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Clint Eastwood, born May 31, 1930, first gained fame as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. He later directed and starred in Unforgiven 1992, winning the Best Director Oscar. In 2004, at age 74, he became the oldest director to win the Best Director Oscar for Million Dollar Baby. He has directed five Best Picture nominees and won two.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Clint Eastwood — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Clint Eastwood by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Clint Eastwood — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
In 1949, Clint Eastwood graduated from Piedmont High School and moved with his family to Seattle. He worked as a logger in Oregon and a lifeguard in Renton, Washington before returning to California in 1951. After a two-year Army stint at Fort Ord, he enrolled at Los Angeles City College but dropped out to pursue acting. His mother Ruth Wood, a housewife turned IBM clerk, and father Clint Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman, provided a middle-class upbringing.
Eastwood’s first consequential acting role came in 1958 on the TV series Rawhide, where he played Rowdy Yates. His big-screen breakthrough arrived in 1964 as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, followed by For a Few Dollars More 1965 and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 1966. In 1971, he directed his first film Play Misty for Me and starred in Dirty Harry, which made him a cultural icon. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Unforgiven 1992 and again for Million Dollar Baby 2004, which also won Best Picture. Other acclaimed directorial works include Mystic River 2003, Letters from Iwo Jima 2006, and American Sniper 2014.
Eastwood has been married twice: to Margaret Neville Johnson from 1953 to 1984, with whom he had two children, Kyle and Alison; and to Dina Eastwood from 1996 to 2014, with whom he had daughter Morgan. He also had long-term relationships with actresses Sondra Locke and Frances Fisher, and has fathered eight children by at least six women. His known children include Laurie Murray born 1954, Kimber Eastwood born 1964 with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis, Scott and Kathryn Eastwood with flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves, and Francesca Eastwood with Frances Fisher. Despite his public fame, he has kept many details of his personal life private and has refused to confirm the exact number of his offspring.
Eastwood directed 12 actors to Oscar-nominated performances, with five winning. His films Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Unforgiven have been inducted into the National Film Registry. At 74, he became the oldest Best Director winner in Academy history. As a producer with Malpaso Productions, he maintained a reputation for finishing films on schedule and under budget. His signature roles, from the Man with No Name to Dirty Harry, have defined American masculinity on screen. Alongside Warren Beatty and Robert Redford, he is one of the few actor-directors to win Best Director Oscars.
The complete filmography of Clint Eastwood — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Clint Eastwood — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Clint Eastwood — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I Like the Libertarian View, Which Is to Leave Everyone Alone. Even as a Kid, I Was Annoyed by People Who Wanted to Tell Everyone How to Live.
I Love Every Aspect of the Creation of Motion Pictures and I Guess I Am Committed to It for Life.
Right Now, the State of the Movies in America, There’s an Awful Lot of People Hanging on Wires and Floating Across Things and Comic Book Characters and What Have You. There Seems to Be a Lot of Big Business in That, a Nice Return on Some of Those.
Nowadays You’d Have Many Battles Before You Blow It Up, but Eventually You’d Take It Down. and That’s Okay, I Don’t Heavily Quarrel with That, but for Me Personally, Having Made Films for Years and Directed for 33 Years, It Just Seems to Me That I Long for People Who Want to See a Story and See Character Development. Maybe We’ve Dug It Out and There’s Not Really an Audience for That, but That’s Not for Me to Really Worry About.
And I Like to Direct the Same Way That I Like to Be Directed.
I Think Kids Are Natural Actors. You Watch Most Kids; If They Don’t Have a Toy They’ll Pick up a Stick and Make a Toy Out of It. Kids Will Daydream All the Time.
There’s Really No Way to Teach You How to Act, but There Is a Way to Teach You How to Teach Yourself to Act. That’s Kind of What It Is; Once You Learn the Little Tricks That Work for You, Pretty Soon You Find Yourself Doing That.
Again, After You’ve Gone Through All the Various Processes and the Film Comes Out and Is Very Successful, You’re Almost Afraid to Revisit It. You Want to Save It for a Rainy Day.
…In America, Instead of Making the Audience Come to the Film, the Idea Seems to Be for You to Go to the Audience. They Come up with the Demographics for the Film and Then the Film Is Made and Sold Strictly to That Audience. Not to Say That It’s All Bad, but It Leaves a Lot of the Rest of Us Out of It. to Me Cinema Can Be a Much More Friendly World If There’s a Lot of Things to Choose From.
You Know When You Think of a Particular Director, You Think You Would Have Liked to Be with Them on One Particular Film and Not Necessarily on Some Other One.
Plastic Surgery Used to Be a Thing Where Older People Would Try to Go into This Dream World of Being 28 Years Old Again. but Now, in Hollywood, Even People at 28 Are Having Work Done. Society Has Made Us Believe You Should Look Like an 18 Year Old Model All Your Life. but I Figure I Might as Well Just Be What I Am.
Most People Who’ll Remember Me, If at All, Will Remember Me as an Action Guy, Which Is OK. There’s Nothing Wrong with That. but There Will Be a Certain Group Which Will Remember Me for the Other Films, the Ones Where I Took a Few Chances. at Least, I Like to Think So.
The Plan Was, When I First Started Directing in the 1970S, to Get More Involved in Production and Directing so at Some Point in My Life, When I Decided I Didn’t Want to Act Anymore, I Didn’t Have to Suit Up.
I Feel Very Close to the Western. There Are Not Too Many American Art Forms That Are Original. Most Are Derived from European Art Forms. Other Than the Western and Jazz or Blues, That’s All That’s Really Original.
You Have to Trust Your Instincts. There’s a Moment When an Actor Has It, and He Knows It. Behind the Camera You Can Feel the Moment Even More Clearly. and Once You’ve Got It, Once You Feel It, You Can’t Second Guess Yourself. You Can Find a Million Reasons Why Something Didn’t Work. but If It Feels Right, and It Looks Right, It Works. Without Sounding Like a Pseudointellectual Dipshit, It’s My Responsibility to Be True to Myself. If It Works for Me, It’s Right.
None of the Pictures I Take a Risk in Cost a Lot, so It Doesn’t Take Much for Them to Turn a Profit. We Don’t Deal in Big Budgets. We Know What We Want and We Shoot It and We Don’t Waste Anything. I Never Understand These Films That Cost Twenty, Thirty Million Dollars When They Could Be Made for Half That. Maybe It’s Because No One Cares. We Care.
There’s a Rebel Lying Deep in My Soul. Anytime Anybody Tells Me the Trend Is Such and Such, I Go the Opposite Direction. I Hate the Idea of Trends. I Hate Imitation; I Have a Reverence for Individuality. I Got Where I Am by Coming off the Wall. I’ve Always Considered Myself Too Individualistic to Be Either Right Wing or Left Wing.
I Don’t Like the Wimp Syndrome. No Matter How Ardent a Feminist May Be, If She Is a Heterosexual Female, She Wants the Strength of a Male Companion as Well as the Sensitivity. the Most Gentle People in the World Are Macho Males, People Who Are Confident in Their Masculinity and Have a Feeling of Well Being in Themselves. They Don’t Have to Kick in Doors, Mistreat Women, or Make Fun of Gays.
I Don’t Believe in Pessimism. If Something Doesn’t Come up the Way You Want, Forge Ahead.
This Film Cost $31 Million. with That Kind of Money I Could Have Invaded Some Country.
They Say Marriages Are Made in Heaven. but so Is Thunder and Lightning.
I’ve Always Supported a Certain Amount of Gun Control. I Think California Has Always Had a Mandatory Waiting Period, so We Were Never Concerned About It Like the Rest of the Country. Some States Didn’t Have Any at All. so I’ve Always Supported That. I Think It’s Very Important That Guns Don’t Get in the Wrong Hands, And, Yes, I Would Support Most of That. I Don’t Know Too Much About Trigger Locks. I’ve Never Really Discussed That with Anyone. but I Do Feel That Guns It’s Very Important to Keep Them Out of the Hands of Felons or Anyone Who Might Be Crazy with It.
Maybe I’m Getting to the Age When I’m Starting to Be Senile or Nostalgic or Both, but People Are so Angry Now. You Used to Be Able to Disagree with People and Still Be Friends. Now You Hear These Talk Shows, and Everyone Who Believes Differently from You Is a Moron and an Idiot Both on the Right and the Left.
I Like to Play the Line and Not Wander Too Far to Either Side. If a Guy Has Just Had a Bad Day in the Mines and Wants to See a Good Shoot ‘Em Up, That’s Great.
My Involvement Goes Deeper Than Acting or Directing. I Love Every Aspect of the Creation of Motion Pictures and I Guess I’m Committed to It for Life.
Whatever Success I’ve Had Is Due to a Lot of Instinct and a Little Luck.
I’ve Always Had the Ability to Say to the Audience, Watch This If You Like, and If You Don’t, Take a Hike.
I’ve Actually Had People Come up to Me and Ask Me to Autograph Their Guns.
Little-known facts about Clint Eastwood — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
At age 74, he became the oldest winner of the Best Director Oscar for Million Dollar Baby 2004.
When directing, he says okay instead of action and cut.
He insists actors wear little makeup and prefers to print first takes, keeping films on schedule and budget.
He learned mountain climbing for The Eiger Sanction 1975 and performed dangerous rope scenes himself.
He wore the same unwashed sarape in all three Man with No Name westerns.
As a director, he has never test-screened his films before release.
Though he often smokes on screen, he is a lifelong non-smoker off-screen.
His production company Malpaso was named after the Italian advice that taking the role in A Fistful of Dollars would be a mal paso bad move.
He allowed his name to be used for Marty McFly’s alter ego in Back to the Future Part III.
He turned down the role of James Bond in Live and Let Die 1973, saying Bond should be played by an English actor.
He claimed racism was the trait he most despised.
An accomplished jazz pianist, he performs music for his films, including the bar scene in In the Line of Fire 1993.
He joked that a sixth Dirty Harry movie would show Harry fly-fishing with his .44 Magnum.
He and Burt Reynolds influenced each other’s careers; Eastwood sent Reynolds Sharky’s Machine, and Reynolds sent him The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Though associated with violence, he personally detests it and showed its consequences in Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.
He developed his movie voice by listening to audio recordings of Marilyn Monroe.
He once stood 6’4 but due to back problems can only reach 6’2.
He is 35 years older than ex-wife Dina Eastwood, making him older than her parents.
He turned down the role in Any Given Sunday because Warner Bros. wouldn’t let him direct.
He has always maintained his films are apolitical, focused on entertainment.
William Goldman said Eastwood was the only star in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
The boots he wore in Unforgiven 1992 were the same from Rawhide 1959 and are now in his private collection.
He directed 12 actors to Oscar-nominated performances, including Sean Penn and Hilary Swank who won.
He got his role in Rawhide when a CBS exec spotted him while visiting a friend.
He served as a lifeguard and projectionist in the U.S. Army at Fort Ord from 1951 to 1953.
He was sworn in as a California state parks commissioner in 2002.
He turned down Paul Newman’s role in The Towering Inferno 1974.
He is one of only six actor-directors to win the Best Director Oscar.
He declined a party for his 80th birthday, saying he only planned to go out for a drink with his wife.
His favorite actors include Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and James Stewart.
He walked out of an interview when asked about his children.
He accepted the role in A Fistful of Dollars for $15,000 after James Coburn asked for $25,000.
He objected to the end of Dirty Harry when Harry throws his badge away, arguing it was out of character.
He claims he was an early choice for the title role in Superman 1978.
He stepped in as director during the jumper sequence in Dirty Harry when Don Siegel fell ill.
He worked as a logger, steel furnace stoker, and gas station attendant before acting.
As Cannes jury president in 1994, his favorite film was To Live, not Pulp Fiction which won.
He is left-eye dominant but right-handed, evident when shooting rifles.
He is allergic to horses and used medication to ride them in westerns.
Three of his films are in the National Film Registry: Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Unforgiven.
He participated in the Pebble Beach golf tournament annually from 1962 to 2002 and now hosts.
He was considered for the role of Rambo in First Blood before Stallone.
He once owned a bluegum eucalyptus tree believed to be the largest hardwood in the U.S.
He finished directing Absolute Power 1997 days ahead of schedule.
He has practiced transcendental meditation twice a day for over 40 years.
His eight children include Laurie Murray born 1954, Kimber 1964, Kyle 1968, Alison 1972, Scott 1986, Kathryn 1988, Francesca 1993, and Morgan 1996.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Clint Eastwood.
Celebrities similar to Clint Eastwood — same craft, ranked by reach.
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