Clint Eastwood

Eastwood in May 2008
Born	Clinton Eastwood, Jr. May 31, 1930 ( 1930-05-31 ) (age 79) San Francisco , California, United States
Occupation	Actor, film director, film producer, composer
Years active	1954 present
Spouse(s)	Maggie Johnson (1953 1978) Dina Ruiz (1996 present)
Domestic partner(s)	Sondra Locke (1975 1989) Frances Fisher (1990 1995)

Clinton " Clint " Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, 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 was initially known for his alienated, morally ambiguous, 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 went on to star as the Man With No Name in the trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns and as Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry film series. 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 and for producer of the Best Picture and received nominations for Best Actor . These films in particular, as well as others such as 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 most of his star vehicles as well as films he has not acted in, such as Mystic River (2003) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations. Certain parts of his film related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access.

He also served as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California from 1986 1988, tending to support small business interests on the one hand and environmental protection on the other.

Eastwood was born in San Francisco , California , to Clinton Eastwood Sr. (1906 1970), a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth Runner (1909 2006), a factory worker. He was a large baby (12 pounds and 6 ounces) and was named "Samson" by the nurses in the hospital. Eastwood has English , Scottish , Dutch , and Irish ancestry and was raised in a "middle class Protestant home". His family moved often, as his father worked at different jobs along the West Coast . The family settled in Piedmont, California , where Eastwood attended Piedmont Junior High School and Piedmont Senior High School . Later he transferred to Oakland Technical High School , where the drama teachers encouraged him to take part in school plays, but he was not interested. Eastwood held several jobs as he moved to different areas, including a paper carrier, grocer clerk, forest firefighter, and caddy.

After graduating high school in 1949, Eastwood intended to enter Seattle University and major in music, but in 1950, during the Korean War , he was drafted into the U.S. Army . He was stationed at Fort Ord where his certificate as a lifeguard got him appointed as a life-saving and swimming instructor. Eastwood safeguarded film and television actors who had joined the Army through the Special Services program, including John Saxon , David Janssen , and Martin Milner . In 1951, while on leave, Eastwood rode in a Douglas AD bomber that ran out of gas and crashed in the ocean near Point Reyes . After escaping the sinking fuselage, Eastwood and the pilot swam several miles to the shore. He later moved to Los Angeles and began a romance with Maggie Johnson, a college student. During this time, he managed an apartment house in Beverly Hills by day (into which he then moved) and worked at a Signal Oil gas station by night. He signed up to study at Los Angeles City College and quickly became engaged to Maggie; they married shortly before Christmas 1953 in South Pasadena and honeymooned in Carmel. According to the CBS press release for Rawhide , Universal (known then as Universal-International) film company happened to be shooting in Fort Ord and an enterprising assistant spotted Eastwood and invited him to meet the director. However, the key figure, according to his official biography, was a man named Chuck Hill, who was stationed in Fort Ord and had contacts in Hollywood. While in Los Angeles, Hill had reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to sneak Eastwood into a Universal studio, where he showed him to cameraman Irving Glassberg . Glassberg was impressed with Eastwood's appearance and stature and believed him to be "the sort of good looking young man that has traditionally done well in the movies". Glassberg arranged for director Arthur Lubin to meet Eastwood at the gas station where he was working in the evenings in Los Angeles. Lubin, like Glassberg, was highly impressed and swiftly arranged for Eastwood's first audition. However, he was a little less enthusiastic about his first audition, remarking, "He was quite amateurish. He didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything". Nevertheless, he told Eastwood not to give up, suggested that he attend drama classes, and later arranged for an initial contract for Eastwood in April 1954 at $100 a week. Some people in Hollywood, including his wife Maggie, were suspicious of Lubin's intentions towards Eastwood; Lubin was homosexual and maintained a close friendship with Eastwood in the years that followed. After signing, Eastwood was initially criticised for his speech and awkward manner; he was soft-spoken and, when performing in front of people, was cold, stiff, and awkward. Fellow talent school actor John Saxon described Eastwood as "being like a kind of hayseed. Thin, rural, with a prominent Adam's Apple , very laconic and slow speechwise."

Eastwood at the Universal talent school in 1954

In May 1954, Eastwood made his first real audition, trying out for a part in Six Bridges to Cross , a film about the Brinks robbery that would mark the debut of actor Sal Mineo . Director Joseph Pevney was not impressed by his acting and rejected him for any role. Later he tried out for Brigadoon , The Constant Nymph , Bengal Brigade and The Seven Year Itch in May 1954, Sign of the Pagan (June), Smoke Signal (August) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (September), all without success. Eastwood was eventually given a minor role by director Jack Arnold in the film Revenge of the Creature , a film set in the Amazon jungle, which was the sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon which had been released just months earlier.

In September 1954, Eastwood worked for three weeks on Arthur Lubin's Lady Godiva of Coventry in which he donned a medieval costume, and then in February 1955, won a role playing "Jonesy", a sailor in Francis in the Navy and his salary was raised to $300 a week for the four weeks of shooting. He again appeared in a Jack Arnold film, Tarantula , with a small role as a squadron pilot, again uncredited. In May 1955, Eastwood put four hours work into the film Never Say Goodbye , in which he again plays a white coated technician uttering a single line and again had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand (his first western film) in August 1955 with Law Man , also known as Stars in the Dust . He gained experience behind the set, watching productions and dubbing and editing sessions of other films at Universal Studios, notably the Montgomery Clift film A Place in the Sun . Universal presented him with his first TV role with a small television debut on NBC 's Allen in Movieland on July 2, 1955, starring actors such as Tony Curtis and Benny Goodman . Although his records at Universal revealed his development, Universal terminated his contract on October 23, 1955, leaving Eastwood gutted and blaming casting director Robert Palmer , on whom he would exact revenge years later when Palmer came looking for employment at his Malpaso Company . Eastwood rejected him.

On the recommendation of Betty Jane Howarth, Eastwood soon joined new publicity representatives, the Marsh Agency, who had represented actors such as Adam West and Richard Long . Although Eastwood's contract with Lubin had ended, he was important in landing Eastwood his biggest role to date; a featured role in the Ginger Rogers - Carol Channing western comedy, The First Travelling Saleslady . Eastwood played a recruitment officer for Teddy Roosevelt 's Rough Riders. He would also play a pilot in another of Lubin's productions, Escapade in Japan and would make several TV appearances under Lubin even into the early 1960s. As Eastwood grew in success, he never spoke to Lubin again until 1992, shortly after winning his Oscar for Unforgiven , when Eastwood promised a lunch that never happened.

Without the Lubin contract in the meantime, however, Eastwood was struggling. He was financially advised by Irving Leonard and, under Leonard's influence, changed talent agencies in rapid succession: the Kumin-Olenick Agency in 1956 and Mitchell Gertz in 1957. He landed a small role as a temperamental army officer for a segment of ABC 's Reader's Digest series, broadcast in January 1956, and later that year, a motorcycle gang member on a Highway Patrol episode. In 1957, Eastwood played a cadet who becomes involved in a skiing search and rescue in the 'White Fury' installment of the West Point series. He also appeared in an episode of the prime time series Wagon Train and played a suicidal gold prospector in Death Valley Days . In 1958, he played a Navy lieutenant in a segment of Navy Log and in early 1959 made a notable guest appearance as a cowardly villain, intent on marrying a rich girl for money, in Maverick .

Eastwood was credited for his roles in several more films. He auditioned for the film The Spirit of St. Louis , a Billy Wilder biopic about aviator Charles Lindbergh . He was rejected and the role went to Jimmy Stewart , who put on makeup to make him look younger. He did, however, have a small part as an aviator in the French picture Lafayette Escadrille , and played an ex-renegade in the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass , his biggest screen role to date opposite Scott Brady . His part was shot in nine days for Regal Films Inc. Out of frustration, he said after watching it at the premiere, "It was sooo bad. I just kept sinking lower and lower in my seat and just wanted to quit". Around the time the film was released, Eastwood described himself as feeling "really depressed" and regards it as the lowest point in his career and a point when he seriously considered quitting the acting profession.

Eastwood as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide

Eastwood learned from Bill Shiffrin that CBS were casting an hour-long Western series and arranged for a screen test. With screenwriter Charles Marquis Warren overlooking, Eastwood had to recite one of Henry Fonda 's monologues from the William Wellman western, The Ox-Bow Incident in his audition. A week later, Shiffrin rang Eastwood and informed him he had won the part of Rowdy Yates in Rawhide . He had successfully beaten competition such as Bing Russell and had got the break he had been looking for.

Filming began in Arizona in the summer of 1958. Although Eastwood was finally pleased with the direction of his career, he was not especially happy with the nature of his Rowdy Yates character. At this time, Eastwood was 30, and Rowdy was too young and too cloddish for Clint to feel comfortable with the part, privately describing Yates as "the idiot of the plains"

It took just three weeks for Rawhide to reach the top 20 in the TV ratings and soon rescheduled the timeslot half an hour earlier from 7.30 -8.30 pm every Friday, guaranteeing more of a family audience. For several years it was a major success, and reached its peak as number 6 in the ratings between October 1960 and April 1961. However, success was not without its price. The Rawhide years were undoubtedly the most gruelling of his life, and at first, from July until April, they filmed six days a week for an average of twelve hours a day. Although it never won Emmy stature, Rawhide earned critical acclaim and won the American Heritage Award as the best Western series on TV and it was nominated several times for best episode by the Writer's and Director's Guilds. Eastwood received some criticism during this period and was considered too laid back and lazy by some directors who believed he relied on his looks and just didn't work hard enough.

Eastwood appeared in a western comedy series Maverick , in which he fought James Garner in the " Duel at Sundown " episode . Although Rawhide continued to attract notable actors such as Lon Chaney Jr , Mary Astor , Ralph Bellamy , Burgess Meredith , Dean Martin and Barbara Stanwyck , by late 1963 Rawhide was beginning to decline in popularity and lacked freshness in the script and would scrapped by early 1966.

 

A model of Eastwood as the man with no name

In late 1963, an offer was made to Eastwood's co-star Eric Fleming on Rawhide to star in an Italian made western ( A Fistful of Dollars ), originally named The Magnificent Stranger , to be directed in a remote region of Spain by a relative unknown at the time, Sergio Leone . However, the money was not much, and Fleming always set his sights high on Hollywood stardom, and rejected the offer immediately. A variety of actors, including Charles Bronson , Steve Reeves , Richard Harrison , Frank Wolfe , Henry Fonda , James Coburn and Ty Hardin were considered for the main part in the film. Harrison had suggested Clint Eastwood, whom he knew could play a cowboy convincingly. Harrison later said: "Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars , and recommending Clint for the part."

Through Irving Leonard, the offer was made to Eastwood, who saw it as an opportunity to escape Rawhide and the states and saw it as a paid vacation. He signed the contract for $15,000 in wages for eleven weeks work and which also threw in a bonus of a Mercedes automobile upon completion, and arrived in Rome in May 1964. Eastwood was instrumental in creating the Man With No Name character's distinctive visual style that would appear throughout the trilogy . He had brought with him the black jeans he had purchased from a shop on Hollywood Boulevard which he had bleached out and roughened up, the hat from a Santa Monica wardrobe firm, a leather bracelet and two Indian leather cases with dual serpents, and the trademark black cigars came from a Beverly Hills shop, though Eastwood himself is a non-smoker and hated the smell of cigar smoke. Leone decided to use them in the film and heavily emphasised the "look" of the mysterious stranger to appear in the film. Leone commented, "The truth is that I needed a mask more than an actor, and Eastwood at the time only had two facial expressions: one with the hat, and one without it." Eastwood said about playing the Man With No Name character in the film,

"I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement. It was just the kind of character I had envisioned for a long time, keep to the mystery and allude to what happened in the past. It came about after the frustration of doing Rawhide for so long. I felt the less he said the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience.

The first interiors for the film were shot at the Cinecitt- studio on the outskirts of Rome, before quickly moving to a small village in Andalucia , Spain in an area which had also been used for filming Lawrence of Arabia (1962) just a few years earlier. A Fistful of Dollars would become a benchmark in the development of the spaghetti westerns , and Leone would successfully create a new icon of a western hero, depicting a more lawless and desolate world than in traditional westerns. The trilogy would also redefine the stereotypical American image of a western hero and cowboy, creating a character gunslinger and bounty hunter which was more of an anti hero than a hero and with a distinct moral ambiguity, unlike traditional heroes of western cinema in the United States such as John Wayne .

Leone hired Eastwood to star in his second film of what would become a trilogy, For a Few Dollars More (1965). Screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni was brought in to write the script which he wrote in nine days; two bounty hunters (Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef ) pursuing a drug-addicted criminal (Volont-), planning to rob an impregnable bank. For a Few Dollars More was shot in the spring and summer of 1965 and again interiors of the film were shot at the Cinecitt- studio in Rome before they moved to Spain again. Screenwriter Vincenzoni was very important in bringing the films to the states, given that he was fluent in English and accompanied Leone to a cinema in Rome to show the new film after completion to United Artist executives Arthur Krim and Arnold Picker . He sold the rights to the film and the third film (which was yet to be written let alone made) in advance in the states for $900,000, advancing $500,000 up front and the right to half of the profits.

In January 1966, Eastwood met with producer Dino De Laurentiis in New York City and agreed to star in a non-Western five-part anthology production named Le streghe or The Witches opposite his wife, actress Silvana Mangano . Eastwood's nineteen minute installment only took a few days to shoot and was not met well with critics, who described it as "no other performance of his is quite so 'un-Clintlike' ", with the New York Times disparaging it as a "throwaway De Sica".

Two months after his De Sica shoot, Eastwood began working on the third Dollars film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , in which he again played the mysterious Man With No Name character. Lee Van Cleef was brought in again to play a ruthless fortune seeker, while Eli Wallach , a character actor noted for his appearance in The Magnificent Seven (1960), was hired to play the cunning Mexican bandit "Tuco", although the role was originally written for Volont-, who passed on working with Leone again. The three become involved in a search for a buried cache of confederate gold buried in a cemetery by a man named Jackson, in hiding as Bill Carson. Eastwood was not initially pleased with the script and was concerned he might be upstaged by Wallach, and said to Leone, "In the first film I was alone. In the second, we were two. Here we are three. If it goes on this way, in the next one I will be starring with the American cavalry".

Eastwood wearing the poncho and hat in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Filming began at the Cinecitt- studio in Rome again in mid-May 1966, including the opening scene between Clint and Wallach when The Man With No Name captures Tuco for the first time and sends him to jail. The production then moved on to Spain's plateau region near Burgos in the north, which would double for the extreme deep south of the United States, and again shot the western scenes in Almeria in the south. This time the production required more elaborate sets, including a town under cannon fire, an extensive prison camp and an American Civil War battlefield; and for the climax, several hundred Spanish soldiers were employed to build a cemetery with several thousand grave stones to resemble an ancient Roman circus .

The Dollars trilogy was not shown in the United States until 1967. A Fistful of Dollars opened in January, For a Few Dollars More in May and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in December 1967. The trilogy was publicised as James Bond -type entertainment and all films were successful in American cinemas and turned Eastwood into a major film star in 1967, particularly the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which eventually collected $8 million in rental earnings. However, upon release, all three were generally given bad reviews by critics (despite the select few American critics who had seen the films in Italy previously having a positive outlook) and marked the beginning of Eastwood's battle to win the respect of American film critics. Judith Crist described A Fistful of Dollars as "cheapjack" while Newsweek described For a Few Dollars More as "excruciatingly dopey" and Renata Adler of the New York Times describing it as "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre". However while Time highlighted the wooden acting, especially Eastwood's, critics such as Vincent Canby and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times were highly praising of Eastwood's coolness playing the tall, lone stranger; and Leone's unique style of cinematography was widely acclaimed, even by some critics who disliked the acting.

Eastwood spent much of late 1966 and 1967 dubbing for the English-language version of the films and being interviewed, something which left him feeling angry and frustrated. Stardom brought more roles in the "tough guy" mold and Irving Leornard (who would later pass away at Christmas 1969) gave him a script to a new film, the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High , a cross between Rawhide and Leone's westerns, written by Mel Goldberg and produced by Leonard Freeman . Eastwood signed for the film with a salary of $400,000 and 25% of the net earnings to the film, playing the character of Cooper, a man accused by vigilantes of a cow baron's murder and lynched and left for dead and later seeks revenge. With the wealth generated by the Dollars trilogy, Leonard helped set up a new production company for Eastwood, Malpaso Productions , something he had long yearned for and was named after a river on Eastwood's property in Monterey County . Leonard became the company's president and arranged for Hang 'Em High to be a joint production with United Artists. Inger Stevens of The Farmer's Daughter fame was cast to play the role of Rachel Warren with a supporting cast which included Pat Hingle , Dennis Hopper , Ed Begley , Bruce Dern and James MacArthur . Filming began in June 1967 in the Las Cruces area of New Mexico , and additional scenes were shot at White Sands and in the interiors were shot in MGM studios. The film became a major success after release in July 1968 and with an opening day revenue of $5,241 in Baltimore alone, it became the biggest United Artists opening in history, exceeding all of the James Bond films at that time. It debuted at number five on Variety's weekly survey of top films and had made its money back within two weeks of screening. It was widely praised by critics including Arthur Winsten of the New York Post who described Hang 'Em High as "A Western of quality, courage, danger and excitement".

Meanwhile, before Hang 'Em High had been released, Eastwood had set to work on Coogan's Bluff , a project which saw him reunite with Universal Studios after an offer of $1 million, more than doubling his previous salary. Jennings Lang was responsible for the deal, a former agent of a director called Don Siegel , a Universal contract director who was invited to direct Eastwood's second major American film. Eastwood was not familiar with Siegel's work but Lang arranged for them to meet at Clint's residence in Carmel. Eastwood had now seen three of Siegel's earlier films and was impressed with his directing and the two became natural friends, forming a close partnership in the years that followed. The idea for Coogan's Bluff originated in early 1967 as a TV series and the first draft was drawn up by Herman Miller and Jack Laird , screenwriters for Rawhide . It is about a character called Sheriff Walt Coogan, a lonely deputy sheriff working in New York City . After Siegel and Eastwood had agreed to work together, Howard Rodman and three other writers were hired to devise a new script as the new team scouted for locations including New York and the Mojave Desert . However, Eastwood surprised the team one day by calling an abrupt meeting and professed that he strongly disliked the script, which by now had gone through seven drafts, preferring Herman Miller's original concept. This experience would also shape Eastwood's distaste for redrafting scripts in his later career. Eastwood and Siegel decided to hire a new writer, Dean Riesner , who had written for Siegel in the Henry Fonda TV film Stranger on the Run some years previously. Don Stroud was cast as the psychopathic criminal Coogan is chasing, Lee J. Cobb as the disagreeable New York City Police Department lieutenant, Susan Clark as a probation officer who falls for Coogan and Tisha Sterling playing the drug addicted lover of Don Stroud's character. Filming began in November 1967 even before the full script had been finalized. The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence, but it had launched a collaboration between Eastwood and Siegel that lasted more than ten years, and set the prototype for the macho hero that Eastwood would play in the Dirty Harry films.

Eastwood was paid $850,000 in 1968 for the war epic Where Eagles Dare opposite Richard Burton . However, Eastwood initially expressed that the script drawn up by Alistair Mclean was "terrible" and was "all exposition and complications". The film was about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the mountains, reachable only by cable car, with Burton playing the squad's commander and Eastwood his right-hand man. He was also cast as Two-Face in the television series, but the series was cancelled before he played the part.

In 1969, Eastwood branched out by starring in his only musical , Paint Your Wagon . He and fellow non-singer Lee Marvin played gold miners who share the same wife (played by Jean Seberg ). Production for the film was plagued with bad weather and delays and the future of the director's career ( Joshua Logan ) was in doubt. It was extremely high budget for this period and eventually exceeded $20 million. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy .

In 1970, Eastwood starred in the western, Two Mules for Sister Sara with Shirley MacLaine . The film, directed by Siegel, is a story about an American mercenary who gets mixed up with a whore disguised as a nun and aid a group of Juarista rebels during the puppet reign of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico . The film saw Eastwood embody the tall mysterious stranger once more, although the film was considerably less crude and more sardonic than those of Leone. The film, which took four months to shoot and cost around $4 million to make, received mixed reviews, and Roger Greenspun of the New York Times reported, "I'm not sure it is a great movie, but it is very good and it stays and grows on the mind the way only movies of exceptional narrative intelligence do".

Later in 1970 he appeared in the World War II movie, Kelly's Heroes with Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas . The film, which stars Eastwood as one of a group of Americans who steal a fortune in bullion from the Nazis , combined tough-guy action with offbeat humor. It was last non-Malpaso film that Clint agreed to appear in. The filming commenced in July 1969 and was shot on location in Yugoslavia and London . Directed by Brian G. Hutton, the film involved hundreds of extras and dangerous special effects. The climax to the film echoes that of his Dollars films when he advances in lockstep on a German tiger tank on the street of a small European town, with a Morricone-esque soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin . The film received mostly a positive reception and its anti-war sentiments were recognized. The film has a respectable 83% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes .

In the winter of 1969-70, Eastwood and Siegel began planning his next film, The Beguiled . Jennings Lang was inspired by the 1966 novel by Thomas Cullinan and in passing the book to Eastwood he was engrossed throughout the night in reading the tale of a wounded Union soldier held captive by the sexually repressed matron of a southern girls' school. This was the first of several films where Eastwood has agreed to storylines where he is the centre of female attention, including minors. The film, according to Siegel, deals with the themes of sex, violence and vengeance and was based on "the basic desire of women to castrate men". The film later received major recognition in France and is considered one of Eastwood's finest works by the French. However, although the film reached number two on Variety' s chart of top grossing films, it was poorly marketed and in the end grossed less than $1 million. According to Eastwood and Jennings Lang, the film, aside from being poorly publicized, flopped due to Clint being "emasculated in the film".

1971 proved to be a professional turning point in Eastwood's career. Before Irving Leonard had died, the last film they had discussed at Malpaso was to give Eastwood the artistic control that he desired and make his directorial debut in Play Misty for Me . The script was originally thought of by Jo Heims , about a jazz disc jockey named Dave (Eastwood) who has a casual affair with Evelyn ( Jessica Walter ), one of his listeners who had been calling the radio station repeatedly at night asking him to play her favourite song, Erroll Garner 's Misty . When Dave ends their relationship the female fan becomes possessive and then violent, turning into a crazed murderess. Filming commenced in Monterey in September 1970, with Eastwood obtaining the rights to Misty after meeting Garner at the Concord Music Festival in 1970 and paying $2,000 for the use of the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack . The film was highly acclaimed by critics, with critics such as Jay Cocks in Time , Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice and Archer Winsten in the New York Post all praising Eastwood's directorial skills and the film, including his performance in the scenes with Walter.

Eastwood as Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry

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). 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 .

Eastwood with President Ronald Reagan in the late 1980s.

Eastwood registered as a Republican in order to vote for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and he supported Richard Nixon 's 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns, but later criticized Nixon's handling of the Vietnam War and morality during Watergate (see the February 1974 edition of Playboy ). He usually describes himself as a libertarian in interviews, fiscally conservative yet socially liberal. At times, he has supported Democrats in California, such as the liberal and environmentally-concerned Representative Sam Farr in 2002. Indeed, Eastwood contributed $1,000 to Farr's successful re-election campaign that year and on May 23, 2003, the iconic actor-director hosted a $5,000-per-ticket fundraiser for California's Democratic governor, Gray Davis. Later that year, Eastwood offered to film a commercial in support of the embattled governor, while in 2001, the star visited Davis' office to support an alternative energy bill written by another Democrat, California State Assemblyman Fred Keeley.

In general, Eastwood has favored less governmental interference in both the private economy and the private lives of individuals. He has disapproved of a reliance on welfare, instead feeling that government should help citizens make something of themselves via education and incentive. He has, however, approved of unemployment insurance, bail-outs for homeowners saddled with unaffordable mortgages, a continued American automobile industry, electric and hybrid cars, free prescription drugs, government-ordained educational standards, environmental conservation, land preservation, alternative energy, and moderate gun control measures such as California's Brady Bill. A longtime liberal on civil rights, Eastwood has stated that he has always been pro-choice on abortion (see the March 1997 edition of Playboy ). He has also endorsed the notion of marriage equality (i.e. allowing gays to marry), just as he had once contributed to groups supporting the Equal Rights Amendment for women. Eastwood disapproved of America's wars in Korea (1950 1953), Vietnam (1964 1973), and Iraq (2003 present), believing that the U.S. should not be overly militaristic or playing the role of global policeman. In all, he considers himself too individualistic to be either right-wing or left-wing, having sometimes described himself as a "political nothing" and a "moderate" (see the February 1974 edition of Playboy ). Eastwood has also stated that he doesn't see himself as conservative, but that he isn't "ultra-leftist," either.

Eastwood made one successful foray into elected politics, becoming the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California (population 4,000), a wealthy small town and artist community on the Monterey Peninsula , for one term in April 1986. Upon being elected, he was called by President Ronald Reagan asking "What's an actor who once appeared with a monkey in a movie doing in politics-", referring to Eastwood's role in Any Which Way But Loose and Reagan's Bedtime for Bonzo . During Eastwood's tenure, he completed Heartbreak Ridge and Bird .

In 2001, he was appointed to the California State Park and Recreation Commission by Democratic Governor Gray Davis . He was reappointed in 2004 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger , whom he supported in the elections of 2003 and 2006 (although Eastwood disapproved of the recall of Davis in 2003). Soon afterwards Governor Schwarzenegger announced a proposal to close 80 percent of California State Parks.

Eastwood, the vice chairman of the commission, and commission chairman, Bobby Shriver , Schwarzenegger's brother-in-law, led a California State Park and Recreation Commission panel in its unanimous opposition in 2005 to a six-lane, 16-mile (26 km), toll road that would cut through San Onofre State Beach , north of San Diego , and one of Southern California's most cherished surfing beaches. Eastwood and Shriver also supported a 2006 lawsuit to block the toll road and urged the California Coastal Commission to reject the project, which it did in February 2008.

Take Pride in America Spokesman Eastwood in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

In March 2008, Eastwood and Shriver, whose terms had expired, were not reappointed. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) asked for a legislative investigation into the decision to not re-appoint Eastwood and Shriver, citing their opposition to the toll road extension. According to the NRDC and The New Republic , Eastwood and Shriver were not reappointed again in 2008 because both Eastwood and Shriver opposed the freeway extension of California State Route 241 , that would cut through the San Onofre State Beach. This extension is likewise supported by Governor Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger's press release appointing Alice Huffman and Lindy DeKoven to replace Eastwood and Shriver makes no mention of a reason for the commission change.

Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Eastwood (along with actor and director Danny DeVito , actor and director Bill Duke, producer Tom Werner and producer and director Lili Zanuck) to the California Film Commission in April 2004.

During the 2008 United States Presidential Election , Eastwood endorsed John McCain for President, citing the fact that he had known McCain since 1973. He donated $2,300 towards McCain's campaign funds. Although sympathetic towards her bid for the presidency, Eastwood expressed disappointment with Hillary Clinton for engaging in a duck-hunting photo op, saying, "I was thinking: 'The poor duck, what the hell did she do that for-' I don't go for hunting. I just don't like killing creatures. Unless they're trying to kill me. Then that would be fine." Upon the election of Barack Obama , Eastwood stated "Obama is my president now and I am going to be wishing him the very best because it is what is best for all of us."

Eastwood told biographer Richard Schickel that he lost his virginity at age 14. He has fathered at least seven children by five different women. Biographer Patrick McGilligan claims Eastwood also fathered a child who was given up for adoption and several others that were aborted . According to McGilligan and biographer Marc Eliot , Eastwood always had a strong sexual appetite and had affairs with tens of women through the years, including many of his co-stars such as Inger Stevens ( Hang 'Em High ), Jean Seberg ( Paint Your Wagon ), Jo Ann Harris ( The Beguiled ), actresses Peggy Lipton , Kay Lenz , Rebecca Pearle and Jane Brolin, script analyst Megan Rose, and swimming champion Anita Lhoest. He also had an affair with French actress Catherine Deneuve , while in Paris in the mid 1960s. Biographer Patrick McGilligan and friend Paul Lippman have claimed that Eastwood was particularly sexually active and promiscuous in the 1970s and that he used his apartment close to the Hog's Breath Inn which he purchased in Carmel in the early 1970s to meet young ladies for "nooners" and "five in the afternooners". According to Lippman, "Eastwood seemed to get a bang out of this kinkier side to himself and rarely concealed it, often gloated about it".

Eastwood married swimsuit model Maggie Johnson on December 19, 1953, six months after they met on a blind date . Eastwood originally did not want to have children with his wife, then she became ill with hepatitis . After she recovered, he changed his mind, and Johnson became pregnant after fourteen years of marriage. They had two children: Kyle Eastwood (born May 19, 1968) and Alison Eastwood (born May 22, 1972). They separated around 1975, but Johnson did not take any legal action until 1978, when she filed for a legal separation . Eastwood was ordered to pay her $25 million ($1 million for each year they were married). Their divorce, however, was not finalized until May 1984.

During his marriage to Johnson, Eastwood had an affair with Roxanne Tunis, who was an extra on Rawhide during the late 1950s and early 1960s. They had a daughter, Kimber Eastwood, born on June 17, 1964. Over the years, Eastwood financially supported Tunis and their daughter, and would secretly visit them every three to four months, according to Kimber. Kimber's son, Clinton, was born on February 21, 1984. The existence of Eastwood's love child and secret grandchild were unknown to the public and even Eastwood's family until reported by the National Enquirer in 1989. Since then Kimber has had a small role in her father's film Absolute Power .

Eastwood and Sondra Locke in their 1977 film The Gauntlet

Eastwood had a fourteen-year relationship with actress Sondra Locke , whom he met in 1972 and co-starred in six films: The Outlaw Josey Wales , The Gauntlet , Every Which Way but Loose , Bronco Billy , Any Which Way You Can , and Sudden Impact . Locke became pregnant by Eastwood twice, and had two abortions and a tubal ligation . Their relationship ended acrimoniously in 1989. She filed a palimony suit against Eastwood, and the litigation continued for a decade, with Locke suing him a second time for fraud . Locke and Eastwood finally resolved the dispute with a non-public settlement in 1999. Her memoir The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly includes a harrowing account of their years together.