If you’ve ever run in to Clint Eastwood, hopefully he hasn’t asked you to make his day. The famous tough guy, known for his mythically masculine screen persona, has been one of the world’s biggest superstars since the early 1960s, and has emerged as a well-respected director as well.
Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco. His father, a steel worker, moved the family around California to find work during the Depression, which gave Eastwood’s childhood a nomadic quality. He attended high school in Oakland, and shortly after was drafted to fight in the Korean War. A plane accident kept Eastwood from seeing action, and he remained at Fort Ord in Monterey Bay, CA where he served as a swimming instructor. The steely-eyed actor attended Los Angeles City College after his 1953 discharge, but dropped out to pursue acting, finding work in B-films like “Tarantula” and “Francis in the Navy”. A series of bit parts followed, but Eastwood found little success until he was cast in his breakthrough role in 1959, as Rowdy Yates in the TV series “Rawhide”. The popular western about a pair of cattle drivers ran for seven years and made Eastwood a household name.
International superstardom was just around the corner for Eastwood, and he found it with Sergio Leone’s ‘lonely man’ trilogy of Italian-made westerns. The three films, 1964’s “A Fistful of Dollars”, 1965’s “For a Few Dollars More”, and 1966’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, completely redefined the genre. With its bleak tone and anti-hero characters, Leone’s trilogy effectively used Eastwood as the icon for a morally decrepit, emotionally bankrupt frontier landscape where crime and greed ruled human interaction. A major departure from the patriotic John Wayne westerns of the past, Leone’s films rank among the most influential of all time, and they gave Eastwood’s career a powerful jolt.
The intimidating actor quickly became a veritable legend, and over 30 years of extraordinary success followed. The 1970s saw him launch another genre, the ‘loose-cannon cop film’, with the release of “Dirty Harry” in 1973. The ultra-violent film spawned four sequels, with 1983’s “Sudden Impact” matching the original’s success. Some of the actor’s other memorable roles from this period include “The Outlaw Josey Wales”, the bizarre musical-western “Paint Your Wagon”, “Kelly’s Heroes”, and the comedy “Every Which Way But Loose” in 1978.
Eastwood’s impressive directing career began in the early 1970s, and his work behind the camera has earned him enormous acclaim from audiences, critics, and film festivals. Often starring in his own films, his first feature, the thriller “Play Misty for Me”, quickly proved that Eastwood had a knack for directing, exhibiting an incredibly focused and deliberately casual pace that exuded a confidence rare for a first-timer. Nearly all of Eastwood’s early directing projects were successful, such as “High Plains Drifter”, “The Outlaw Josey Wales”, “Pale Rider”, and “Sudden Impact”. Notable failures included 1982’s “Firefox” and 1990’s “The Rookie”, with the 80s being Eastwood’s only decade characterized by disappointment, despite a few terrific films like the Charlie Parker biopic “Bird”.
1992’s revisionist western “Unforgiven” changed the actor’s fortunes, winning Eastwood Oscars for Best Picture and Director, a nod for Best Actor, and also earning co-star Gene Hackman a Supporting Actor award. The pessimistic film remains among Eastwood’s finest work, and despite its success is credited with killing the genre due to its vision of the Old West as a harbinger of a corrupt, morally diseased nation. Eastwood hasn’t done a western since, and few subsequent entries in the genre have been even marginally successful.
“Unforgiven” restarted his career, and he was soon starring in hits like “In the Line of Fire”, “The Bridges of Madison County” alongside Meryl Streep, and the assassination thriller “Absolute Power”. He returned to prominence as a director with the 2002 ensemble drama “Mystic River”, which starred Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon. The film earned Penn a Best Actor Oscar, and Eastwood received nominations for Best Picture and Director, two awards that he won for a second time with his follow-up, the bleak boxing drama “Million Dollar Baby”, which also netted a Best Actress award for Hilary Swank and a Supporting Actor award for Morgan Freeman.
The legendary 76-year old actor and director continues to carry enormous clout in the industry, and his latest film, “Flags of Our Fathers”, will hit theatres in late 2006 followed by its companion piece “Letters From Iwo Jima”.