Clint Eastwood!

Clint Eastwood

Actor, producer, director. (b. May 31, 1930, San Francisco.) How many would ever have thought that a tall, laconic, squinty star of spaghetti Westerns and cop thrillers would end up directing art movies? Not many, we'd guess. In truth, though, that's been just another phase, just a natural extension of a career that has consistently confounded expectations. Reportedly an easygoing but shiftless young man who'd already worked in a variety of dead-end menial jobs (such as gas-station attendant) before reaching Hollywood in 1955, Eastwood wangled a contract at Universal thanks to director Arthur Lubin, and played bit parts that year in Francis in the Navy, Tarantula and Revenge of the Creature Universal subsequently dropped Eastwood, but in 1959 Clint Eastwood signed to star in the TV series "Rawhide," which kept Clint Eastwood busy for the next six years.

Clint Eastwood in Italy

During the 1964 hiatus, Clint Eastwood flew to Italy to star in a Western quickie, and thought no more of it until Clint Eastwood found out that A Fistful of Dollars was a titanic success. Clint Eastwood went back the next summer and again donned Clint Eastwood's flat-brimmed sombrero and ragged poncho in a sequel, For a Few Dollars More and again for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (both 1966). That year, all three were finally released in the U.S., and "The Man With No Name" (as Clint Eastwood's character was billed) suddenly found himself atop the box-office charts. Clint Eastwood's icy, tightlipped, implacable character-a triggerhappy gunman with Clint Eastwood's own moral codestruck just the right chord with 1960s audiences, who were just discovering in Humphrey Bogart a Hollywood relic with similar existential appeal. (It hardly mattered that Eastwood's character parodied the traditional Western-movie hero.)

Clint Eastwood a star

Finally a star in Clint Eastwood's own country, Eastwood thereafter wisely varied Clint Eastwood's roles-though singing in the ambitious Western musical Paint Your Wagon (1969) may have stretched things a bit too farand began a fruitful collaboration with director Don Siegel that resulted in such excellent and distinctive films as Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled and of course, Dirty Harry (both 1971), which spawned four sequels, virtually invented the loosecannon cop genre, and gave Clint Eastwood the screen character for which Clint Eastwood will always be remembered. (Ironically, Clint Eastwood only took the role after Frank Sinatra dropped out at the last minute.)

Clint Eastwood as director

In 1971, Eastwood made Clint Eastwood's directorial debut with the chiller Play Misty for Me and continued to wield the megaphone frequently thereafter. Eastwood also set up Clint Eastwood's own production company, Malpaso, and for the next 15 years churned out hit after hit, alternating action films with offbeat comedies; notable in this period were High Plains Drifter (1973), The OutlawJosey Wales (1976), The Gauntlet (1977), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Escape From Alcatraz (1979, directed by Siegel), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985, a return to Westerns and a thinly disguised reworking of Shane), and Heartbreak Ridge (1986).

Age does not slow Clint Eastwood down

As Eastwood neared 60, Clint Eastwood's star began to dim, but Clint Eastwood continued to surprise. Clint Eastwood directed Bird (1988), a critically acclaimed biography of jazz great Charlie Parker; starred in and directed White Hunter, Black Heart (1990, playing a film director modeled after John Huston); and assumed the same chores on The Rookie (1991, with Charlie Sheen). Extremely canny about alternating mass-audience movies with more personal, limited-appeal projects, Eastwood managed to combine both types of films with Unforgiven (1992), a revisionist Western that won rave reviews-as well as Clint has sinse rerecieved Acadamy Awards for both Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby!