Taciturn, tight-lipped, and somewhat wooden, this is how Western star Clint Eastwood is known. He is not only a taciturn Western and action hero, but also a director and producer. Less well known is that he was also politically active.
Throughout his career, Clint Eastwood has received many Oscars. He has also received numerous other awards and honors. The Western “Unforgiven” is considered his greatest work, but he has also acted in or directed numerous other films.
Clint Eastwood also worked as a singer and film composer. He composed the music for numerous films.
Profile: Clint Eastwood
The following brief profile provides insights into the key stages of Clint Eastwood’s life and conveys the outstanding facts about him.
- Full name: Clinton Eastwood Jr.
- Date of birth: May 31, 1930
- Place of birth: San Francisco, California, USA
- Parents: Clinton Eastwood Sr., Margaret Ruth Runner
- Education: various schools
- Vocational training: discontinued college studies
- Professional activity: Actor, director, producer, singer, film composer
- Marital status: divorced
- Wives: Maggie Johnson, Dina Ruiz
- Children: eight children from marriages and various relationships
- Political views: Republican, member of the Republican Party
Childhood and youth
Clint Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California, USA. His father, Clinton Eastwood Sr., was an accountant and lived from 1906 to 1970. His mother was Margaret Ruth Runner, who lived from 1909 to 2006. Clint Eastwood’s ancestors were Scots, English, Irish, and Dutch.
Clint Eastwood’s father had to work as a gas station attendant during the Depression. He moved around the country with his family looking for work. At times, Clint Eastwood lived with his grandmother in Sunol, where she ran a chicken farm.
The family settled in Oakland. Clint Eastwood was considered shy and introverted. He attended ten different schools.
After Clint Eastwood dropped out of college in 1948, he worked as a fireman, lumberjack, gas station attendant, and warehouse worker.
Training and Studies
Clint Eastwood was drafted into the Army in 1951. He was transferred to Fort Ord, where he worked as a swimming instructor for two years. He met the future star of the series “On the Run,” David Janssen, during his military service.
Janssen, who played Dr. Richard Kimble in the series, suggested to Clint Eastwood to go to Hollywood and try his hand at acting there. His athletic build and good looks were decisive advantages for Clint Eastwood that benefited him in his acting career.
Clint Eastwood is not only active as an actor and director. He runs the Mission Ranch Hotel in Carmel. There he offers a beer called Pale Rider Ale. The beer is named after the film Pale Rider. Clint Eastwood donates the proceeds from the brand to charitable organizations.
Career
Clint Eastwood began his career in the mid-1950s with screen tests at Universal Pictures. He received a six-month contract and took acting lessons on the side. He got his first small roles starting in 1955.
At the beginning of his acting career, Clint Eastwood had a role as a lab assistant in the monster film “Revenge of the Creature.” He played a jet pilot in “Tarantula,” who had to fight a giant spider with napalm. In addition, he got smaller television roles.
His contract was not renewed by Universal in 1957. He had to work as a swimming instructor again. His wife was seriously ill, which put him in financial trouble.
The film company RKO Pictures signed him on a short-term contract in 1957. However, the company withdrew from the film business shortly thereafter. From 1959 onward, he was able to establish himself in television.
In the Western series Rawhide, he played the cowboy Rowdy Yates, a role he embodied until 1965 in 217 episodes.
Eastwood as an actor
Over time, Clint Eastwood became a well-known actor worldwide. He was considered an icon and a cult figure. With his distinctive features and athletic body, he became known for taciturn action heroes. With an impassive expression, he delivers cynical one-liners.
Clint Eastwood’s image as a tough gunslinger sparked controversial discussions in the 1970s. He was regularly attacked by the influential film critic Pauline Kael, who accused his film characters of having a misanthropic and reactionary ideology. Clint Eastwood vehemently denied these accusations.
Clint Eastwood’s roles became gentler and more self-ironic with age. The film Grand Torino was intended as a brilliant farewell performance. Clint Eastwood played a bitter, cynical, but honest character with a ruthless conviction.
Eastwood as a singer
Clint Eastwood worked as a singer several times. As early as the 1960s, he recorded records aimed primarily at female teenagers.
His first record was a single titled “Unknown Girl,” which was released in 1961. Two more singles, Rowdy in 1962 and For You, For Me, For Everymore in 1963, followed. A long-playing record was released under the title “Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites.”
The Western musical film “Paint Your Wagon” was released in 1969. Clint Eastwood performed several songs in it:
Elisa
I Talk to the Trees Gold Fever Best Things as a duet with Lee Marvin
Clint Eastwood sang several songs for the film Bronco Billy, which was released in 1980, including the title track “Barroom Buddies” together with Merle Haggard. With Ray Charles, he sang “Beers to You” in the soundtrack of 1980’s Any Which Way You Can.
The single “Cowboy in a Three Piece Suit” was released in 1981. Clint Eastwood played a country singer in 1982 in Honkytonk Man. He sang his own songs in it, including Honkytonk Man.
Clint Eastwood also appears on the soundtrack of 1997’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with “Accentuate the Positive,” and in the end credits of 2008’s Gran Torino. He also contributed to some country albums.
Works
The works of Clint Eastwood are extensive. It all began with small, insignificant supporting roles. Clint Eastwood became known as a Western hero, but he also distinguished himself as a director and producer.
Clint Eastwood acted in a variety of films. He also received Oscars for Best Director in several films.
Supporting Roles and Television Series
Clint Eastwood took on small supporting roles starting in 1955 in “Revenge of the Creature” as a lab assistant and in “Tarantula” as a jet pilot.
His first roles in television series began in 1959. He played the cowboy Rowdy Yates in Rawhide. The series spanned eight seasons and 217 episodes.
“Italo-Western”
The Italian director Sergio Leone was preparing the Western “A Fistful of Dollars” in 1964, for which he had only a small budget. He wanted to cast the lead role with an established star like James Coburn or Henry Ford, but he didn’t have the money.
Sergio Leone hired Clint Eastwood for the lead role and paid him 5,000. Clint Eastwood played a gunslinger who worked for two rival clans and played them against each other.
The film was hardly noticed by critics, but it became a box office success. In the 1960s, it triggered a wave of Spaghetti Westerns. Clint Eastwood became a pop culture icon and served as a role model for numerous Western actors.
The sequel film “For a Few Dollars More” was released in 1965. Clint Eastwood played a bounty hunter. Due to the success of the film, Sergio Leone was able to realize an elaborate Western with “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” in 1966.
Once again, Clint Eastwood appeared as a bounty hunter. This Western was also a box office success and a cult film. It ranks eighth in the Internet Movie Database and was considered the most popular Western of all time in May 2015.
The relationship between Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood was considered broken after this film, however. Therefore, Charles Bronson was engaged as the lead actor in “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
Clint Eastwood directed the Western Unforgiven in 1992, which he also dedicated to Sergio Leone. He himself played the lead role.
Hollywood
Clint Eastwood became popular thru the Spaghetti Westerns, but in his home country, he still couldn’t achieve great fame as a film actor. However, he managed to establish himself in Hollywood due to the success of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
In “Hang ‘Em High” from 1969, he survived an execution as a supposed cattle thief. He began a collaboration with the director Don Siegel and played a provincial sheriff in “Coogan’s Bluff.”
In “A Place for the Lions” from 1970, he played alongside Shirley McLaine and added comic accents when he portrayed the reluctant protector of the supposed nun played by her. In 1969, he appeared as a singing gold digger in “The Wind Blows West,” a Western musical.
Clint Eastwood also appeared in the 1968 war film “Where Eagles Dare,” but left the lead role to Richard Burton. He also played an action hero in “Kelly’s Heroes” from 1970.
Clint Eastwood founded the film production company Malpaso Productions in 1967.
“Dirty Harry”
Clint Eastwood’s breakthrough to superstardom came in 1971 with “Dirty Harry,” directed by Don Siegel. Clint Eastwood played police inspector Harry Callahan, who is on the hunt for a psychopathic serial killer in San Francisco.
The film was controversially discussed because the police inspector used dubious methods for crime fighting. The character of Dirty Harry became a new cult figure.
Originally, the famous entertainer Frank Sinatra was intended for the title role of Harry Callahan. He dropped out due to a hand injury. John Wayne, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen were also in the running for the lead role.
For several decades, Clint Eastwood was considered one of the most successful film actors in the world. He played the role of Harry Callahan from 1973 to 1976. He also appeared in action films like “The Last of the Dogmen” or in Westerns like “A Stranger Without a Name.”
An unpredictable orangutan was his partner in 1978’s “Every Which Way But Loose.” His last role under Don Siegel was as Frank Morris in 1979’s “Escape from Alcatraz.”
With the 1979 psychological thriller “Sadistico,” Clint Eastwood made his debut as a director. He also directed the late Western “The Outlaw Josey Wales” in 1975. He himself played the role of a farmer who wanted to avenge his family, who had been massacred. He also directed various action films.
First directing Oscar for “Unforgiven”
Between 1988 and 1990, Clint Eastwood directed several box office flops, but he was able to stabilize his career. He expanded his range of roles and addressed his advanced age in a self-ironic way. He regularly appeared in commercially successful films.
Under the direction of Wolfgang Petersen, he played a Secret Service agent in the 1993 thriller “In the Line of Fire.”
Clint Eastwood directed the late Western “Unforgiven” in 1992 and played a former gunslinger himself. The film was well received by both audiences and critics. As a director and producer, Clint Eastwood received two Oscars. He also received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his work as a film producer.
Under his own direction, Clint Eastwood acted from 1993 to 2008. Alongside Kevin Costner, he played a ranger in the 1993 crime drama Perfect World.
In 1995, at the age of 65, he played a romantic lover in “The Bridges of Madison County” alongside Meryl Streep. However, he was not always successful as a director, as the box office flop “True Crime” in 1999 showed.
The 1997 drama “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” was another success for Clint Eastwood as a director. The film was about the murder of a gay man.
For his lifetime achievement as an actor, director, and producer, Clint Eastwood was awarded the Live Achievement Award by the American Film Institute in 1996.
Second directing Oscar for “Million Dollar Baby”
Clint Eastwood directed Space Cowboys in 2000, at the age of 70. The film about four aging astronauts, played by James Garner, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and Clint Eastwood himself, became another box office success.
Clint Eastwood was also successful as a director in Mystic River, a dark drama from 2003.
For the 2005 drama “Million Dollar Baby,” about a female boxer, which Clint Eastwood directed, he received his second Oscar as director. He also received an award for Best Film of the Year.
Another success was “Flags of our Fathers” from 2006, directed by Clint Eastwood. The film was about a battle in the Pacific War from the American perspective. The film “Letters from Iwo Jima,” also directed by Clint Eastwood, depicts the battle from the Japanese perspective and was also successful.
Political Views
Clint Eastwood is a supporter of the Republicans and a member of this party himself. In interviews, he expresses himself as libertarian or moderate. Socially, he sees himself as left-wing, economically as right-wing. Since 1952 he has been a voter in the Republican primaries.
Clint Eastwood is against the participation of the United States in wars in overseas territories such as Vietnam, Korea or Afghanistan.
Even tho he has never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, he is in favor of same-sex marriage, the right to abortion, and environmental protection. He also supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election campaign.
Honors and Awards
Clint Eastwood has won the Oscar four times, for Unforgiven for Best Director and Best Picture, and also for Million Dollar Baby for Best Director and Best Picture. In addition, he has been nominated for the Oscar several times.
He was awarded the Golden Globe six times. He was also nominated for the Golden Globe several times. He was honored twice at the Cannes Film Festival. He was awarded twice at the Venice Film Festival. He received the Golden Camera in 2009 for his life’s work.
