Best Known As: Film Actor

Gist:  Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, film director, producer, and composer. He has received five Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and five People's Choice Awards—including one for Favorite All-Time Motion Picture Star.

Eastwood is primarily known for his tough guy, patriotic American, anti-hero acting roles in violent action and western films, particularly in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Following his role on the long-running television series Rawhide, he was cast as the Man with No Name in the Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns and as Inspector Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry police dramas. These roles have made him an enduring icon of masculinity. Eastwood is also known for his comedic efforts in Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980), his two highest-grossing films after adjustment for inflation.

For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director, producer of the Best Picture, and received nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others such as Paint Your Wagon (1969), Play Misty for Me (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008) have all received great critical acclaim and commercial success. He has directed many of his films, and has also found success in others in which he has not acted such as Mystic River (2003).

He also has an interest in politics, serving as Mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, from 1986 to 1988, and has also been a critic of disability rights.

Life Facts:  Eastwood was born in San Francisco, California, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth Eastwood (née Runner), a factory worker. Clint was born a very large baby at 11 pounds. Eastwood has English, Scottish, 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. He worked at a pulp mill in Springfield, Oregon when he was 18 or 19. Eastwood then worked as a gas station attendant, as a fireman, and played ragtime piano at a bar in Oakland. In 1950, during the Korean War, Eastwood was drafted into the U.S. Army, and was aboard a military flight that crashed into the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco (Drake's Bay). 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.

In 1980, Eastwood starred in two films: first playing the main attraction in a traveling Wild West Show in Bronco Billy; he reprised his role in the sequel to Every Which Way But Loose entitled Any Which Way You Can. Despite bad reviews from critics, the sequel also became another box-office success and was among the top five highest-grossing films of the year.

In 1982, Eastwood directed, produced and starred in the Cold War-themed Firefox. The fourth Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact (1983), is widely considered to be the darkest, "dirtiest" and most violent film of the series. Also, it was the highest-grossing film of the franchise, making Eastwood a viable star for the 1980s. This would be the last time he starred in a film with frequent leading lady Sondra Locke. President Ronald Reagan referred to his famous "Go ahead, make my day." line in one of his speeches.

Three of Eastwood's films in the 1980s featured his real-life children. His son Kyle starring as his nephew in Honkytonk Man (1982). His daughter Alison had a small role as an orphan in Bronco Billy, and a much bigger role as his daughter in the provocative thriller Tightrope (1984), in which Eastwood starred as a single-father cop lured by the promise of kinky sex.

Eastwood starred in the period comedy City Heat (1984) with Burt Reynolds and the military drama Heartbreak Ridge (1986). He revisited the western genre directing and starring in Pale Rider (1985), an homage to the western film classic Shane, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

"]]

Eastwood's fifth and final Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool (1988), was a commercial success, but was generally panned by critics. It co-starred Liam Neeson, Patricia Clarkson, and a young Jim Carrey, who later appeared with Eastwood in the poorly received comedy Pink Cadillac (1989) alongside Bernadette Peters and Eastwood's future girlfriend Frances Fisher, with whom he has since appeared in two more films. Also during this time, he began working on smaller, more personal projects, first directing Bird (1988), a biopic starring Forest Whitaker as jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker, a genre of music that Eastwood has always been personally interested in. Eastwood received two Golden Globes—the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his lifelong contribution and the Best Director award for Bird, which also earned him a Golden Palm nomination at the Cannes Film Festival.

]]

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 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. In 1985, he made his only foray into TV direction to date with the Amazing Stories episode Vanessa In The Garden, starring Harvey Keitel and Sondra Locke; this was his first collaboration with writer/executive producer Steven Spielberg (Spielberg later produced A Perfect World, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima).

Eastwood has chosen a wide variety of films to direct, some clearly commercial, others highly personal. Eastwood produces many of his films, and is well known in the industry for his efficient, low-cost approach to making films; he has said that "everything I do as a director is based upon what I prefer as an actor." 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 the 2000s, Eastwood also began composing music for some of his films. He is one of the subjects profiled in the documentary Fog City Mavericks, which interviews Eastwood alongside other fellow San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers such as George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. As producer, director, and actor, Eastwood has worked exclusively with legendary film poster designer Bill Gold. Gold designed (and often photographed) posters for 35 Clint Eastwood films, from Dirty Harry (1971) to Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Eastwood will be directing the Nelson Mandela bio-pic Invictus, a film based on a 2008 book by John Carlin (Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation - ISBN 978-1-59420-174-5), starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as rugby team captain Francois Pienaar. Carlin sold the film rights to Morgan Freeman. Eastwood and Warner Bros. have purchased the film rights to James R. Hansen's First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, the authorized biography of astronaut Neil Armstrong. No production date has been announced. As of November 2008, he is in talks to direct Peter Morgan's Hereafter for DreamWorks. Eastwood had announced that he has all but retired from acting, although maintained that "if a good western script turns up, you never know..." In 2008, he starred in Gran Torino, which was not a western. Eastwood 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.

See Clint Eastwood in popular culture

Won

* 1992 Best Director - Unforgiven

* 1992 Best Picture - Unforgiven

* 1994 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award

* 2004 Best Director - Million Dollar Baby

* 2004 Best Picture - Million Dollar Baby

Nominated

* 1992 Best Actor - Unforgiven

* 2003 Best Director - Mystic River

* 2003 Best Picture - Mystic River

* 2004 Best Actor - Million Dollar Baby

* 2006 Best Director - Letters from Iwo Jima

* 2006 Best Picture - Letters from Iwo Jima

Career Facts:  Clint Eastwood began acting during the mid-1950s , with uncredited appearances in B-films such as Revenge of the Creature, Tarantula, and Francis in the Navy. Later on, he was credited for his roles in several more films, including Ambush at Cimarron Pass, which he has dismissed as "probably the lousiest Western ever made." Around the time the film was released Eastwood described himself as feeling "really depressed" and regards it as the lowest point in his career. He seriously considered quitting the acting profession and returning to school to start doing something with his life. His break came when he won the role of Rowdy Yates in the TV series Rawhide, which ran from 1959 to 1966. As Rowdy Yates (whom Eastwood privately described as "the idiot of the plains"), he became a household name across the United States. He did not make another theatrical film until he was contacted by Sergio Leone in 1964, although he did make several guest appearances on TV, including the western comedy series Maverick, in which he fought James Garner in the "Duel at Sundown" episode.

In 1980, Eastwood starred in two films: first playing the main attraction in a traveling Wild West Show in Bronco Billy; he reprised his role in the sequel to Every Which Way But Loose entitled Any Which Way You Can. Despite bad reviews from critics, the sequel also became another box-office success and was among the top five highest-grossing films of the year.

In 1982, Eastwood directed, produced and starred in the Cold War-themed Firefox. The fourth Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact (1983), is widely considered to be the darkest, "dirtiest" and most violent film of the series. Also, it was the highest-grossing film of the franchise, making Eastwood a viable star for the 1980s. This would be the last time he starred in a film with frequent leading lady Sondra Locke. President Ronald Reagan referred to his famous "Go ahead, make my day." line in one of his speeches.

Three of Eastwood's films in the 1980s featured his real-life children. His son Kyle starring as his nephew in Honkytonk Man (1982). His daughter Alison had a small role as an orphan in Bronco Billy, and a much bigger role as his daughter in the provocative thriller Tightrope (1984), in which Eastwood starred as a single-father cop lured by the promise of kinky sex.

Eastwood starred in the period comedy City Heat (1984) with Burt Reynolds and the military drama Heartbreak Ridge (1986). He revisited the western genre directing and starring in Pale Rider (1985), an homage to the western film classic Shane, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

"]]

Eastwood's fifth and final Dirty Harry film, The Dead Pool (1988), was a commercial success, but was generally panned by critics. It co-starred Liam Neeson, Patricia Clarkson, and a young Jim Carrey, who later appeared with Eastwood in the poorly received comedy Pink Cadillac (1989) alongside Bernadette Peters and Eastwood's future girlfriend Frances Fisher, with whom he has since appeared in two more films. Also during this time, he began working on smaller, more personal projects, first directing Bird (1988), a biopic starring Forest Whitaker as jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker, a genre of music that Eastwood has always been personally interested in. Eastwood received two Golden Globes—the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his lifelong contribution and the Best Director award for Bird, which also earned him a Golden Palm nomination at the Cannes Film Festival.

]]

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 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. In 1985, he made his only foray into TV direction to date with the Amazing Stories episode Vanessa In The Garden, starring Harvey Keitel and Sondra Locke; this was his first collaboration with writer/executive producer Steven Spielberg (Spielberg later produced A Perfect World, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima).

Eastwood has chosen a wide variety of films to direct, some clearly commercial, others highly personal. Eastwood produces many of his films, and is well known in the industry for his efficient, low-cost approach to making films; he has said that "everything I do as a director is based upon what I prefer as an actor." 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 the 2000s, Eastwood also began composing music for some of his films. He is one of the subjects profiled in the documentary Fog City Mavericks, which interviews Eastwood alongside other fellow San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers such as George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. As producer, director, and actor, Eastwood has worked exclusively with legendary film poster designer Bill Gold. Gold designed (and often photographed) posters for 35 Clint Eastwood films, from Dirty Harry (1971) to Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Eastwood will be directing the Nelson Mandela bio-pic Invictus, a film based on a 2008 book by John Carlin (Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation - ISBN 978-1-59420-174-5), starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as rugby team captain Francois Pienaar. Carlin sold the film rights to Morgan Freeman. Eastwood and Warner Bros. have purchased the film rights to James R. Hansen's First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, the authorized biography of astronaut Neil Armstrong. No production date has been announced. As of November 2008, he is in talks to direct Peter Morgan's Hereafter for DreamWorks. Eastwood had announced that he has all but retired from acting, although maintained that "if a good western script turns up, you never know..." In 2008, he starred in Gran Torino, which was not a western. Eastwood 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.