Eastwood is best known for his tough guy, anti-hero acting roles in western films, particularly in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. His performances as the laconic Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's "Dollars trilogy" of Spaghetti Westerns which include A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and as Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films have seen him become an enduring icon of masculinity. Eastwood has won five Academy Awards - twice each as Best Director and as producer of the Best Picture and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1995. He has also been nominated twice for Best Actor, for his performances in Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. His recent films in particular, like Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), and also earlier Revisionist Western films such as High Plains Drifter (1973), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Unforgiven (1992) have all received a significant degree of critical acclaim.
Eastwood also has an interest in politics and was elected Mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California in which he served from 1986 to 1988.
Clinton was born in San Francisco, California, to Clinton Eastwood, Sr., a steelworker and migratory worker, and his wife Margaret Ruth (Runner) Eastwood, a factory worker. Eastwood has Scottish, English, Dutch and Irish ancestry. He was raised in a "middle class Protestant home" and moved often as his father worked at a variety of jobs along the West Coast. The family settled in Piedmont, California during Eastwood's teens, and he graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1949. Eastwood then worked as a gas station attendant, as a firefighter, and played ragtime piano at a bar in Oakland. In 1950, during the Korean War, was drafted into the Army, and was aboard a military flight that crashed into the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco. He escaped serious injury, but had to remain behind to testify at a hearing investigating the cause of the crash. This kept him from being shipped to Korea with the rest of his unit. During his military service, Eastwood became friends with fellow soldiers and future actors Martin Milner and David Janssen.
Eastwood first entered the film industry in the mid-1950s, and began work as an actor with brief appearances in B-films such as Revenge of the Creature, Tarantula and Francis in the Navy. His break as an actor came in 1958 when he took on the role of Rowdy Yates in the TV series Rawhide. As Rowdy Yates (whom Eastwood described as "the idiot of the plains" in private), he became a household name across the United States and appeared throughout its seven year run from the first broadcast in January 1959. While appearing in the series Eastwood would star in several films, including his first starring role in a feature film, Ambush at Cimarron Pass, which he has dismissed as "probably the lousiest Western ever made."[citation needed] In 1959, he fist fought James Garner in the "Duel at Sundown" episode of the western comedy television series Maverick. He then, whilst appearing in Rawhide, didn't appear in a film until one day he was contacted by Italian auteur Sergio Leone.
An executive had spotted Eastwood on the series Rawhide in the early 1960s and thought he looked like a cowboy, and at 6 ft 4 inches (193cm) (during his younger years) was a strong physical presence on set. Eastwood was called upon to audition for Leone's picture A Fistful of Dollars (1964), but Eastwood was not the first actor who was approached to play the main character. Originally, the director Sergio Leone intended James Coburn to play the role of the "Man With No Name". However, the production company could not afford to engage a major Hollywood star. Hereupon, Leone offered Charles Bronson the part who, in turn, declined the role arguing the script was too bad. Both Fonda and Bronson would later star in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Other actors who turned the role down were Ty Hardin and James Coburn.Leone then turned his attentions towards Richard Harrison, who had recently starred in the very first Italian western, Gunfight at Red Sands (Duello nel Texas). Harrison, however, had not been impressed with his experience on his previous film, and refused. The producers later established a list of available, lesser-known American actors, and asked Harrison for advice. Harrison suggested Clint Eastwood, who he knew could play a cowboy convincingly. Harrison later stated: "Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars, and recommending Clint for the part".
The film was to be shot in Spain, and although it wasn't the first western shot in such manner and the film itself was evidently a tribute to Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), the film would become a benchmark in the Spaghetti Western genre that evolved from the mid 1960s. Eastwood was instrumental in creating the Man With No Name character's distinctive visual style that would appear in the Dollars trilogy that followed. He bought the black jeans from a sport shop on Hollywood Boulevard, the hat came from a Santa Monica wardrobe firm and the trademark black cigars came from a Beverly Hills store, although Eastwood himself is a non-smoker. Because A Fistful of Dollars was an Italian/German/Spanish co-production, there was a significant language barrier on the set. Sergio Leone did not speak English, and Eastwood communicated with the Italian cast and crew which also included prominent actor Gian Maria Volontè mostly through stuntman Benito Stefanelli, who also acted as an unofficial interpreter for the production and would later appear in Leone's other pictures. Leone reportedly took to Eastwood's distinctive style soon, and in Italian commented that "I like Clint Eastwood because he has only two facial expressions: one with the hat, and one without it".
Leone would hire Eastwood to appear in his trilogy of westerns following on with For a Few Dollars More / Per qualche dollaro in più (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly / Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966) many of which included the same actors. Leone used his innovative style to depict a wilder, more lawless and desolate world than traditional westerns. All three films were hits, particularly the third, and Eastwood became a star, redefining the traditional image of the American cowboy, though his character was actually a gunslinger and bounty hunter rather than a traditional hero.
Stardom brought more roles in the "tough guy" mold. In 1968's Where Eagles Dare, he had second billing to Richard Burton, but was paid $800,000. In the same year, he starred in Don Siegel's Coogan's Bluff, in which he played a lonely deputy sheriff who came to the big city of New York to enforce the law in his own way. The film was controversial for its straightforward portrayal of violence, but it launched a more than ten-year collaboration between Eastwood and Siegel, and set the prototype for the macho cop hero that Eastwood would play in the Dirty Harry films.
In 1969, Eastwood began to branch out. Paint Your Wagon was a musical starring Eastwood and top-billing fellow non-singer Lee Marvin.
In 1970, Eastwood appeared in the war movie, Kelly's Heroes, and in the Siegel-directed western, Two Mules for Sister Sara, co-starring Shirley MacLaine. Both movies combined tough-guy action with offbeat humor. In The Beguiled, another movie directed by Siegel, Eastwood played a wounded Union soldier held captive by the sexually repressed matron of a southern girls' school.
1971 proved to be a professional turning point in Eastwood's career. His own production company, Malpaso, gave Eastwood the artistic control that he desired, allowing him to direct and star in the thriller, Play Misty for Me. But it was his portrayal of the hard-edged police inspector Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry that propelled Siegel's most successful movie at the box-office. Dirty Harry is arguably Eastwood's most memorable character. The film has been credited with inventing the "loose-cannon cop genre" that is imitated to this day. Eastwood's tough, no-nonsense cop touched a cultural nerve with many who were fed up with crime in the streets. Dirty Harry led to four sequels: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988).
Eastwood directed two allegorical westerns during the 1970s: High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Josey Wales would be the first of six movies he starred in with his then-girlfriend Sondra Locke.
Breezy (1973) was the first film directed by Eastwood in which he did not also appear. It starred William Holden.
In 1974, Eastwood teamed with a young Jeff Bridges in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The movie was written and directed by Michael Cimino, who had previously written the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force.
In 1975, Eastwood brought another talent to the screen: rock climbing. In The Eiger Sanction, which he directed and in which he starred, Eastwood - a 5.9 climber - performed his own rock climbing stunts. This film has become a cult classic among rock-climbers.[citation needed] This film was done before the advent of CGI, so no digital manipulation was used in the film.
In 1977, Eastwood starred in The Gauntlet, in which he played a down and out cop assigned to escort a prostitute from Las Vegas to Phoenix to testify against the mob.
In 1978, he starred in Every Which Way But Loose in an uncharacteristic and offbeat comedy role. Eastwood played Philo Beddoe, a trucker and brawler who roamed the American West, searching for a lost love, while accompanying his best friend/manager Orville and his pet orangutan, Clyde. Arguably, Clyde stole the show. Panned by critics, the movie was a box office success, and it spawned the 1980 sequel, Any Which Way You Can. Between these two flicks, he played the main attraction in a traveling circus show in Bronco Billy, which sparked collaboration between country music star Merle Haggard and Eastwood on the song "Bar Room Buddies." The song became a hit on country music stations. (Haggard also appeared in the movie).
In 1979, Eastwood played yet another memorable role as the prison escapee Frank Morris in the fact-based movie Escape from Alcatraz, which was also his last collaboration with Don Siegel. Morris was an escape artist who was sent to Alcatraz in 1960, which was, at the time, one of the toughest prisons in America. Morris devised a meticulous plan to escape from "The Rock" and, in 1962, he and two other prisoners broke out of the prison and entered San Francisco Bay. The FBI maintains that the escapees drowned.
In 1982 Eastwood directed, produced, and starred in the Cold War-themed Firefox. The fourth Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact (1983) made Eastwood a viable star for the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan referenced his famous "Go ahead, make my day." line in one of his speeches. In Tightrope (1984) Eastwood starred as Capt. Wes Block set in New Orleans.
Eastwood revisited the western genre directing and starring in Pale Rider (1985), a homage to the western film classic Shane, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. His fifth and final Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool (1988), was a success overall, but it lacked the box office punch his previous films had achieved. Eastwood alternated between more mainstream comedic films (if not particularly successful), such as Pink Cadillac and The Rookie (1990), and more personal projects, such as directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie "Bird" Parker which gave him the nomination for the Golden Palm in the Cannes Film Festival. He also directed and starred, as an ersatz John Huston, in White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), an uneven adaptation of Peter Viertel's roman à clef about the making of the classic The African Queen. The film received some critical acclaim, although Katharine Hepburn contested the veracity of much of the material Eastwood rose to prominence yet again in the early 1990s. He revisited the western genre one final time in the self-directed 1992 film, Unforgiven, taking on the role of an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime. The film, also starring such esteemed actors as Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and Richard Harris, laid the groundwork for such later westerns as Deadwood by re-envisioning established genre conventions in a more ambiguous and unromantic light. A great success both in terms of box office and critical acclaim, it was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Actor for Eastwood and Best Original Screenplay for David Webb Peoples. It won four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood.
The following year, Eastwood played a guilt-ridden Secret Service agent in the thriller In the Line of Fire (1993) directed by Wolfgang Petersen. This film was a blockbuster and among the top 10 box-office performers in that year. Eastwood directed and starred with Kevin Costner in A Perfect World the same year. He continued to expand his repertoire by playing opposite Meryl Streep in the love story The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Based on a best-selling novel, it was also a hit at the box-office. Afterward, Eastwood turned to more directing work - much of it well received - including Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997). He directed and starred in Absolute Power (1997), a political thriller co-starring Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, and Dennis Haysbert.
In 2002, Eastwood played an ex-FBI agent on the track of a sadistic killer in Blood Work, which was derived from a book by Michael Connelly. In 2003 he directed Mystic River for which he garnered a Best Director nomination. In Space Cowboys, which also starred Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, and James Cromwell, he plays Frank Corvin, a retired NASA engineer called upon to save a dying Russian satellite. He found critical acclaim with Million Dollar Baby in 2004, winning 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and Eastwood was nominated for Best Actor (the award went to Jamie Foxx). In 2006, he directed two movies about the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. The first one, Flags of Our Fathers, focused on the men who raised the American Flag on top of Mount Suribachi. The second one, Letters from Iwo Jima, dealt with the tactics of the Japanese soldiers on the island and the letters they wrote to family members. Both films were highly praised by critics and garnered several Oscar Nominations, including Best Director and Picture for Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood will return to the screen for his film Gran Torino in which he will play the lead role of Walt Kowalski, who tries to change the ways of his teenager neighbor after noticing he tried to steal his prize winning 1972 Gran Torino. The film has been scheduled for a December 2008 release.
Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Bros. This deal was unchanged when Warner Music Group was sold by Time Warner to private investors. Malpaso has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward. It also released the album of a 1996 jazz concert he hosted, titled Eastwood after Hours - Live at Carnegie Hall.
Eastwood has redefined himself as a director and has generally received greater critical acclaim for his directing than he ever did for his acting. His directorial debut occurred with Play Misty For Me in 1971. He had tried for some time to direct an episode of Rawhide, even being promised at one point the possibility of doing so. However, because of differences between the president of the studio and show producers, Eastwood's opportunity fell through. Eastwood has become known for directing high-quality but bleak dramas such as Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. However, he has chosen a wide variety of films to direct, some clearly commercial, others highly personal.
Eastwood produces many of his movies, and is well known in the industry for his efficient, low-cost approach to making films. Over the years, he has developed relationships with many other filmmakers, working over and over with the same crew, production designers, cinematographers, editors and other technical people. Similarly, he has a long-term relationship with the Warner Bros. studio, which finances and releases most of his films. However, in a 2004 interview appearing in The New York Times, Eastwood noted that he still sometimes has difficulty convincing the studio to back his films. In more recent years, Eastwood also has begun composing music for some of his films.
Eastwood completed in December 2007 directing Universal Pictures' Changeling, a period thriller from noted writer J. Michael Straczynski and producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Angelina Jolie is starring in the film, with a fall 2008 release date.
He is rumored to be directing the Nelson Mandela bio-pic The Human Factor, with Morgan Freeman playing Mandela. No confirmation has been released to date. Eastwood and Warner Bros. have purchased the movie rights to James Hansen's First Man, the authorized biography of astronaut Neil Armstrong. No production date has been announced. Eastwood recently announced that he has all but retired from acting, although maintains that "if a good western script turns up, you never know..."
Clint Eastwood has been announced as director and star of the upcoming Warner Brothers film, "Gran Torino".
He currently donates funds toward the new CSUMB campus library. In early 2007, Eastwood announced that he will produce a Bruce Ricker documentary about jazz legend Dave Brubeck. The film is tentatively titled Dave Brubeck – In His Own Sweet Way. It will trace the development of Brubeck's latest composition, the Cannery Row Suite. This work was commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival and premiered at the 2006 festival. Eastwood's film crews captured early rehearsals, sound checks and the final performance. Ricker and Eastwood are currently working on a documentary about Tony Bennett, as well, titled The Music Never Ends.
