).
Mentioned on T.G. Sheppard's hit single 'Make My Day,' which in the first half of 1984 reached #12 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart and also reached #62 on that magazine's Hot 100 singles survey.
When Don Siegel fell ill during production of Dirty Harry (1971), Eastwood stepped in as director during the attempted-suicide/jumper sequence.
Ex-wife Dina Ruiz (Dina Eastwood) is a former local television news anchor/reporter from Salinas, California. They met when she was assigned to interview him for KSBW-TV in April 1993. Dina admitted that she'd seen 'zero' of his movies. The pair didn't start dating right away since Clint was expecting a baby with Frances Fisher. In February 1995, Clint made his first public appearance with Dina at a golf tournament, without ever announcing that he and Frances had broken up.
Is 35 years older than ex-wife Dina Eastwood. Dina's parents were 19 and 21 when she was born. This makes Clint 16 years older than his former mother-in-law and 14 years older than his former father-in-law.
Ex-brother-in-law of Dominic V. Ruiz & Jade Marx-Berti.
He got involved in an illicit relationship with Roxanne Tunis in 1959 during the second season of Rawhide (1959). Tunis was a regular extra/stuntwoman on the show. Their daughter Kimber Eastwood was born in 1964 as Kimber Tunis. Following Kimber's birth, Eastwood asked Maggie Johnson for a divorce. But within a matter of weeks afterward, Johnson fell very ill with hepatitis and had to be hospitalized. Eastwood and Johnson reconciled, mutually understanding that it would be best if she turned a blind eye to his existing family, and in 1968, almost 15 years after they married, their first child together was born. Johnson was finally introduced to Tunis in 1972, outside Eastwood's presence, by a crew member on the set of Breezy (1973). The affair between Eastwood and Tunis is believed to have dissolved in the mid-seventies, around the time he and Sondra Locke got together. Tunis later appeared as an extra in Every Which Way but Loose (1978) as a member of the audience at LA's Palomino country-western club where Locke's character sings, but Eastwood didn't tell Locke about Kimber until 1983. She thought it was cruel that he admitted he was Kimber's father but never treated her accordingly.
Eastwood's two children from liaisons with Jacelyn Reeves were given their mother's last name. No father is listed on either of their birth certificates.
He has always disliked the reading of political and social agendas in his films, which has occurred from Dirty Harry (1971) to Million Dollar Baby (2004). He has always maintained that all of his films are apolitical and what he has in mind when making a film is whether it's going to be entertaining and compelling.
Has been named to Quigley Publications' annual Top 10 Poll of Money-Making Stars 21 times, making him #2 all-time for appearances in the top 10 list. Only John Wayne, with 25 appearances in the Top 10, has more. Eastwood, who first appeared in the Top Ten at #5 in 1968, finished #2 to Wayne at the box office in 1971 after finishing #2 to Paul Newman in 1970. After his first two consecutive #1 appearances in 1972 and 1973, he dropped back to #2 in 1974, trailing Robert Redford at the box office. Clint was again #2 in 1979, 1981 and 1982 (topped by Burt Reynolds all three years), before leading the charts in 1983 and '84. He last topped the poll in 1993.
Was named the top box-office star of 1972 and again in 1973 by the Motion Picture Herald, based on an annual poll of exhibitors as to the drawing power of movie stars at the box-office, conducted by Quigley Publications.
He was the only nominee for the Best Actor Oscar in 2004 (for Million Dollar Baby (2004)) to play a fictitious character. All four other nominees portrayed real people in their respective films.
A sample of his whistling can be heard on the track 'Big Noise' from his son Kyle Eastwood's jazz CD 'Paris Blue' (2004).
At The 45th Annual Academy Awards (1973), he presented the 1972 Best Picture Oscar to Al Ruddy, the producer of The Godfather (1972). Thirty-two years later they would jointly accept the 2004 Best Picture Oscar at the The 77th Annual Academy Awards (2005), along with fellow Million Dollar Baby (2004) co-producer Tom Rosenberg.
At The 72nd Annual Academy Awards (2000) he presented the Best Picture statuette to American Beauty (1999).
Was named the #1 top money-making star at the box office in Quigley Publications' annual poll of movie exhibitors five times between 1972 and 1993. Bing Crosby, Burt Reynolds and Tom Hanks also have been named #1 five times, while Tom Cruise holds the record for being named #1 six times.
Stacy McLaughlin filed a $100,000 lawsuit against Eastwood in May 1989 for 'knowingly, intentionally and deliberately' ramming her Nissan Maxima with his quarter-ton pickup at the Burbank Studios on Dec. 16, 1988, when she mistakenly parked in his parking space while dropping off a tape at his Malpaso Productions office. Eastwood, who contended he was only trying to park his vehicle in its rightful space, paid $960 to repair the headlights and bumper of McLaughlin's car. She sought the additional money as punitive damages, claiming malice on Eastwood's part. The case went to court in July 1991, but a judge refused to grant the damages.
At age 74, he became the oldest person to win the Best Director Oscar for Million Dollar Baby (2004).
He directed 11 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Gene Hackman, Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Marcia Gay Harden, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper, and himself (in Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004)). Hackman, Penn, Robbins, Freeman and Swank won Oscars for their performances in one of Eastwood's movies.
For two consecutive years he directed two out of the four actors who won Oscars for their performances: Sean Penn (Best Actor) and Tim Robbins (Best Supporting Actor) in Mystic River (2003)) in 2004, and Hilary Swank (Best Actress) and Morgan Freeman (Best Supporting Actor) for Million Dollar Baby (2004)) in 2005.
Received an honorary Doctorate from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Wesleyan is also home to his personal archives. [2000]
Every year the PGA tour comes to Pebble Beach, Ca., to host a celebrity golf tournament where celebrities team up with the professionals. Clint participated in this every year from 1962-2002 and is the longest running participant. He now serves as Host.
In early 2005 he announced that he would supply the voice for a 'Dirty Harry' video game. However, the game ended up getting canceled in 2007.
Premiere Magazine ranked him as #43 on a list of the Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in their Stars in Our Constellation feature. [2005]
Some of his favorite movies are The 39 Steps (1935), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) and Chariots of Fire (1981).
Some of his favorite actors are Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum and James Stewart.
Became so fond of British pubs and beer during his time in London filming Where Eagles Dare (1968) that he opened the Hog's Breath Inn with co-founders Paul E. Lippman and Walter Becker in 1972. According to Lippman, 'I had to terminate three pretty good waitresses in the first few months of operation; not because they went to bed with Clint Eastwood, but because they either talked about it all over the premises, or came in the next day acting like they owned the place.' The restaurant closed in 1999 and has since re-opened under new management.
Has his look-alike puppet in the French show Les Guignols de l'info (1988).
He stood at 6'4' at his peak, but due to recent back problems, he can only stretch up to 6'2'.
He, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Mel Gibson, Richard Attenborough and Kevin Costner are the only directors best known as actors who have won an Academy Award as Best Director.
President of jury at the Cannes Film Festival. [1994]
Claimed that the trait he most despised in others was racism.
The boots that he wore in Unforgiven (1992) are the same ones he wore in the TV series Rawhide (1959). They are now a part of his private collection and were on loan to the 2005 Sergio Leone exhibit at the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles. In essence these boots have book-ended his career in the Western genre.
Made six movies with former partner Sondra Locke: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Gauntlet (1977), Every Which Way but Loose (1978), Bronco Billy (1980), Any Which Way You Can (1980) and Sudden Impact (1983).
As a director, he has always refused to test screen his films before their release.
He objected to the end of Dirty Harry (1971) when Harry throws his badge away after killing the Scorpio Killer, arguing with director Don Siegel that Harry knew that being a policeman was the only work for which he was suited. Siegel eventually convinced Eastwood that Harry threw his badge away as a symbol that he had lost faith in the justice system.
He was a contract player at Universal International in the mid-1950s. He and a younger actor named Burt Reynolds were released from their contracts and left the studio on the same day. They were both fired by the same director. Eastwood was fired when the director didn't want to use him in a movie because of the wart above his top lip. Reynolds, who was serving as a stunt man, was fired after he shoved the director into a water tank during an argument over how to do a stunt fall.
At the 2005 National Board of Review awards dinner in New York City, Eastwood joked that he would kill filmmaker Michael Moore if Moore ever showed up at his home with a camera (an evident reference to Moore's controversial interview with actor/Second Amendment advocate Charlton Heston, for Bowling for Columbine (2002)). After the crowd laughed, Eastwood said, 'I mean it.' Moore's spokesman said, 'Michael laughed along with everyone else, and took Mr. Eastwood's comments in the lighthearted spirit in which they were given.' Publicly, Eastwood has not commented further.
Took acting class from Michael Chekhov in Hollywood.
In 1972 Eastwood attended President Richard Nixon's landslide victory celebration in Los Angeles, along with John Wayne, Charlton Heston and Glenn Ford.
Was appointed to serve on the National Council of the Arts by President Nixon in 1972.
Has ruled out the possibility of playing Dirty Harry again, saying he has 'outgrown him age-wise.'
His performance as 'Dirty' Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971) is ranked #92 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
At a press conference for his movie Mystic River (2003), Eastwood condemned the Iraq war as a 'big mistake' and defended Sean Penn's visit to Baghdad, saying he might have done the same thing but for his age.
Eastwood declined an offer from President George Bush to campaign for him in the 1992 Presidential election. He told an interviewer the next year, 'I think what the ultra-right wing conservatives did to the Republicans is really self-destructive, absolutely stupid.'.
His performance as Blondie in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is ranked #50 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
His performance as 'Dirty' Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971) is ranked #42 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
Ended his longstanding friendship with onetime neighbor William R. Thompkins in 1964.
He claims that he wound up getting the role in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) because James Coburn, to whom the role was originally offered, wanted $25,000. Eastwood accepted the role for $15,000.
Was offered Al Pacino's role in Any Given Sunday (1999), but turned it down because Warner Bros. wouldn't let him direct it also.
Is a patron of the arts, notably as an avid collector of western art.
Presented the Golden Globe Award for Best Director to Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain (2005).
His 'Fistful' mannerisms was imitated in Canada, by the Tim Horton's restaurant chain, to promote the 2005 Southwest chicken sub.
Claims to have been an early choice for the title role in Superman (1978).
Whenever asked if he would do a Dirty Harry 6, he often joked that he can imagine Dirty Harry now long retired, and fly-fishing with his .44 magnum.
Cited as America's Favorite Movie Star by the Harris Polls conducted in 1993, 1994 and 1997. Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford are the only other actors to be cited as the #1 Movie Star as many times.
He is 'Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur', a high French distinction that has been conferred on him by President Jacques Chirac on February 17, 2007, as a tribute to his career as an actor and a filmmaker.
Voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California in 2003 and 2006.
In 1969 he attended a celebration of John Wayne's 40-year career at Paramount Pictures, along with Lee Marvin, Rock Hudson, Fred MacMurray, James Stewart, Ernest Borgnine, Michael Caine and Laurence Harvey.
Had to fill in for Charlton Heston at The 44th Annual Academy Awards (1972) until Heston arrived.
Was offered Gregory Peck's role in Mackenna's Gold (1969), but turned it down to make Hang 'Em High (1968) instead.
The producers of Dirty Harry (1971) originally didn't want Eastwood, since they felt he was too young at 41. After older stars like John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum turned the film down, Eastwood was cast. He last played Harry Callahan aged 58 in The Dead Pool (1988), which was only a year older than the character was supposed to be in the first film according to the original screenplay.
William Friedkin offered him the lead in Sorcerer (1977), but Eastwood didn't want to travel anywhere at that time. Jack Nicholson turned the film down for the same reason.
Mentioned in theme song in The Adventures of George the Projectionist (2006).
Received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Southern California. [May 2007]
Learned mountain climbing for The Eiger Sanction (1975) because he felt the scenes were too dangerous for him to pay a stuntman to do for him. He was the last climber up The Totem Pole in Monument Valley, and as part of the contract, the movie crew removed the pitons left by decades of other climbers. The scene where he was hanging off the mountain by a single rope was actually Eastwood, and not a stuntman.
An accomplished jazz pianist, he performs much of the music for his movies, including the scene in the bar in In the Line of Fire (1993).
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Eastwood into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts. [December 2006]
Along with John Travolta and Tom Selleck, he attended the formal state dinner at the White House held by President Ronald Reagan to welcome Prince Charles and Princess Diana to the United States in 1985.
In the late 1980s he discussed remaking the classic Sam Peckinpah western Ride the High Country (1962) with Charlton Heston.
He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.
William Goldman said of Eastwood that he was the only person to be a star in the '70s, '80s and '90s. By 'star' Goldman means Variety's list of top ten actors of the decade.
Former longtime companion Sondra Locke blasted Eastwood in her autobiography 'The Good, the Bad & the Very Ugly: A Hollywood Journey' (1997). Locke described Eastwood as 'a monster who thought nothing of destroying anything inconvenient to him' and likened the actor to O.J. Simpson. 'Others who knew Clint said that I had been 'far too kind' to him,' she said of this evisceration. (Neither Eastwood or his publicist, Joe Hyams, would comment.) Locke reiterated previous testimony that Eastwood had manipulated her into having two abortions and sterilizing herself in the 1970s and sabotaged her directorial career after their 1989 split. But she also made a new allegation that he sired another woman's two children during the last three years of their relationship. The allegation of secret children was not even acknowledged by mainstream media, despite the fact that Locke's book exposed the kids' names and exact birthdates. Published reviews misrepresented the book by omitting its serious accusations and emphasizing trivial tidbits instead. (One anecdote widely printed in lieu of anything relevant was Eastwood's habit of asking 'Sweetie, did you floss?' before they made love.) Locke learned of Eastwood's double life, she wrote, when an investigative journalist phoned her during depositions in the palimony case. The extraordinary revelation -- that Eastwood had a hidden family in Carmel, residing in a house under his business manager Roy Kaufman's name -- was confirmed in closed court after Locke filed a motion to discover and Eastwood's will was called in for evidence, with the document showing one Jacelyn Reeves and Reeves' legally fatherless son and daughter listed as beneficiaries.
In April 1989, Sondra Locke filed a $70 million palimony lawsuit against Clint, after he changed the locks on their Bel-Air home and moved her possessions into storage while she was at work on the Impulse (1990) set. The relationship had been on the rocks for months, with Clint leaving nonverbal hints that he wanted Sondra to get out of his life voluntarily (once, while she was still in the shower, he left to go to a party to which they'd both been invited), but they weren't officially broken up. During the 15 days between the lockout and Sondra filing suit, she tried to resolve things quietly, but Clint offered her nothing and would only communicate via lawyers. (To Sondra, an equal division of assets was principle rather than greed. She had actually saved up $3 million over the course of her 14-year relationship with Clint because he was paying all their expenses.) Clint refused to say Sondra's name out loud at his depositions, reducing her to pronouns or alternately referring to her as 'the person.' He also never made eye contact or any reference to her proximity in the courtroom. Sondra said the stress of the ordeal induced breast cancer, requiring mastectomies. In November 1990, 19 months into proceedings, she arranged to meet with Clint in private and achieved an immediate settlement. Sondra received $450,000 lump sum plus monthly support payments, title to a house in West Hollywood that Clint had been leasing to her lawful wedded but openly gay husband Gordon Anderson, and a $1.5 million multi-year contract with Warner Bros. to develop and direct films. By 1994, however, the studio had yet to provide Sondra with a single directorial assignment and rejected over 30 projects she submitted. Sondra became convinced the deal was a sham and that she was employed only on paper. 'I was stunned and outraged at how I had been tricked and cheated' she said. (Her attorney, Peggy Garrity, would later claim Clint held out the Warner deal like a 'dangled carrot' to get her to drop the palimony suit.) Sondra sued Clint again for fraud in June 1995, having unearthed a bookkeeping printout to corroborate the charge. She asserted that the money WB pretended they were paying her came from Clint's own pocket and had been laundered through the operating budget for Unforgiven (1992). The case went to trial in September 1996; one juror disclosed that the panel agreed to find for Sondra by a 10-to-2 vote (nine votes are needed for a verdict) and were only debating the amount. Clint's legal team convinced him to settle at the eleventh hour, and on the morning jurors were set to begin a second day of deliberation, Sondra announced her decision to drop her suit against Clint in return for an unspecified monetary reward. As Clint walked down the courthouse steps, he told a bank of cameras, 'What does this say to young women across the country who work very hard for a living?' (A nonsensical remark, since the case he had just lost was all about work--work he had obstructed his ex-soulmate from doing.) Sondra then brought separate action against Warner Brothers, seeking $100 million in damages for conspiring with Clint to ruin her career. It was settled out of court in May 1999, ending the decade-long legal saga. While she was bound by confidentiality not to reveal the amount, Locke wasn't shy about disclosing her feelings. 'I feel elated. This has been the best day in a long, long time' she told reporters.
Though he often smokes in his movies, he is a lifelong non-smoker offscreen.
Although he can handle pistols with either hand equally well, he is left-eye dominant, evident when he shoots a rifle as in Joe Kidd (1972) or Unforgiven (1992), but is right handed, as seen when he wears or handles one pistol.
He and Burt Reynolds had major influences on each other's careers. It was he who sent a copy of 'Sharky's Machine' to Reynolds, which gave Reynolds the idea to turn the novel into a movie, Sharky's Machine (1981), which went on to garner excellent reviews. On the other hand, it was Reynolds who sent Clint a copy of 'The Outlaw Josey Wales', later made into a film by Eastwood (The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)). Years later, Reynolds told him about 'this great novel' called 'The Bridges of Madison County', and some time later it was shot by Eastwood (The Bridges of Madison County (1995)).
Served as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA for one term for the nominal salary of $300. A small contingent insisted that Eastwood was a spoiled brat mayor and the town acted just like an indulgent parent. 'We wanted to eliminate traffic and parking problems, not make more with hordes of tourists. He brought a lot of notoriety that we didn't need,' said Jane Mayer, president of the Carmel Residents Association. 'Some people thought he was charming, but I disagree. He didn't know anything about the issues. People are giving him credit for things that were on the table for years. He also hired a public relations woman and kept an unlisted phone number - he was totally inaccessible. I don't think that's being a good mayor.' 'It was a disaster,' added former mayor Gunnar Norberg. 'Eastwood turned a peaceful forest by the sea into Coney Island.' Norberg claimed his blood pressure hit such heights when he was around Eastwood that his doctor refused to let him attend council meetings. Sondra Locke, Eastwood's cohabiting partner at the time, later acknowledged she 'knew he wasn't the dedicated mayor he pretended to be.'.
Turned down the role of Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now (1979) because he found the storyline 'too dark.' The role went to Martin Sheen.
Was offered the role of James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973). He was flattered, but declined, saying that Bond should be played by an English actor.
Has a younger sister named Jeanne Bernhardt (b. 1934) and two nieces, Anna (b. 1958) and Celia (b. 1961).
Owns a hillside mansion in Sun Valley, Idaho and a beachfront estate in Maui.
Notable women Eastwood had affairs with include actresses Mamie Van Doren, Inger Stevens, Jean Seberg, Jo Ann Harris, Jamie Rose, Rebecca Perle, Jill Banner, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Saint James; competitive swimmer Anita Lhoest; singer Keely Smith; restaurant critic Gael Greene; columnist Bridget Byrne; French model Cathy Reghin; WB story analyst Megan Rose; wildlife activist Jane Cameron Agee; and former Carmel mayor Jean Grace. Generally, however, Eastwood preferred unknown women he would not later accidentally meet. In his early 40s, he'd sometimes pick up young ladies from the Carmel tourist shops for quick intercourse in his truck parked on Dolores Street.
Practices transcendental meditation twice a day, and said in 2013 that he has been meditating for the past 40 years.
Father was Clinton Eastwood Sr. (1906-1970), an executive at Georgia Pacific LLC, a pulp and paper manufacturing company. Stepfather, after his widowed mother remarried in 1972, was John Belden Wood (1913-2004), a lumber executive.
Considered for the role of Rambo in First Blood (1982) long before Sylvester Stallone was hired.
He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts on February 25, 2010 for his services and contributions to the arts.
Profiled in 'Directors Close Up' by Jeremy Kagan. [2005]
Declined to have a party for his 80th birthday, explaining that at his age he doesn't like birthday parties for himself. He said his only plans to celebrate the occasion would be to go out for a drink with his wife.
The genesis of his production company, Malpaso Productions, had a curious origin. When Italian director Sergio Leone approached Eastwood about appearing in what would become the 'Spaghetti Western' trilogy--A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)--Eastwood was eager to take it but was advised against it by his agent, suggesting it would be a 'bad move' (mal paso). Against all advice, the actor went ahead and accepted the 'man with no name' role and his decision turned out to be a 'good move'. Eastwood never forgot the irony of the situation and adopted 'Malpaso' as his production company name.
Turned down the role of Harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), which went to Charles Bronson.
Sergio Leone asked him and his The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) co-stars Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef to appear in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). The idea was reportedly scrapped due to scheduling conflicts with other films, although some rumors state they declined when they heard that their characters were going to be killed off by Charles Bronson's character in the first five minutes. Leone filmed the scene instead with character actors Woody Strode, Jack Elam and Al Mulock.
Attended Glenview Elementary School, Crocker Highlands Elementary School and Frank C. Havens Elementary School, all located within a short distance of each other in Oakland and Piedmont. He was held back due to poor academic scores, but in at least one case, delinquent behavior was the reason he left one school to enroll in another. He went to Piedmont Junior High and attended Piedmont High School from January 1945 to at least January 1946. Eastwood was asked to leave Piedmont High for writing an obscene suggestion to a school official on the athletic field scoreboard, and burying someone in effigy on the school lawn, on top of other school infractions. He transferred to Oakland Technical High School, scheduled to graduate in January 1949 as a midyear graduate, although it is not clear if he ever did.
Served as President of the Cannes Jury when Pulp Fiction (1994) won but the film was not his personal choice: 'On the jury here when 'Pulp Fiction' won, somebody said, 'Oh, Clint Eastwood was on the jury, so he voted for the American film.' But my sensibilities are European, here is where my success started. Actually, Yimou Zhang's To Live (1994) was my favorite piece, but most of the European jurors seemed to like 'Pulp Fiction.'.
Five of his movies were nominated for AFI's 100 Years..100 Movies: Dirty Harry (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Unforgiven (1992), Mystic River (2003) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). 'Unforgiven' made the list at #68, 30 places up from its original rank at #98.
Turned down Paul Newman's role in The Towering Inferno (1974).
Paul Haggis, who wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby (2004), offered Eastwood the role of Hank Deerfiled in In the Valley of Elah (2007). Eastwood turned it down and recommended Tommy Lee Jones, who went on to receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance.
He was going to play the villain Two-Face on the Batman (1966) TV series, but the show was canceled before the episode began shooting.
Although he has been associated with violence throughout his career, he personally detests it and has carefully shown the horrific consequences of violence in films such as Unforgiven (1992), A Perfect World (1993), Absolute Power (1997), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Gran Torino (2008).
According to Robert Daley, the head of Warner Bros. when Eastwood made 15 pictures there, none of those films ever included preview screenings because Clint 'doesn't believe in the preview process'.
He and Warren Beatty are the only actor-directors to earn Best Actor and Best Director Oscar nominations for the same film two times.
His signature character, 'The Man With No Name', is portrayed by Timothy Olyphant as 'The Spirit of the West' in Rango (2011).
A former logger, steel furnace stoker and gas station attendant before becoming an actor.
Directed two films concurrently in 1973; High Plains Drifter (1973) and Breezy (1973).
Cinematographer Bruce Surtees and actor Geoffrey Lewis are regulars in Eastwood films (he's directed).
Father-in-law of Stacy Poitras and Shawn Midkiff.
In Cape Town, South Africa, filming Invictus (2009). [March 2009]
Attending Cannes premiere of latest film Changeling (2008), a period thriller set in the 1920s. [May 2008]
The character Shane Gooseman ('Goose' for short) from the animated space opera The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers (1986) was based on him and his screen persona.
A guest speaker at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Eastwood spent much of his speech time on a largely improvised routine addressing an empty chair representing President Barack Obama. It generated many responses and a lot of discussion. Old flame Frances Fisher wrote a condemning post on Facebook and insinuated that Eastwood's appearance was a publicity stunt to get more tickets sold for his new movie Trouble with the Curve (2012), adding 'I've seen this act before. And I didn't buy it. Crazy like a fox. I saw the same act sitting with therapists, mediators and lawyers. [..] Even though I am certainly not a Republican, I felt bad for the people who thought this was a good idea.' Several commentators including Bill Maher sidetracked to point out the hypocrisy of Eastwood's mere presence at the gathering, since his inordinately adventurous love life antithesizes the 'family values' advocated by Presidential nominee Mitt Romney on the same stage that evening.
Has played the same character in more than one film three times: The Man with No Name in the Leone trilogy, Philo Beddoe in the Any Which Way movies and Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry franchise.
He appeared in and directed two Best Picture Academy Award winners: Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). Morgan Freeman also appeared in both films.
Had planned to star in Die Hard (1988) and originally owned the rights to the novel 'Nothing Lasts Forever' on which the film is based, but opted to make The Dead Pool (1988) instead.
Ranked #19 in Forbes magazine's list of the world's 40 best-paid entertainers, with estimated earnings of $44 million in 1995 and 1996. [September 1996]
Along with Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, Kenneth Branagh and Roberto Benigni, he is one of only seven men to receive Academy Award nominations for both Best Actor and Best Director for the same film: Welles for Citizen Kane (1941), Olivier for Hamlet (1948), Allen for Annie Hall (1977), Beatty for both Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Reds (1981), Branagh for Henry V (1989), Eastwood for Unforgiven (1992) and Benigni for Life Is Beautiful (1997).
Ex-significant other Sondra Locke was legally married to homosexual Gordon Anderson from 1967 until her death in 2018, covering the whole time she and Eastwood were living together. While house hunting with Locke in the late seventies, Eastwood introduced himself as 'Mr. Anderson,' even when he happened to be wearing a Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) T-shirt. Locke recalled that the sales agents could barely keep a straight face and always looked at their feet when addressing him as such.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. 'World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945- 1985'. Pages 294-302. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
Early in his career he appeared in a 'B' western, Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958), in which he was billed third and leading lady Margia Dean was billed second. Years later, after Eastwood had become a superstar actor and director, Dean ran into him at a social function and teased him, 'Just remember, I got top billing over you'.
Went through a brief period in Hollywood sitting for hours on a Schwab's drugstore stool in a tight sweater waiting to be 'discovered' à la Lana Turner.
Has a grandson born in February 1984 named Clinton Eastwood Gaddie (aka Clinton McCartney) from his illegitimate daughter Kimber Tunis (Kimber Eastwood). Clint and Roxanne Tunis are great-grandparents via Kimber's son, to great-grandson Clinton IV (born 2011) and great-granddaughter Penelope McCartney (born 2018). Their existences have never been acknowledged in the press.
Clint and former spouse Maggie Johnson were estranged for at least nine years and legally separated for six before she filed for divorce in May 1984 (it was finalized that November). Johnson had finally decided to make the split official so she could marry Henry Wynberg, a used car salesman slightly younger than herself. The Johnson-Wynberg union ended in 1989 after four years, and in 1992 Wynberg, then 58, married a 19-year-old Costa Rican woman.
Couples in his social circle used to include Merv Griffin & Eva Gabor, Bud Yorkin & Cynthia Sikes, Richard D. Zanuck & Lili Fini Zanuck, Arnold Schwarzenegger & Maria Shriver.
Had a falling out with longtime associate Fritz Manes during the filming of Heartbreak Ridge (1986). Manes was fired over the telephone by Eastwood's secretary. When Manes went over to Malpaso to collect his belongings, the locks on his office had been changed and his possessions were sitting outside next to a dumpster.
Dated Marisa Berenson, Dani Crayne, Barbra Streisand and Barbara Minty.
Landed his breakthrough role in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) after Charles Bronson, Rory Calhoun, James Coburn, Henry Fonda, Ty Hardin, Steve Reeves, Tony Russel and Henry Silva all turned it down.
Wanted to direct Angels & Demons (2009), but didn't get the chance because Ron Howard was contractually obligated to direct it because of his contract from The Da Vinci Code (2006).
Once said that his wide hips were his only physical flaw, except for the chipped tooth he eventually had fixed.
Hired a private detective in the early 1980s when his company, Malpaso Productions, began to receive a series of strange, threatening letters addressed to him mailed from various California locations by someone who seemed to have inside knowledge of his life. The trouble was, the detective had an extremely long list of possible Clint enemies and ex-girlfriends but no real clues as to who might be the culprit. After a while suspicion focused on Jane Cameron Agee, an off-and-on paramour of Eastwood's then married to actor James Brolin. Eastwood scoffed at the idea it was her and thought it might be an actress friend of ex-mistress Roxanne Tunis, seeking some kind of revenge on him. One night he drove around the Hollywood Hills with Fritz Manes trying to find this woman's address. He tried to convince Manes that they should burgle her place, and see if the lady's typewriter matched up with the letters. Manes said no, and the vile letters eventually waxed and waned.
When he was 19, he gained unwanted attention from a 23-year-old schoolteacher who stalked him after a one-night stand and threatened to kill herself.
Wanted to play Charles A. Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) and penned a letter to director Billy Wilder in October 1954 requesting to meet in person to discuss his potential eligibility for the role. Eastwood had just done his first screen test for Universal Pictures but had yet to make his acting debut. The role ultimately went to an established star, James Stewart.
On Christmas morning 2001, his daughter Francesca Eastwood and her mother Frances Fisher narrowly escaped a fire that engulfed their rented house in North Vancouver, Canada. Francesca leaped 15 feet from a second-story window into the arms of her mother and a neighbor, and was treated at a hospital for smoke inhalation. Frances was also treated for burns on her hands. Clint flew up to visit them in the hospital and personally thanked his daughter's rescuers.
One of several celebrity endorsers of David Lynch's Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.
On a return air trip from a prearranged tryst in Seattle, a two-seated plane on which he was aboard ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Point Reyes. Using a life raft, Eastwood and the pilot swam 2 miles to shore. After the fact publicity erroneously infers that this occurrence was somehow war related. [September 1951]
Former father-in-law of Kirk Fox and Jordan Feldstein.
Says he voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, Ross Perot in 1992, and John McCain in 2008.
Had a long-held obsession with New York Times film critic Pauline Kael because she never liked his work. After her review of The Enforcer (1976), Clint asked a psychiatrist to do an analysis of Kael from her reviews of his past work, which he had memorized verbatim. It concluded that Kael was actually physically attracted to Clint and because she couldn't have him she hated him. Therefore, it was some sort of vengeance, according to Clint.
Was interested in the prospect of playing Hank Rearden in a cinematic adaptation of 'Atlas Shrugged' that was in development by Al Ruddy in the early '70s.
A slow bloomer in almost every regard, Clint was going on 19 when he left high school (in an era where some students graduated at 16), got his first big film role at age 34, waited until he turned 38 to start a family (not including illegitimate unmentionables), made his directorial debut at 41, and received his first Oscar nomination when he was nearly 63.
Accounts from inside the courtroom in the fraud case brought against him by Sondra Locke noted that Eastwood spoke in a barely audible tone on the witness stand and was unable to cross-reference. In one deposition he used the phrase 'I have no records on that' 79 times.
Developed his movie voice by listening to audio recordings of Marilyn Monroe. He said he'd noticed Monroe's breathy whisper and he thought it was very sexy and since it had worked so well for her, he decided he'd 'do' a male version of it himself.
Has at least six homes in the state of California alone. One of them, the 1,067.5 acre Rising River Ranch near Cassel, formerly belonged to Bing Crosby; Eastwood bought it in November 1978 for $1.9 million after it fell into probate. In July 1979, he paid a little over $1.1 million for a 6,136-square-foot house in Bel Air, just a mile northwest of UCLA. He eventually acquired the place next door as well. The most expensive property he owns is a 15,000-square-foot estate in Carmel, which he spent approximately $20 million building in 2010.
Parodied by Bill Hader on Saturday Night Live (1975).
Used to be buddies with Robert Donner, George Fargo and Chill Wills.
Past cars have included Audi, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and GMC Yukon. As of 2016 he is still driving at 86 years old and his vehicle of choice is an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria.
According to author Patrick McGilligan, in July 1993 Eastwood was confronted with the claims of a woman in her late thirties, originally from Washington State, who had researched her adoption and ascertained that he was her biological father. After having his lawyers and business managers check her out, so the story goes, Eastwood agreed to have dinner with the woman, Laurie Murray, who was married to a rich man and was happy to guard her anonymity - she just wanted to meet him - and promised to stay in touch. (It is worth noting that although McGilligan's book is touted as being scrupulously researched, it does contain easily discernible errors concerning people in Eastwood's life, e.g. ex-consort Sondra Locke's year of birth, son Kyle Eastwood's marital status at a given time and the gender of Clint's only grandchild of record, Graylen Eastwood.) In Les grands reportages: L'album secret de Clint Eastwood (2013), McGilligan stated on camera: 'We don't know how many children Clint has had.' Besides Ms. Murray, since at least 2005 there is a rumor of unknown origin that Eastwood fathered a son named Lesly born on 13 February 1959 to one Rosina Mary Glen. Publicly, Eastwood has neither confirmed nor denied any of these claims.
Turned down The Bucket List (2007).
Doesn't use text messaging and prefers landline when he talks on the phone.
His first onscreen kiss was with Carol Channing in The First Traveling Saleslady (1956).
In addition to his multiple houses, he has a well-appointed apartment behind his studio office in Burbank. In Carmel he used to keep an apartment on the third floor of a building two doors down from the Hog's Breath Inn.
Turned down the role of Archie Gates in Three Kings (1999) which went to 31-years-younger George Clooney. Coincidentally, Eastwood and Clooney have both been romantically linked with Frances Fisher.
Cited under the pseudonym Mr. Smith in Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw's self-help book, 'Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach' (1982).
A July 1968 newspaper item by Dorothy Manners gives insight to his rapid rise to stardom: 'Clint Eastwood is on his way to earning $750,000 per picture while the proverbial man in the street is still asking, 'Who's Clint Eastwood?' He's the hottest property sight unseen (almost) in Hollywood today.' Clint was 38 years old.
Has always been allergic to horses, which is why, in his westerns, he is rarely seen in close-up on horseback. When he had to ride horses in films, he would first have to sniff medication into his nose and lungs. On Bronco Billy (1980) it left him constantly miserable. One time he was so frustrated he socked his horse in the nose.
Ferris Webster worked exclusively as Eastwood's film editor for a decade, but the two had a falling out during postproduction on Firefox (1982).
The only biographical book he's ever authorized is 'Clint Eastwood: A Biography' (1996) by Richard Schickel. It provides extensive plot summary for each of Eastwood's movies but leaves his life little documented by comparison (not to mention omitting several of Eastwood's families). What it does say about his life, while approved by Clint, doesn't sit well with everyone. Sondra Locke denounced Schickel's book as a 'puff piece' and said it was 'full of misstatements and downright fabrication, not only about me but others.' Schickel, who also provided audio commentary for Eastwood films on DVD, passed away in 2017. Locke died a year later.
Clint's first wife Maggie encouraged him to marry Frances Fisher, with whom she and her two kids by Clint, Alison and Kyle, got along great. Fisher was aware of Clint's other family Roxanne and Kimber Tunis, but it was only after giving birth to Eastwood's child that she discovered - not through him - that he had yet another brood with Jacelyn Reeves. So it didn't really come as a surprise to anyone in the know when they decided not to get married, splitting when their daughter Francesca was barely a year old. Frances later had a face-to-face encounter with Reeves at the funeral of one of Clint's golf buddies.
Without taking any acting jobs, he earned $17 million for the period of a year ending in 2010: $6 million apiece for directing Invictus (2009) and Hereafter (2010), $4 million in DVD royalties for Gran Torino (2008), plus $1 million in royalties from earlier projects.
Completely avoids soda and rarely drinks alcohol.
Personal physician Dr. Harry Demopoulos told Muscle & Fitness magazine in 1991 that Clint never eats fat, takes his antioxidants faithfully, works out like a demon and gets plenty of sleep, which is an area that is often neglected in a fitness program.
He started lifting weights at 19, when weight training and bodybuilding were relegated to back-alley sweatshops with black-iron plates.
Eastwood's image was untouched by personal scandal of any sort until late April 1989, when his girlfriend of 14 years, Sondra Locke, made it known to the world that she had undergone two abortions and a tubal ligation 'at his specific request.' ('I had done the unthinkable. I had publicly exposed him,' she commented in retrospect.) The breakup with Locke opened the floodgates to investigative journalism about Eastwood. In July 1989, the National Enquirer reported the existence of a love child he fathered in 1964, and in February 1990, the Star tabloid became the first publication to link Eastwood's name with Jacelyn Reeves--who, it turns out, was the mother of two of his unmentionable offspring. Reputable news outlets wouldn't touch this information for years after. Almost certainly, his career would have suffered had this become public knowledge during the fact. Almost certainly, knowledge of this (and other out-of-wedlock children) would have hampered his 1986 mayoral campaign. When Locke's memoirs were published in 1997, she was shut out of most venues to promote the book. 'Sadly, it was well suppressed by Clint and WB. [..] I was sad that it did not get the attention I feel it deserved,' she said in 2013. 'Clint: The Life and Legend,' a deeply unflattering biography by film historian Patrick McGilligan, was published in Great Britain in 1999, but did not make its way to the United States until 2002, having bounced around publishers for three years amid rumored threats from Eastwood's attorneys. Los Angeles Times critic Allen Barra called it 'perhaps the most thoroughly demythologizing book yet written on modern Hollywood.' On Christmas Eve 2002, Eastwood's lawyer Marshall Grossman filed a $10 million libel suit against McGilligan and St. Martin's Press in San Jose, California. Strangely enough, out of all the sordid stories in the book, the libel claim only covered three points, according to news reports: (1) That Eastwood once punched his first wife Maggie Johnson in the face; (2) That Eastwood is an atheist; (3) That Eastwood used a romantic relationship with an officer's daughter in order to avoid being sent overseas during the Korean conflict. The suit was settled in July 2004 without any public disclosure; McGilligan and the publisher admitted no wrongdoing and there was no penalty. A revised and updated version of 'Clint' was published in 2015, with most of the original content intact. The three cited passages had been excised, and a few other modifications amounting to less than two pages were made. McGilligan says many of things he reported in the first edition are now taken for granted, and one of the reasons Eastwood sued him was an obvious attempt to find out his sources.
Net worth was estimated at $375 million prior to his 2014 divorce from Dina Eastwood. No terms of financial settlement were revealed in the divorce decree, so it's unclear where his personal fortune currently stands.
A bachelor again at age 84, he's been seen in the company of photographer Erica Tomlinson-Fisher and restaurant hostess Christina Sandera in recent times, and has reportedly bought homes for both women. [2014]
Had hair transplants in the mid-1980s. When his head was wrapped in white bandages after the surgery, he told people he'd been in a bicycle accident.
Was asked for permission about his name being used for Marty (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future Part III (1990). He consented and was said to be tickled by the homage.
Eastwood was Ratboy (1986)'s de facto producer and exerted complete creative control, so first-time director Sondra Locke had an obligation to show the revised screenplay to him after she did some collaborative editing with Gordon Anderson. Eastwood sat up in bed one night reading the new draft, while Locke sat next to him, watching him warily. Yet he seemed to be enjoying it, laughing as he read and scribbling in the margins. The next day, Locke arrived at Malpaso offices first and told credited producer Fritz Manes not to worry, Clint loved the changes. Eastwood came in the door about noontime because he never came in early. According to Manes, 'He was purple..I've never seen him so f***ing mad. He takes this thing and he throws it so hard it almost broke the window behind me. He said, 'I'm closing this thing down. How could you let her do this?'. I said, 'I thought you knew.' He said, 'Well, you don't have to worry about this piece of s*** anymore. I'm going out and telling Warners to shut the production down.' Clint went to the outer office and grabbed Sondra and they went off somewhere and had a huge explosion. Manes went over to the floor and picked up the script. 'It had F*** - C***SUCKER - S*** - across every page,' said Manes. 'Every page had some awful thing on it like some lunatic had scribbled all over it!' Production ultimately went ahead, but Locke had to abandon Anderson's script and all the new characters and details he had created. Sondra cites the Ratboy (1986) debacle as 'the beginning of the end' of her relationship with Clint, and declared in hindsight that 'obviously whatever control issues he had over my directing were fueled by the hidden birth of a son.' (Although she didn't know it at the time, Eastwood was cheating on her and had just become the father of Scott Clinton Reeves, born more than 300 miles away to a stewardess in Monterey.).
While promoting the reality series Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012) on E!, Clint's then-wife Dina Eastwood told Chelsea Handler: 'I hope we're still married when this is over!'. Just two weeks after the show premiered, Clint and Dina separated.
Known to be passive-aggressive in private life, communicating only by gesture, inference, and what isn't said or done.
Went to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2013 and 2015.
After being contacted by Sondra Locke in 1994, feminist leader Gloria Steinem said she would orchestrate a nationwide campaign to ban Clint Eastwood films. However, there was no ban on Clint's movies, and no explanation of why not.
Although Clint implies that he grew up poor by frequently dropping references to the Great Depression, actually his family lived in a very wealthy part of town, had a swimming pool, belonged to the country club, and each drove their own car.
His mother Ruth Wood often brought her own bedsheets when she visited overnight at Clint's.
With the exception his cameo as Silvana Mangano's husband in the obscure Italian film The Witches (1967), Space Cowboys (2000) is the only time Eastwood has played a formally married man. His characters are usually single and meet their potential love interest (if any) as the story develops. Other times he's played divorcées (Tightrope (1984), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), The Rookie (1990), The Mule (2018)), widowers (Dirty Harry (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Gran Torino (2008), Trouble with the Curve (2012)) or men who are separated from their wives (True Crime (1999)) but never actually married.
Biographer Patrick McGilligan affirms that 'the people who know Clint best suspect there are other families in his closet' in addition to his verified children, editorializing 'If Kimber Tunis was kept secret for twenty-five years, and the Washington woman for forty, might there not be others?'.
To date, 24 of the 47 films Eastwood has starred in depict violence against women. He's made 16 films in which a female character is killed, 12 films depicting rape or attempted rape, and 11 films showing a female character physically battered. [2019]
According to the unpublished manuscript 'Take Ten' by Ria Brown, Anita Lhoest at one point became pregnant with Clint's child, but went ahead and had an abortion.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one of the mothers of Eastwood's children told biographer Patrick McGilligan: 'There is no guilt with Clint. Anything that vaguely resembles guilt is channeled into anger. His anger is always intended to prove people wrong, or prove their behavior bad. And if people are wrong or bad, there is nothing for him to feel guilty about.'.
Modeled sweaters in a 1972 Playboy layout with a bottomless Susan Blakely.
In general, he wraps films early and uses the actors' first takes. Most of his films are shot in the spring or summer and released around Christmastime.
According to Robert Daley, 'If they ever called a meeting of all the people Clint has screwed over, they'd have to hold it in the LA Coliseum.'.
Eerily, three of his leading ladies (Inger Stevens, Jean Seberg, Elizabeth Hartman) committed suicide.
One afternoon in the early 1970s, Eastwood and Paul E. Lippman were walking around San Francisco when a random woman on the street (who happened to be of short stature, just his type) sniffed, 'Oh, you're Clint Eastwood . . . I hear you're a bum lay!' Clint, very stunned and at a total loss for words, stretched his neck muscles mightily, as he always did when stuck for a quick response, then finally managed, 'Well . . . uh . . . where did you hear that?' To which she pertly answered, 'Oh, it's all over town.' After a few more neck stretches, Clint invited her for a drink at some club to discuss the matter, then spent the night at Sausalito's Alta Mira Hotel trying to prove otherwise. The next morning Lippman asked her if she still thought Clint Eastwood was 'a bum lay', and she held out a flat hand, palm down, and wiggled it.
Formerly a part-time resident of Tiburon, Marin County.
Jane Cameron Agee, a side piece of Eastwood's for several years, was in the process of writing a tell-all book when she died in a car crash on February 13, 1995.
Told Rolling Stone magazine in 1985, 'I didn't really get involved in team sports because we moved so much,' but actually, he didn't move at all between the ages of 10 and 19.
When The Variety Club honored Clint in 1986, hardly anyone in the audience knew him personally. He'd never even met some of the celebrities who gave a speech. Yet everyone acted like good friends.
Lifeguarded for a summer at Kennydale Beach in Renton, Washington, 1953. 'He never had to bring his lunch. He never had to do any of the normal duties like beach clean-up, because all the girls would do it for him,' according to Penny Wade, chief of budget and personnel for King County Parks. 'There are stories,' Wade added.
One of many fictitious stories to be spoon fed to reporters - and go unchallenged for decades - is that Eastwood got into show business after being scouted by director Arthur Lubin at Fort Ord during the filming of Francis Joins the WACS (1954). For one thing, Eastwood had already left Fort Ord by the time Lubin filmed there in spring 1954. His military stint lasted barely a year from 1951-52, not 1950-54 like his early publicity biographies state. It was Clint who took initiative, as he wanted to be an actor and had somehow managed to encounter cinematographer Irving Glassberg after moving to L.A. in 1953. Glassberg introduced him to Lubin at a gas station on Santa Monica Boulevard, and that's how they met.
First wife Margaret Neville Johnson, known as Maggie, was born in 1931 and had one sibling, Gilbert F. Johnson Jr. (1924-2006). Her parents were Gilbert Sr. (1896-1966) and Edith (1896-1970). An alumni of UC Berkeley, Maggie was employed as a secretary for auto parts suppliers Industria Americana when she met Clint on a blind date in L.A. in June 1953. At that time, she'd been 'going steady' with another guy and Clint had recently impregnated a girl he knew from a Seattle theatre group. The Seattle girlfriend, who has never been identified, gave birth to Clint's daughter Laurie Eastwood on February 11, 1954 - less than 8 weeks after he married Maggie.
The first incarnation of his publicity advanced the fairy tale that Clint was 'a star on the high school basketball team,' and this became an established nugget of his life story, carried down in permutations through the years in articles and books, appearing in even as authoritative and recent a source as Current Biography (Yearbook, 1989).
Is allegedly updating and revising his will constantly.
Studied at LACC. Other alumni include Morgan Freeman, Mark Hamill, Cindy Williams, Donna Reed and Rene Michelle Aranda.
Hates being written about, even if it's the most harmless mention.
Women he's been photographed with throughout his career have often been misidentified in accompanying captions, because he's always refused comment on his personal life. Most celebrities issue a press release when they get married or divorced, break up with their significant other, or become a parent. Eastwood never has. Hence, many discrepancies exist.
In 2017, 46 years after the release of The Beguiled (1971), Sofia Coppola remade the film. The Beguiled (2017) stars Colin Farrell in the role of John McBurney. Farrell shares the same May 31 birthday as Eastwood and is 41, the same age Eastwood was in the original.
Bans Coca-Cola from his sight, stemming from a long-ago discord with Columbia Pictures (Coca-Cola and Columbia Pictures were connected).
Doesn't allow pets in the house because of his allergy to animal hair.
Sondra Locke said it was a nightmare getting him into court because he refused his subpoena and ordered Malpaso to also refuse any subpoenas her lawyer Peggy Garrity tried to serve him. Eastwood always had an excuse for being unavailable: he was out of town; he was sick; his life was being threatened etc. On December 8, 1994, Mark Ryan, a registered California process server for Harris & Mason, went to Malpaso's headquarters at the Warner Brothers Burbank lot to serve Eastwood with court papers requiring him to appear as a witness. Once Eastwood realized what the papers were he began screaming, 'What the fuck!' 'Close the door and call security,' he ordered his assistant. In a lawsuit filed on January 4, 1995, Ryan contended that Warner Bros., at the direction of Eastwood, falsely imprisoned him in a van for 70 minutes, handcuffed him, refused to allow him to leave the WB lot and threatened to have him arrested. Eastwood, of course, could not be reached for comment.
During a 1985 interview with Gene Siskel, he subtly expressed disdain for Jessica Lange, Sally Field and Sissy Spacek.
Has a line of sportswear: Tehama Clint. At the tourist shops in Carmel, kinkier fans can buy panties with the inscription 'Make My Night'.
Was given the nickname 'Susi Pi' by Gordon Anderson.
As a boy he collected snakes. One time, he had 13 snakes.
Clint Eastwood has stated 'The best part of me is the Irish part of my ancestry' and has expressed a desire to make a film in Ireland in the past.
At one point, he took so much carotene his hands turned orange.
Counts among his fans such luminaries as Orson Welles.
Surprisingly does not have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He does, however, have his hands and footprints in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. By sheer coincidence, Clint's handprint square touches corners with comedy legend Groucho Marx's handprint square. Groucho's granddaughter, Jade Marx-Berti, is Clint's ex-sister-in-law. When Jade started dating Dominic V. Ruiz (the younger brother of Clint's former wife Dina Eastwood), they viewed this as a 'sign' of their relationship being written 'in stone and in the stars'.
As of 2018, has produced and directed two Oscar Best Picture winners: Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), and three nominees: Mystic River (2003), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) and American Sniper (2014).
Throughout his life, he has always had a preference for women of small stature. (He calls them 'little dollies,' 'squirts,' 'spinners,' 'shrimps' or 'hip pocket rockets.') He once dated a woman who was only 4'8' -- 20 inches shorter than himself.
Got the role of Dirty Harry after first choice Frank Sinatra suffered an arm injury.
His first wife Maggie was born in 1931, although during the 1970s she was wrongly reported as five years younger than that. Longtime spouse-equivalent Sondra Locke was born in 1944 but always gave a younger birthdate, sometimes as much as twelve years younger. Unlike the women in his life, Clint has always been honest about his age.
On August 4, 2018, he was honored with a day of his film work during the TCM Summer Under The Stars.
In 1960, Clint Eastwood was one of Lucille Ball's first choices to play her romantic lead in the Broadway musical 'Wildcat.' When he (and a few A-list marquee names) were not available, she settled on Keith Andes.
In 1997, he launched his own beer 'Pale Rider Ale', with the ad line: 'You Didn't Expect Clint Eastwood to Make a Salad Dressing Did You?' on a western-style playbill poster.
Grandson Titan Wraith Eastwood was born September 16, 2018 to daughter Francesca Eastwood and her boyfriend Alexander Wraith. Titan is Clint's first grandchild whose birth has been publicly announced.
Has played a pilot twice: Tarantula (1955) & Firefox (1982).
Was offered the role of K in Men in Black (1997), but turned it down.
Often directs using a hand-held wireless monitor, which allows him to be close to the actors while keeping an eye on the frame.
Grandchildren: Lowell Thomas Murray IV (born circa 1982) and Kelsey Hayford (born April 17, 1984) via secret daughter Laurie Warren and her husband, Lowell Thomas Murray III. Their existence was not publicized until December 2018. Laurie was born in 1954 when Clint was married to his first wife, Maggie Johnson. She was adopted by Helen and Clyde Warren of Seattle. Eastwood biographer Patrick McGilligan divulged that Laurie's biological mother, who refuses to be identified, was a member of a Seattle theatre group when she and Clint conceived Laurie. The Daily Mail said that Clint's office did not respond to requests for clarification.
The death of Eastwood's former common-law wife Sondra Locke on November 2, 2018 was not publicized until opening day of his new movie The Mule (2018) - 6 weeks later.
Once punched his fist through a door, ripping his hand. The same day a palmist read his hand - still bleeding - and said she could tell what a 'tranquil' person he is.
Obtained a permit for a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver in 1983.
His fallacious episode of Biography (1987) (original air date: 10/5/03) only acknowledges four children, when he in fact has at least eight.
Walked out on an interview with The Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer when Schaefer asked about his kids.
He has appeared in three films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically or aesthetically' significant: Dirty Harry (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Unforgiven (1992). He has also directed two films that are in the registry: The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven.
According to Bill Brown, publisher of The Pine Cone newspaper in Carmel and a golfing pal of Eastwood's, 'Clint told me not too long ago that Sondra was the love of his life.'.
Business manager Roy Kaufman died in 2016. For more than 40 years, all the houses Eastwood owns were listed in Kaufman's name, to keep stalkers at bay.
His father's obituary in the Oakland Tribune omitted some of Clint's illegitimate children from the grandchildren count.
With the sole exceptions of Shirley MacLaine in Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County (1995), has never starred opposite an actress of even remotely equal stature.
During his life, he has impregnated at least nine women: the six women confirmed as having his babies, plus Sondra Locke, Anita Lhoest and Jane Cameron Agee whose terminated pregnancies are documented in Patrick McGilligan's Clint biography.
Was offered officer training while serving the Army by superiors who thought he had the right look. Eastwood however admitted that he had no interest in a military career, although this could be just another PR gimmick.
Personal Quotes (240)
[on Sondra Locke] She plays the victim very well. Unfortunately she had cancer and so she plays that card.
[to Eli Wallach prior to starting work on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)] Never trust anyone on an Italian movie. I know about these things. Stay away from special effects and explosives.
[what he says after a take, instead of 'Cut!'] That's enough of that shit.
I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by people who wanted to tell everyone how to live.
I love every aspect of the creation of motion pictures and I guess I am committed to it for life.
Right now, the state of the movies in America, there's an awful lot of people hanging on wires and floating across things and comic book characters and what have you. There seems to be a lot of big business in that, a nice return on some of those.
Nowadays you'd have many battles before you blow it up, but eventually you'd take it down. And that's okay, I don't heavily quarrel with that, but for me personally, having made films for years and directed for 33 years, it just seems to me that I long for people who want to see a story and see character development. Maybe we've dug it out and there's not really an audience for that, but that's not for me to really worry about.
And I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed.
[on directing] Most people like the magic of having it take a long time and be difficult . . . but I like to move along, I like to keep the actors feeling like they're going somewhere, I like the feeling of coming home after every day and feeling like you've done something and you've progressed somewhere. And to go in and do one shot after lunch and another one maybe at six o'clock and then go home is not my idea of something to do.
I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don't have a toy they'll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.
There's really no way to teach you how to act, but there is a way to teach you how to teach yourself to act. That's kind of what it is; once you learn the little tricks that work for you, pretty soon you find yourself doing that.
Again, after you've gone through all the various processes and the film comes out and is very successful, you're almost afraid to revisit it. You want to save it for a rainy day.
..in America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience. Not to say that it's all bad, but it leaves a lot of the rest of us out of it. To me cinema can be a much more friendly world if there's a lot of things to choose from.
You know when you think of a particular director, you think you would have liked to be with them on one particular film and not necessarily on some other one.
At the studios, everybody's into sequels or remakes or adaptations of old TV shows. I don't know if it's because of the corporate environment or they're just out of ideas. Pretty soon, they're going to be wanting to do one of Rawhide (1959).
I think I'm on a track of doing pictures nobody wants to do, that they're all afraid of. I guess it's the era we live in, where they're doing remakes of The Dukes of Hazzard (1979) and other old television shows. I must say, I'm not a negative person, but sometimes I wonder what kind of movies people are going to be making 10 years from now if they follow this trajectory. When I grew up there was such a variety of movies being made. You could go see Sergeant York (1941) or Sitting Pretty (1948) or Sullivan's Travels (1941), dozens of pictures, not to mention all the great B movies. Now, they're looking for whatever the last hit was. If it's The Incredibles (2004), they want 'The Double Incredibles.' My theory is they ought to corral writers into writers' buildings like they used to and start out with fresh material.
I liked the Million Dollar Baby (2004)' script a lot. Warner Bros. said the project had been submitted to them and they'd passed on it. I said, 'But I like it.' They said, 'Well, it's a boxing movie.' And I said, 'It's not a boxing movie in my opinion. It's a father-daughter love story, and it's a lot of other things besides a boxing movie.' They hemmed and hawed and finally said that if I wanted to take it, maybe they'd pay for the domestic rights only. After that, I'd be on my own. We took it to a couple of other studios, and they turned it down, much like Mystic River (2003) was turned down, the exact same pattern. People who kept calling and saying, 'Come on, work with us on stuff.' I'd give it to them, and they'd go, 'Uh, we were thinking more in terms of Dirty Harry coming out of retirement.' And who knows? Maybe when it comes out they'll be proven right.
Plastic surgery used to be a thing where older people would try to go into this dream world of being 28 years old again. But now, in Hollywood, even people at 28 are having work done. Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life. But I figure I might as well just be what I am.
[on trying to get Million Dollar Baby (2004) made at Warner Bros.] They might have been a little more interested if I said I wanted to do 'Dirty Harry 9' or something.
[2005 Academy Awards acceptance speech for Best Director for Million Dollar Baby (2004)] Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'd like to thank my wife, who is my best pal down here. And my mother, who was here with me in 1993. She was only 84 then. But she's here with me again tonight. And she just -- so, at 96, I'm thanking her for her genes.
It was a wonderful adventure. It takes a -- to make a picture in 37 days, it takes a well-oiled machine. And that well-oiled machine is the crew -- the cast, of course, you've met a lot of them. But there's still Margo and Anthony and Michael and Mike and Jay and everybody else who was so fabulous in this cast. And the crew, Campanelli. Billy Coe and, of course, Tom Stern, who is fantastic. And Henry Bumstead, the great Henry Bumstead who is the head of our crack geriatrics team. And Henry and Jack Taylor, and Dick Goddard [Richard C. Goddard], all those guys. Walt and everybody. I can't think of everybody right now.
I'm drawing a blank right now. But, Warren, you were right. And thank you, for your confidence earlier in the evening. I'm just lucky to be here. Lucky to be still working. And I watched Sidney Lumet, who is 80, and I figure, 'I'm just a kid. I'll just -- I've got a lot of stuff to do yet.' So thank you all very much. Appreciate it.
[1985] My old drama coach used to say, 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.
One of the first films I went to - I went with my dad because my mother didn't want to go see a war movie - was Sergeant York (1941). My dad was a big admirer of Sergeant York stories from [World War I]. It was directed by Howard Hawks. That was when I first became aware of movies, who made them, who was involved.
Most people who'll remember me, if at all, will remember me as an action guy, which is OK. There's nothing wrong with that. But there will be a certain group which will remember me for the other films, the ones where I took a few chances. At least, I like to think so.
The plan was, when I first started directing in the 1970s, to get more involved in production and directing so at some point in my life, when I decided I didn't want to act anymore, I didn't have to suit up.
I feel very close to the western. There are not too many American art forms that are original. Most are derived from European art forms. Other than the western and jazz or blues, that's all that's really original.
In The Bridges of Madison County (1995) Kincaid's a peculiar guy. Really, he's kind of a lonely individual. He's sort of a lost soul in mid-America. I've been that guy.
I think people jumped to conclusions about Dirty Harry (1971) without giving the character much thought, trying to attach right-wing connotations to the film that were never really intended. Both the director [Don Siegel] and I thought it was a basic kind of drama - what do you do when you believe so much in law and order and coming to the rescue of people and you just have five hours to solve a case? That kind of impossible effort was fun to portray, but I think it was interpreted as a pro-police point of view, as a kind of rightist heroism, at a time in American history when police officers were looked down on as 'pigs', as very oppressive people - I'm sure there are some who are, and a lot who aren't. I've met both kinds.
You have to trust your instincts. There's a moment when an actor has it, and he knows it. Behind the camera you can feel the moment even more clearly. And once you've got it, once you feel it, you can't second-guess yourself. You can find a million reasons why something didn't work. But if it feels right, and it looks right, it works. Without sounding like a pseudointellectual dipshit, it's my responsibility to be true to myself. If it works for me, it's right.
None of the pictures I take a risk in cost a lot, so it doesn't take much for them to turn a profit. We don't deal in big budgets. We know what we want and we shoot it and we don't waste anything. I never understand these films that cost twenty, thirty million dollars when they could be made for half that. Maybe it's because no one cares. We care.
[on how he decided to do A Fistful of Dollars (1964)] I'd done Rawhide (1959) for about five years. The agency called and asked if I was interested in doing a western in Italy and Spain. I said, 'Not particularly.' They said, 'Why don't you give the script a quick look?' Well, I was kind of curious, so I read it, and I recognized it right away as Yojimbo (1961), a Kurosawa [Akira Kurosawa] film I had liked a lot. Over I went, taking the poncho with me - yeah the cape was my idea.
There's a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality. I got where I am by coming off the wall. I've always considered myself too individualistic to be either right-wing or left-wing.
I don't like the wimp syndrome. No matter how ardent a feminist may be, if she is a heterosexual female, she wants the strength of a male companion as well as the sensitivity. The most gentle people in the world are macho males, people who are confident in their masculinity and have a feeling of well-being in themselves. They don't have to kick in doors, mistreat women, or make fun of gays.
I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead.
The reason I became a Republican is because [Dwight D. Eisenhower] was running. A hero from World War II, a charismatic individual, a military man, a non-attorney - even then I liked that! I was a very young person voting for the first time. A lot of people joke that a conservative is a liberal who's made his first $100,000 and then decides,'Wait a second, I want to save this, why are they taxing it away?'. Today the country's in kind of a turmoil over taxing. Being raised in the thirties, watching my parents work hard to make ends meet, with jobs scarce, and then the war years - it tends to make a person a little more fiscally conscious than if you've been born into a wealthier family. You know, if you go to most people who are self-made and ask them what their political philosophy is, usually they're a little more conservative than people who had a better start.
This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.
They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.
I've always supported a certain amount of gun control. I think California has always had a mandatory waiting period, so we were never concerned about it like the rest of the country. Some states didn't have any at all. So I've always supported that. I think it's very important that guns don't get in the wrong hands, and, yes, I would support most of that. I don't know too much about trigger locks. I've never really discussed that with anyone. But I do feel that guns - it's very important to keep them out of the hands of felons or anyone who might be crazy with it.
I've thought about retiring for years now. When I did Play Misty for Me (1971) in 1970, I thought that if I could pull this off maybe I could step behind the camera, and it would be time to see the end of me. Every year I have threatened to do that - and here I am. So it may come sooner than you think.
[on World War II] I feel terrible for both sides in that war and in all wars. A lot of innocent people get sacrificed. It's not about winning or losing, but mostly about the interrupted lives of young people.
I've done a lot of violent movies, especially in the early days. My recent efforts, like The Bridges of Madison County (1995), weren't too violent. In recent years I've done less, and, yes, I am concerned about violence in film. In '92, when I did Unforgiven (1992), which is a film that had a very anti- violence and anti-gun play - anti-romanticizing of gun play theme, I remember that Gene Hackman was concerned about it, and we both discussed the issue of too much violence in films. It's escalated ninety times since Dirty Harry (1971) and those films were made.
Maybe I'm getting to the age when I'm starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now. You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot - both on the Right and the Left.
I like to play the line and not wander too far to either side. If a guy has just had a bad day in the mines and wants to see a good shoot 'em up, that's great.
My involvement goes deeper than acting or directing. I love every aspect of the creation of motion pictures and I guess I'm committed to it for life.
Whatever success I've had is due to a lot of instinct and a little luck.
I've always had the ability to say to the audience, watch this if you like, and if you don't, take a hike.
I've actually had people come up to me and ask me to autograph their guns.
[on former President Ronald Reagan] Yes, I liked him very much. When he was a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, I don't think he had the vast support that a lot of other presidents have had. So I don't know why that is, it's just the nature of things.
[when asked if he is still registered as a Republican] Yes, I am. I started - I enrolled as a Republican in 1951 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was running. And I was in the military. I was a fan of his. And that's how I got started off. I was never - my parents were mixed, I think one Republican, one Democrat, so I didn't have any grand-pappies to influence me.
When I was doing The Bridges of Madison County (1995), I said to myself, 'This romantic stuff is really tough. I can't wait to get back to shooting and killing.'
[when asked if he has disappointed his conservative fans by directing Million Dollar Baby (2004)] Well, I got a big laugh out of that. These people are always bitching about 'Hollyweird', and then they start bitching about this film. Are they all so mad because The Passion of the Christ (2004) is only up for the makeup award and a couple of other minor things? Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.
[on John Huston] It's another aspect of the character that pleased me: he was interested in other things besides his art. He liked women, gambling, living the high life. He could have a life parallel to his work. I could identify with this type of behavior. But, because of this very fact, he became attracted more and more by other things, so that what interested him in life moved him away from his art to the point that he nearly lived a tragedy. And the tragedy brings him back to reality. If you study Huston's life, you realize that at the age of nineteen he thought he didn't have long to live because of a heart defect a doctor has notified him of as a result of a misdiagnosis. It drove him to elaborate a personal philosophy according to which he would profit from life to the maximum. He didn't take care of himself - he was a confirmed smoker, a heavy drinker - and yet he lived to be more than eighty. Paul Newman spoke to me about him when we were acting at the same time, each in a different movie, in Tucson, Arizona. He was starring in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) and I was doing Joe Kidd (1972) with John Sturges. Huston drank martinis and smoked cigars all night long, slept from one o'clock to four o'clock in the morning because he was an insomniac, did everything he shouldn't do to live to be old, and yet he died at a very great age! It was the same thing with John Wayne, who was first of all the opposite of a health fanatic.
I never considered myself a cowboy, because I wasn't. But I guess when I got into cowboy gear I looked enough like one to convince people that I was.
I always cry when I watch myself on screen.
Guys I thought of as heroes were like Joe Louis and, maybe during the war, there was General [George S. Patton], of course, and maybe [Dwight D. Eisenhower], who was the head of the Allied forces. And Gary Cooper. There were just a handful of men and a handful of women. Now, people become stars who are just heiresses or something.
I also wonder how I got this far in life. Growing up, I never knew what I wanted to do. I was not a terribly good student or a very vivacious, outgoing person. I was just kind of a backward kid. I grew up in various little towns and ended up in Oakland, California, going to a trade school. I didn't want to be an actor, because I thought an actor had to be an extrovert - somebody who loved to tell jokes and talk and be a raconteur. And I was something of an introvert. My mother used to say: 'You have a little angel on your shoulder.' I guess she was surprised I grew up at all, never mind that I got to where I am. The best I can do is quote a line from Unforgiven (1992): 'Deserve's got nothing to do with it.'
Every movie I make teaches me something, and that's why I keep making them. I'm at that stage of life when I could probably stop and just hit golf balls. But in filming these two movies about Iwo Jima, I learnt about war and about character. I also learnt a lot about myself.
I was a teenager when the battle of Iwo Jima took place. I remember hearing about the bond drive and the need to maintain the war effort. Back then, people had just come through 10 years of a Depression, and they were used to working for everything. I still have an image of someone coming to our house when I was about six years old, offering to cut and stack the wood in our back yard if my mother would make him a sandwich.
The Americans who went to Iwo Jima knew it would be a tough fight, but they always believed they'd win. The Japanese were told they wouldn't come home - they were being sent to die for the Emperor. People have made a lot out of that very different cultural approach. But as I got into the storytelling for the two movies [Flags of our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)], I realised that the 19-year-olds from both sides had the same fears. They all wrote poignant letters home saying: 'I don't want to die.' They were all going through the same thing, despite the cultural differences.
I guess if you see both of the movies [Flags of our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)] together, they sum up as an antiwar film. Whether it's about territory or religion, war is horrifyingly and depressingly archaic. But I didn't set out to make a war movie. I cared about those three fellows - Bradley, Hayes and Gagnon [John H. Bradley, Ira H. Hayes, Rene A. Gagnon] - the headliners on that war-bond circus. The young men were taken off the front lines, wined and dined, introduced to movie stars. But it felt wrong to them.
As for me, I like being behind the camera instead of in front of it. I can wear what I want. Will I act again? I never say never. I like doing things where I can stretch and go in different directions. I'm not looking to take it easy. Like the Marines on Iwo Jima, I understand that if you really want something, you have to be ready to fight.
Life is a constant class, and once you think you know it all, you're due to decay. You're due to slide. I have to keep challenging myself and try something I haven't done before. The studios aren't always happy with that. When I wanted to make Mystic River (2003), the studio said, 'Uh-oh, it's so dark.' And I said, 'Well, it's important. And it's a nice story.' Then the next movie, Million Dollar Baby (2004), they said, 'Who wants to see a picture about a girl boxing?' And I said, 'It's really a father-daughter love story. Boxing just happens to be what's going on.' They didn't have much faith. So there are always obstacles and people afraid to take risks. That's why you end up with remakes of old TV shows as movies. But playing it safe is what's risky, because nothing new comes out of it.
[on the Iraq war] My druthers would have been, 'Get a more benevolent dictator and stick him in. You know, try somebody a little less mean.' You don't go in there and fire the army. The army's got to do something. When you fire 'em, you leave them all unemployed. Worst thing in the world. Just get somebody else who they respect and bring him on your side. That's one way of doing it.
[on President George W. Bush] You've got to admire somebody who stands up for what they believe regardless of how the polls go. A lot of presidents do everything by the polls. They do a focus group then all of a sudden they say, 'OK, that's what I'm going to be for because that's where focus group is leading me.
[on the Iraq war] I wasn't for going in there. Only because democracy isn't something that you get overnight. I don't think America got democracy overnight. It's something we had to fight for and believe in.
[on John Wayne] I gave him a piece of material that I thought had potential for us to do as a younger guy and an older guy. He wrote me back critical of it. He had seen High Plains Drifter (1973), and he didn't think that represented Americana like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and other John Ford westerns. I never answered him.
[on Sergio Leone] I spun off Sergio and he spun off me. I think we worked well together. I like his compositions. He has a very good eye. I liked him, I liked his sense of humor, but I feel it was mutual. He liked dealing with the kind of character I was putting together.
'Macho' was a fashionable word in the 1980s. Everybody was kind of into it, what's macho and what isn't macho. I really don't know what macho is. I never have understood. Does it mean somebody who swaggers around exuding testosterone? And kicks the gate open and runs sprints up and down the street? Or does handsprings or whatever? Or is macho a quiet thing based on your security. I remember shaking hands with Rocky Marciano. He was gentle, he didn't squeeze your hand. And he had a high voice. But he could knock people around, it was a given. That's macho. Muhammad Ali is the same. If you talked with him in his younger years, he spoke gently. He wasn't kicking over chairs. I think some of the most macho people are the gentlest.
I was tired of playing the nice, clean-cut cowboy in Rawhide (1959), I wanted something earthier. Something different from the old-fashioned Western. You know: Hero rides in, very stalwart, with white hat, man's beating a horse, hero jumps off, punches man, schoolmarm walks down the street, sees this situation going on, slight conflict with schoolmarm, but not too much. You know schoolmarm and hero will be together in exactly 10 more reels, if you care to sit around and wait, and you know the man beast horse with eventually get comeuppance from hero this guy bushwhacks him in reel nine. But [A Fistful of Dollars (1964)] was different; it definitely had satiric overtones. The hero was an enigmatic figure, and that worked within the context of this picture. In some films, he would be ludicrous. You can't have a cartoon in the middle of a Renoir.
In those days, they'd make interview tests, not acting tests. They'd sit you in front of the camera and talk--just as we're talking now. I thought I was an absolute clod. It looked pretty good; it was photographed well, but I thought, 'If that's acting, I'm in trouble'. But they signed me up as a contract player--which was a little lower than working in the mailroom.
I like working with actors who don't have anything to prove.
[on Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958)] Probably the lousiest western ever made.
[on the retirement of friend and fellow actor Gene Hackman]: It is a sad thing. I know his agent and I saw him recently, and he said, 'Can't you talk Gene into coming back?' I said, 'I'd love to see him come back, but I think it's not very nice to ride him.' He's too good an actor not to be performing but, by the same token, he probably thinks that's enough.
[on Gran Torino (2008)] That will probably do it for me as far as acting is concerned. You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don't want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you're not performing at your best.
There are certain things you have to be realistic about. Dirty Harry would not be on a police department at my age so we'll move on from that.
Having a good person as a foil certainly helps, because acting is an ensemble art form. Clark Gable is only as good as Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934).
[on Paint Your Wagon (1969)] It wasn't like Singin' in the Rain (1952), where it had a cohesive plot line. They started out with a real dramatic story and then made it fluffy. When they changed it around, I tried to bail out. It wasn't my favorite. I wasn't particularly nervous about singing on film. My dad was a singer and we'd have sing-arounds. But certainly [Frank Sinatra] wasn't worried.
With Every Which Way but Loose (1978), they gave me the script and I thought, 'This is something. This is kinda crazy. But there's something kind of hip about it. This guy's out drifting along and his best friend is an orangutan'. I mean, the scenes of talking to an orangutan about your troubles, I'd never seen anything quite like it. He has a romance that falls through, he doesn't get the girl, and then he goes off with the orangutan. I thought, What could be better? I wouldn't put it in the time capsule of films you did that you thought were great, but everything's a challenge.
Gene Hackman was interesting because I gave the Unforgiven (1992) script to his agent and he said no, he didn't want to do anything violent. But I went back to him and said, 'I know where you're coming from. You get to a certain age and I'm there too, where you don't want to tell a lot of violent stories, but this is a chance to make a great statement'.
At this particular time in my life, I'm not doing anything as a moneymaker. It's like I'm pushing the envelope the other way to see how far we can go to be noncommercial. But I'm definitely not going for the demographics of 13- to 15-year-olds. I didn't know if Mystic River (2003) would go over at all. I had a hard time getting it financed, to tell you the truth. But I just told Warners the same thing I did with Million Dollar Baby (2004): 'I don't know if this is going to make any money. But, I think I can make a picture that you'd be proud to have in your library.
People have lost their sense of humor. In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth or you will be insulted as a racist. I find that ridiculous. In those earlier days every friendly clique had a 'Sam the Jew' or 'Jose the Mexican' - but we didn't think anything of it or have a racist thought. It was just normal that we made jokes based on our nationality or ethnicity. That was never a problem. I don't want to be politically correct. We're all spending too much time and energy trying to be politically correct about everything.
[on the possibility of a Dirty Harry (1971) sequel] I'm 78 years old, and you're pretty well drummed out of the police force by that age. There could be a scenario. I suppose if some mythical writer came out of nowhere and it was the greatest thing on the planet, I'd certainly have to think about it. But it's not like I've ever courted it. I feel like that was an era of my life, and I've gone on to other things. I'm not sure about being Dirty Harry again--but who knows?
I keep finding interesting stories, or they come to me, so I'll keep making movies.
[on a possible return to acting after saying he was giving it up with Gran Torino (2008)] I'm like Jaws 2 (1978): 'Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water..'
[on Angelina Jolie] She's wonderful. To me, she's like a throwback to the women in film of the Forties. Not to say women today aren't great, but back then there was more individuality. They didn't have the same Botox look. Angelina has that great individuality, her own look and her own style. I think she would have been just as big a name in that era, the same as Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman.
[on Million Dollar Baby (2004)] It's a tragedy that could have been written by the Greeks or Shakespeare.
I don't quite understand this obsession about doing remakes and making television series into feature films. I would rather see them encourage writers with new ideas in all different genres like they used to in the heyday of movies.
[in 2002, on Michael Cimino] George Lucas made Howard the Duck (1986), and the guy who made Waterworld (1995) - those films didn't destroy them. Critics were set up to hate Heaven's Gate (1980) . . . the picture didn't work with the public. If it had, it would have been the same as Titanic (1997). 'Titanic' worked, so all is forgiven. Certain things may have been his fault. The accolades for The Deer Hunter (1978) probably made him think, 'I am a genius, king of the world'. But if you say you're king of the world then people will root for you to fall . . . I've always said that if you're prepared to accept reviews saying you're brilliant, you better be prepared to accept reviews saying you're a burn. The guy calling you a bum may be wrong, but the guy calling you brilliant may be wrong, too. Michael needs to make an intimate, smaller picture, do a film for five or six weeks, with no special effects, flying by the seats of his pants, to not be afraid and pull the trigger.
[on death] I don't think older people think about it that much, my mother was 97. She passed away a few years back. The only thing she ever said to me, toward the last, she said, 'I want out of here, I am tired.' And I said 'No, no, three more years. We get the century mark.' I figured I could coax her into more after that, but when she finally did pass away, she couldn't talk because she had had a stroke. They said do you want to be resuscitated for while, and she said 'no.' So, I had to grant her that wish. She had no fear and I think as you get older -- you probably have more fear as a younger person than you do as an older person. Because as an older person you have stacked up a lot of background and time-in-grade, so to speak, so you are probably thinking what the hell 'I have had a good time.
If you believe in reincarnation you're putting too much on the other side. I believe you have just one shot at life, and you should do the best you can with that shot. And I suppose you should be thankful that you've been given the ability to do certain things in life, and not be greedy enough to want to stay around forever.
[on the Rocky (1976) movies] I loved the first one. I always admired Sylvester Stallone's tenacity to go ahead and get that made.
I would never have been able to pass the Bill Clinton-Gary Hart test. No one short of Mother Teresa could pass.
[on directing Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover] He could make a lot of money making mechanical genre pictures but he wants to be challenged. And it's much more of a challenge to play someone who doesn't have the slightest thing in common with you.
[on Bruce Surtees] He was fearless. He wasn't afraid to give you sketchy lighting if you asked for it. He didn't believe in flat light or just bright, 'Rexall drugstore' lighting, which a lot of times you can get if you get somebody that isn't very imaginative. He was perfect for me, because we didn't have very big budgets in those days. He'd made dollies by towing a blanket across the floor with the cameraman sitting on it.
I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come out the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.
[on surviving a plane crash in the early 1950s] They had one plane, a Douglas AD, sort of a torpedo bomber of the World War II vintage, and I thought I'd hitch on that. Everything went wrong. Radios went out. Oxygen ran out. And finally we ran out of fuel up around Point Reyes, California, and went in the ocean. So we went swimming. It was late October, November. Very cold water. I found out many years later that it was a white shark breeding ground, but I'm glad I didn't know that at the time or I'd have just died.
[on his planned remake of A Star Is Born (1937)] I talked about that for a while with Warner Brothers' people and we're still playing with that idea. But the problem at the beginning was they were more infatuated with just the idea of the casting. They were talking about having Beyoncé in it, and she was very popular, but she also is very active and it's hard to get a time scheduled, so we never could get that worked out. But I'm still playing with the idea.
I've done war movies because they're always loaded with drama and conflict. But as far as actual participation .. it's one of those things that should be done with a lot of thought, if it needs to be done. Self-protection is a very important thing for nations, but I just don't like to see it.
Extremism is so easy. You've got your position and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right,you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.
The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.
I like the image of the piano player: the piano player sits down, plays, tells his story, and then gets up and leaves - letting the music speak for itself.
[after the Carmel city council refused his architectural plans for a downtown construction] They don't know who they're fuckin' with. I'll build that damn building the way I want it if I have to run the fucking city council to do it.
My father used to say to me, 'Show 'em what you can do, and don't worry about what you're gonna get. Say you'll work for free and make yourself invaluable'.
[asked by Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes (1968) how many children he has, 11/16/97] I have a few.
[press statement issued 4/27/89 in response to claims made by ex-significant other Sondra Locke] I adamantly deny and deeply resent the accusation that either one of those abortions or the tubal ligation were done at my demand, request or even suggestion. As to the abortions, I told Locke that whether to have children or terminate her pregnancies was a decision entirely hers. Particularly with regard to the tubal ligation, I encouraged Locke to make her own decision after she had consulted with a physician about the appropriateness of and the necessity for that surgical procedure.
[re Patrick McGilligan's 2002 unauthorized biography of him] I don't know if this is the same book that came out in England, but if it is, it's just very factually inaccurate. He has me involved with women I've never met and attending schools I've never gone to - and there was a photograph supposedly of me that wasn't me. The stories about my father weren't true (sic). There were incidents described that never took place; I've never broken a window with a ball peen hammer in my life. If you can't even get the little stuff right, then how are you going to get the big stuff right? But I don't want to talk about it too much, because I hate even giving it credence. It's a very mean-spirited book. I don't care if you write something bad about me, as long as it's true. I'm not Mr. Evangelical Pure-as-the-snow. I just want the true [stories] out. They're fair game. But when they're made up, they're not fair game.
[on misrepresentation of his early work] My parts ranged from one-liners to four-liners, but to look at some of the billings in TV Guide these days, you'd think I co-starred in those films.
[on director Arthur Lubin] We spent a lot of time together, traveled together. He liked me a lot; got me into the talent program at Universal, gave me a lot of breaks. Bought me some nice clothes, too. That's when people started wondering about us!
[to Sondra Locke, 1975] I've never known anyone that I wanted to be around me all the time. I guess I'm usually trying to get away.
[in bed with Sondra Locke on Thanksgiving night 1975] I never knew I could love somebody so much, and feel so peaceful about it at the same time.
Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society.
[1/14/09, his reply to David Letterman's question 'You have uh--is it seven children?'] Uh, at least.
I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that's OK, too. It's whatever suits you.
My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn't take very good care of himself.
I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.
It's much more fun to play something you're nothing like than what you are.. It's much easier to hide yourself in a character.
[characterizing his relationship with Roxanne Tunis] It didn't mean anything; it was just an affair. I was young and . . . anyway she was a stand-in and extra on the show, and she was really crazy about me, and always hanging out in my dressing room.
Plagiarism is always the biggest thing in Hollywood.
I always thought of myself as a character actor. I never thought of myself as a leading man.
When I was a kid, I thought movies just came from air. I thought they just appeared.
I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.
[2007, on troubled actress June Fairchild, his Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) co-star who wound up homeless] My heart sank when I heard of what had become of June. There are organizations that can help her but I'm sure she could also use a friendly face right now. I'd really like to meet her.
I've been through my womanizer part of my life. There was a point when it was an illness, just compulsive, but that's behind me now. I've never considered myself addicted to anything, but if I was, that was it.
Everybody has certain things they wish they hadn't done in life. They wish they hadn't kicked their dog when they were ten or something.
I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the '60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.
[January 1962] There has to be something for me beyond western roles, which rarely give you a full feeling of acting accomplishment. Have you ever heard of a western star being called an actor's actor? I'll bet not!
[April 2010] I planned on not working at this time in my life, but I am enjoying working more now than I ever have. I have been lucky enough to work in a profession I really like and I figure I will continue until somebody hits me over the head.
In the past I have been with women who wanted more from me than I was ever willing to give. I was probably not as attentive as I could have been. I can be selfish and some of the women didn't have a good idea of their self. They wanted me to mould them and I just can't do that.
I'm not good in big crowds. I prefer smaller, one-to-one nights out, which is why I've never been single. I like the company of women, but I do go for longer-term relationships than flings. The best things to come of all those relationships are my children.
[2002] I've waited all my life for a woman like Dina. She is bright, funny, independent. It's fate that I met her when I was in my sixties. I'd love to have been with her 20, 30 years ago and I would have settled down much sooner. I spent my twenties and thirties being angry, then my forties and fifties being disappointed. It's only in the last part of my life that I've learned to be happy.
[if he could give advice to his younger self] He was never a smart kid. I was a slow learner, so I'd say speed up the process a bit-and maybe practice a little more!
[December 2014] I just went through a period where my DNA was in demand for a while. I think that's all ended-but, you never know!
[on marriage] I haven't exactly been successful at it, but I made a couple of attempts. I've had moments of success interrupted by moments of satyr. Shelley Berman used to say that. I admire people who can accomplish and do it, but it's very difficult in today's society, because there are so many things pulling at people. People gain different interests as time goes by, so they decide that they want to try something else. You have to keep trying! You don't want to give up and be so cynical that, you say, 'Never!' But, maybe, at my stage in life, there's a silver act. Never say never.
Sergio Leone loved long stories and long pictures. To me, I don't mind a long picture if you've got a lot of story. But if you're just making a long movie to just show off more production value, I think you can edit some of that stuff down. That's where he and I would differ.
I am concerned about violence in films. In 1992, when I did Unforgiven (1992), which is a film that is very anti-violence and very anti-gun, I remember that Gene Hackman was concerned about it too. And we both discussed how much violence in films has escalated since Dirty Harry (1971) and other movies I made.
Films can go overboard on violence but the Dirty Harry films don't. We don't use slow motion violence for instance, or lingering blood squirts. Also, Harry Callahan is an honorable man and a hero to middle America. I'd question films like Taxi Driver (1976) where the hero is mentally ill.
As soon as I read that line in the script, 'Go ahead make my day', I knew audiences would love it.
[on John Ford] I remember seeing Stagecoach (1939) as a kid when it first came out. Ford had an influence on me subconsciously, and I watched it in a dark theatre with my knees up. Sometimes twice in a row. There's something about the way he approached the subject that broke down clichés of the era. I think he was always trying to make social statements in his movies, and with Stagecoach he used the western to do it efficiently.
Too many directors don't know what the hell they're doing. They'll do multiple takes on scenes and try out different angles and lighting. I don't like that. If you can't see it yourself straight away, you shouldn't be a director.
[on his dissatisfaction with his diminishing role in the 'Dollars' trilogy] In the first, I was just about alone. Then there were two of us. And now are three of us. If it goes on like this I'm going to end up in a detachment of cavalry.
There's a bar I used to go to on Sunset Boulevard that was a straight bar that's now a gay bar. I think I went into it once some years later, and I looked around and said, 'Oh, yeah, it's a gay bar.' I still finished my beer.
[on his daughter Kimber Eastwood and her mother Roxanne Tunis] I give them a few thousand here and there, but I always give it in cash so they can't prove anything. Besides, Kimber is listed as a dependent on her stepfather's tax returns; she's not a dependent of mine. Legally, I'm not responsible.
[asked by British interviewer Ginny Dougary why so many women had his babies] Well, sometimes -- ughh . . . arghh . . . I . . . I don't . . . ahh . . . know why it is that I'm any more of a sire than anyone else. Um . . . er . . . something to do with the genes, I guess.
When I used to be a contract player in 1954 at Universal, I wasn't getting good roles. I was getting one-liners, and then I'd be gone. But I'd hang around; I'd watch guys. And when I had days off, which was most days, I'd go down and watch other sets while they were shooting. Watch Joan Crawford or whomever. Just watch how they worked and how the director handled them. I didn't know anything about making movies, and there's a lot to learn.
Secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist. And then when I did Gran Torino (2008), even my associate said, 'This is a really good script, but it's politically incorrect.' And I said, 'Good. Let me read it tonight.' The next morning, I came in and I threw it on his desk and I said, 'We're starting this immediately.'
I don't know what I am. I'm a little of everything.
[on Barack Obama] He doesn't go to work. He doesn't go down to Congress and make a deal. What the hell's he doing sitting in the White House? If I were in that job, I'd get down there and make a deal. Sure, Congress are lazy bastards, but so what? You're the top guy. You're the president of the company. It's your responsibility to make sure everybody does well. It's the same with every company in this country, whether it's a two-man company or a two-hundred-man company..
You're as young as you feel. As young as you want to be. There's an old saying I heard from a friend of mine. People ask him, 'Why do you look so good at your age?' He'll say, 'Because I never let the old man in.' And there's truth to that. It's in your mind, how far you let him come in.
I don't have any great pickup lines. I was never an extrovert, so I always had to have someone meet me halfway. If she was interested, we'd come together, and if not .. When I became a movie actor and became well-known, it took care of itself. Maybe that's why I became an actor.
100 years from now and more, people will look back on this generation of films, and the guy who will standout more than anyone else will be Tom Cruise.
What's one great thing about a theater is it's got an exit.
One of the most important things in life is feeling good about yourself. And when you're in decent shape, when you like the way your body looks and feels and your energy levels are at their highest, it's a lot easier to feel good about yourself.
I am a junior, and all my younger life I was called Sonny or Junior, and I think a kid deserves his own name.
When I was growing up in the '30s and '40s, kids were a lot more active than they are today. We didn't have television, we certainly didn't have computers, so you came home from school and then went out to play with the other kids in your neighborhood. You didn't have to be a varsity athlete to get into a game of pickup basketball or football or to take a bat, ball and glove out to an empty lot for a game of flies-and-grounders.
[on taking nootropics] You can actually feel a difference and see a difference in yourself. I'm not necessarily interested in extending life. To me, what seems most intriguing is just keeping the quality of your life up as long as fate decrees that you'll be here on the planet.
What Happened To Maggie Eastwood Now
[on the contemporary superhero craze in Hollywood] Thank God that I didn't have to do that. [..] I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality. Maybe they do super things or more-than-human things - like Dirty Harry, he has a knack for doing crazy things, or the western guys - but, still, they're not caped crusaders.
Follow what you think. You want to do something? Just do it the best you can. Not everyone makes something phenomenal, but at least you can fail on your own terms.
I think women like to see other women put down when they're out of line. They have a dream of the guy who won't let them get away with anything. And the man in the audience is thinking, 'That's how I'd like to handle it--cool and assured, knowing all the answers.' He wants to be a superhero.
The important thing to remember about women is that they're a lot smarter than men and they don't play fair.
Maggie Eastwood Today
[asked on the red carpet at The Bridges of Madison County (1995) premiere if he thinks men become sexier with age] That's in the eyes of the beholder. I know nothing about how men become sexy because men aren't sexy to me, so I really don't know.
My appeal is in the characters I play. A superhuman type character who has all the answers, is double cool, exists on his own without society or the help of society's police forces. A guy sits in the audience. He's twenty-five years old and he's scared stiff about what he's going to do with his life. He wants to have that self-sufficient thing he sees up on the screen.
I'm just doing a job, I'm just in the entertainment business doing the kinds of films that appeal to me. You've got to keep that in perspective. Fame is fleeting.
[in GQ magazine, October 2011] I don't give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We're making a big deal out of things we shouldn't be making a deal out of .. Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want
I can get into the nostalgia thing sometimes, but to me the good old days are right now.
I am very well mannered, and that, believe it or not, stands me in very good stead.
Marriage is not just about 'love.' It's about 'like' as well.
The main thing is not how long you're on the planet, but the quality you have while you're here.
In some ways I know I didn't live up to my parents' hopes. It was a long time before I wanted to go to college--but in some ways I surpassed my parents' hopes.
I guess I'm just a bum and a drifter by nature. I don't think of myself as a 'star.' I don't have any image of myself.
Sometimes I think I disappoint people by not being more like the characters I play in the movies. But who wants to be those guys? The best kind of fan is the one who tells you he loved your film and then, boom, is off.
I'm in the entertainment business, NOT in the business of trying to shape social opinions.
My dad was always talking about retiring and sitting next to a stream with a couple of beers in his hand. Sounds like a commercial - but it's not for me!
[asked for the secret to a lasting marriage, 1971] We don't believe in 'togetherness'. We've stayed together by staying apart.
For years I bummed around trying to get an acting job. They told me my voice was too soft, my teeth needed capping, I squinted -- all that tearing down of my ego. If I walked into a casting office now, a stranger, I'd get the same old crap. But now I'm Clint Eastwood.
[in the early '70s] I'm number one at the box office, but Hollywood considers me a bore.
I've always felt that if I examine myself too much, I'll find out what I know and don't know, and I'll burst the bubble. I've gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I'd rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.
Guys appreciate a man's ingenuity to make a buck and have a certain cool. The girls like it too . . . A guy who knows exactly what he wants and goes out and gets it, is reassuring to people.
The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
I'll never win a Best Actor Oscar. First of all, I'm not Jewish, and second, I'm too successful for all those old farts at the Academy.
I'm like Hitchcock; I believe when you CHOOSE the actors, that's the direction.
[when Frances Fisher announced 'We're pregnant!' during dinner with Richard D. Zanuck & Lili Fini Zanuck] Who's this 'we'? YOU are pregnant, not we!
[when Rawhide (1959) cast members kidded him about having had 'a hard night in the sack with the old lady'] Don't make me barf!
[January 1989, when his mother Ruth Wood had been in the hospital with pneumonia] She's okay now. For a minute there I thought it was gonna be the end of an era.
I feel like I should just throw myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.
By nature I'm not a person who likes to expound. My nature is to be more within. That sometimes can be an advantage and sometimes not.
What Happened To Maggie Eastwood Movie
[12/10/88, after learning Sondra Locke had cast Lynne Thigpen in Impulse (1990)] I hope you know what you're doing. Casting a black actress to play a police psychiatrist! [as he walked out the door to pick up his NAACP award]
I was born looking like what most people perceive as the western type. I have no burning desire to play Henry V. I'm totally unsuited for it.
[to Maria Shriver in January 1989] Maybe it's time to get rid of everybody in my life and start over.
[on turning down Superman (1978)] I was like, 'Superman? Nah, nah, that's not for me.' Not that there's anything wrong with it. It's for somebody, but not me.
[on how some might not approve of his personal life] What? My modern, dysfunctional family? Life is no great plan. Mine is career-driven and fate-driven. I was in a job that took me around the world. I wasn't always the good guy I could have been. But I haven't run away from members of my family, either. I'm a very integral part of their lives.
When I was doing The Bridges of Madison County (1995), I said to myself 'This romantic stuff is really tough. I can't wait to get back to shooting and killing.'
I don't think my movies are that stimulating. People in the audience just sit there and say, 'I admire the independence. I'd like to have the nerve to tell the boss off or have that control over my life.' In the society we live in, everything is kind of controlled for us. We just grow up and everything's kind of done.
I think that the sad trick of nature is that people propagate at a rather early age when they really enjoy it at a later age.
Men can probably identify more with me than the prettier actor.
I guess I am vain. I never thought about it. I don't look in the mirror and ask: 'Who is the fairest of them all?' If you do that a voice comes out and says: 'Snow White, baby, and don't you forget it!'
I like people but I'm not that comfortable with them.
I was never a discovery of the press. I never had a publicity build-up or any amazing covers. I had to have the success first.
I was a daydreamer as a kid. I just like being myself and meditating. I think a certain kind of meditation is good for anybody for some sort of peace of mind. Some people find it looking at the ocean, some people find it in religion. It depends on the individual. I don't believe in the old adage that men shouldn't cry. If a person feels like crying it's probably the greatest catharsis in the world.
I do the kind of roles I'd like to see if I were digging swimming pools and wanted to escape my problems.
I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.
It's kind of a boring life. I guess movie-making is my biggest obsession .. I just like it.
There's a little bit of me in every character I play.
[on if he worries about having a movie flop at the box office] If you start thinking about the end results and start anticipating what an audience might feel, you may be dead wrong. I just go ahead with my way and figure that, at least I can have the satisfaction of having put it down. And if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, move on.
Nobody really knows me . . . I've never been an extrovert or even inclined to be one.
[on his first marriage to Margaret Neville Johnson] The first year of marriage was terrible. If I had to go through it again, I think I'd be a bachelor for the rest of my life. I liked doing things when I wanted to do them. I did not want any interference. .. One thing Mag had to learn about me was that I was going to do as I pleased. She had to accept that, because if she didn't, we wouldn't be married.
Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino play losers very well, but my audience likes to be in there vicariously with a winner.
I never begged for respectability. I never said, 'Come, let me show you, come like me.'
I guess I can lie like anybody else, but I don't like it. I'd hate to exist constantly, day- in, day-out, having to come up with something. Having to come up with something whether it's the truth, a variation of the truth or whether it's an outright lie or variations on a lie.
Maybe being an introvert gives me, by sheer accident, a certain screen presence, a mystique.
I'm always appalled, just knocked out by disloyalty. I never think it's coming. I was driving around my place in Carmel, and I saw this guy and his girl camping on it. I thought, 'What the hell, they're probably having a great time, let 'em stay.' Later, I went back, and they had left the place a mess. I felt I had been had.
I never second-guess audiences, because many times they're just so much further ahead of you. And then sometimes, they miss what you think you've been explaining so simply. So you can't second-guess. All you do is build on your own instinctive reactions. That tells you what to do. You do it the best way you know how, and you hope, of course, that somebody likes it.
[on turning down Apocalypse Now (1979)] I would't have been happy. I didn't understand the story, didn't feel the role was a challenge, something I hadn't done before. Also, I'd just got situated at home and didn't want to live in the Philippines for two years. They weren't planning on two years - just 18 weeks. I kinda felt it might be a little longer.
I've never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves - it's just a question of finding the subject.
It was time to do some American films - the movie business was still thinking of me as a TV actor hiding out on the plains of Spain - or an Italian movie actor! My agency thought Carl Foreman's film was a real plum. a vast amount of well known people in it. I thought it just an extension of Rawhide (1959) and went off and did Hang 'Em High (1968), which analysed the pros and cons of capital punishment. They thought I was absolutely nuts! Why do this little $1.5m movie as opposed to the $7m epic? I wasn't snubbing them, the subject matter didn't interest me. Hang 'Em High did.
[why he turned down The Towering Inferno (1974)] Financially, it would have been a smart move. It made an awful lot of money. I could've played it. Just couldn't see the reason why. The effects, the tower, was the star!
[recalling his worst fan encounters] One night in Indianapolis, a woman calmly walked up to me and poured a drink over my head. I seldom go anyplace that I don't meet up with the character fresh out of a bar who wants to take a poke at me. I have been in several situations where I almost had to fight my way out. And an actor, no matter how much in the right he is, can only be the heavy in any such situation.
I like clothes kind of sporty I guess. But a woman has to wear something that fits her particular design. Clothes have to be simple . . . I like everything simple . . . nothing gaudy. Women shouldn't wear very much jewelry . . . just a little . . . just enough to make things look right.
Call me lucky, if you want to, but people don't know about the weeks and months I was a regular customer at the unemployment office in Hollywood.
Sergio [Leone] was great fun, but he didn't speak much English. None, in fact. So we communicated in Spanish mostly. But, come to think of it, he didn't speak much Spanish either.
I don't get tired. That's because I took up lumber jacking and being a swimming instructor instead of playing chess and watching birds.
Of course I saw Angelina [Jolie] in Girl, Interrupted (1999). She's a tremendous actress. Sometimes she's taken for granted because you see her in the tabloids. But she's terribly smart.
[observation, 1964] I'm not too wild about some of these new hair styles. I like hair that you can touch. But most of these gals . . . their hair is like barbed wire or straw or something. You don't even want to touch it! It has to be soft and pretty.
[on mayonnaise] You might as well shoot up Crisco, right into your veins.
The first time I went to Italy, I just sneaked in. I had a beard, but it didn't matter. Nobody knew me anyway. And no one paid me any attention.
[when told Sophia Loren wants to meet him] That's news to me. But if the lady wants to meet me, I'd sure enjoy meeting her.
[his rationale for making Frances Fisher keep her pregnancy a secret until her third trimester] I don't want that kinda thing taking attention away from my Oscar race!
[asked in 1969 if he would ever consider playing a gay character] Only if I was sure I could convince people I was merely acting.
It's not healthy to go out with a woman who has a connection to the business and might look at you as some kind of stepping stone. When you have a certain standing, it isn't easy weeding out the predators.
Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.
I have no choice but to look the way I am because they don't make enough shoe polish for my hair and they don't have a sander for my face. At some point you have to say: 'This is who I am.'
Salary (27)
Francis in the Navy (1955) | $300 |
Star in the Dust (1956) | $75 |
The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) | $750 |
Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958) | $750 |
Rawhide (1959) | $700 per episode (season one) |
Per un pugno di dollari (1964) | $15,000 |
Per qualche dollaro in più (1965) | $50,000 |
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966) | $250,000 + 10% of Western Hemisphere profits |
Le streghe (1967) | $20,000 |
Hang 'Em High (1968) | $400,000 + 25% of gross |
Coogan's Bluff (1968) | $1,000,000 |
Where Eagles Dare (1968) | $850,000 |
Paint Your Wagon (1969) | $600,000 |
Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) | $750,000 |
Kelly's Heroes (1970) | $1,000,000 |
Every Which Way but Loose (1978) | $16,000,000 (after 15% take from the gross) |
Firefox (1982) | $3,000,000 + 10% of gross |
Sudden Impact (1983) | $30,000,000 (includes salary and 60% of all profits) |
Tightrope (1984) | $5,000,000 |
City Heat (1984) | $5,000,000 |
Pale Rider (1985) | $6,000,000 |
Heartbreak Ridge (1986) | $10,000,000 |
White Hunter Black Heart (1990) | No upfront fee in exchange for unspecified percentage of the gross |
In the Line of Fire (1993) | $7,000,000 |
Mystic River (2003) | $0 (waived his salary) |
Invictus (2009) | $6,000,000 |
Hereafter (2010) | $6,000,000 |