Eastwood, Clint

▪ American actor, director, and politician

in full  Clinton Eastwood, Jr.  

born May 31, 1930, San Francisco, California, U.S.

      American motion-picture actor who emerged as one of the most popular Hollywood stars in the 1970s and went on to become a prolific and respected director-producer.

      Growing up during the Great Depression, Eastwood moved from town to town with his family, spending little more than a few months in each of the many schools he attended. After graduating from high school in California and briefly attending Los Angeles City College, Eastwood held various jobs and served in the U.S. Army before becoming a bit player in Hollywood. He first attracted notice as the second lead in the television western series Rawhide (1959–66). He achieved international stardom during this same period when he played “The Man With No Name”—a laconic, fearless gunfighter whose stoicism masks his brutality—in three Spanish-Italian westerns (popularly known as “spaghetti westerns”) directed by Sergio Leone (Leone, Sergio): Per un pugno di dollari (1964; A Fistful of Dollars), Per qualche dollari in piú (1965; For a Few Dollars More), and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).

      Once these films were released in the United States, Eastwood was offered starring roles in Hollywood pictures. He worked with director Don Siegel (Siegel, Don) on Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971), and Escape from Alcatraz (1979). Their best-known collaboration was Dirty Harry (1971), in which Eastwood first portrayed the ruthlessly effective police inspector Harry Callahan. The film proved to be one of Eastwood's most successful, spawning four sequels and establishing the no-nonsense character of Dirty Harry—known for such catchphrases as “Go ahead, make my day” (Sudden Impact [1983])—as a cinema icon. Eastwood capably directed himself in such films as Play Misty for Me (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Bronco Billy (1980), Pale Rider (1985), and White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), as well as Sudden Impact, regarded as the best of the Dirty Harry sequels. A lifelong devotee of jazz, Eastwood also directed the well-regarded Bird (1988), a film biography of saxophonist Charlie Parker (Parker, Charlie), and produced the documentary Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988). Offscreen, Eastwood made national headlines in 1986 when he was elected mayor of Carmel, California, largely on the strength of his campaign promise to end the town's ban on the eating of ice cream on its main street.

      Eastwood's style of acting is minimally expressive, and his films initially drew little praise from critics. Yet his strong, resonant screen presence earned him success at the box office. His standard role was that of a tough loner whose violent behaviour conforms to his own understated moral principles. Eastwood's willingness to demythologize such stock characters as western heroes and private eyes eventually brought him critical acclaim, as did his lean, crisp directorial style. He is known as a director equally adept at presenting deep character studies and fluid action sequences. Eastwood's revisionist western Unforgiven (1992) won the Academy Award for best picture and the best director award for Eastwood. His noted films of later years include In the Line of Fire (1993), A Perfect World (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Absolute Power (1997), Space Cowboys (2000), and Mystic River (2003), a dark tale of murder and revenge that many critics believed to be one of Eastwood's finest films as a director.

      In 2005 Eastwood earned an Academy Award for best director for the boxing drama Million Dollar Baby (2004), which also received an Oscar for best picture. He next directed the World War II films Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), both of which focused on the Battle of Iwo Jima. The latter, told from the Japanese perspective, was nominated for several Academy Awards, including best director and best film. Eastwood later directed the 1920s-era drama changeling (2008), about a mother (played byAngelina Jolie (Jolie, Angelina)) who fought to find her kidnapped son after the wrong child is returned to her, and Gran Torino (2008), in which he also starred as a hardened Korean War veteran.

      Eastwood's long-standing interest in music was reflected in Piano Blues, his contribution to the Public Broadcasting System's multipart series The Blues (2003). Eastwood was the recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1996. In 2007 he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.

Additional Reading

Michael Munn, Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner (1992); Boris Zmijewsky and Lee Pfeiffer, The Films of Clint Eastwood (1993); Richard Schickel, Clint Eastwood (1996).

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