Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood (Clinton Eastwood, Jr.), 1930-, American actor and director, b. San Francisco. Eastwood, who began his acting career in 1955, came to public attention with his role in the TV Western Rawhide and in so-called spaghetti Westerns (usually filmed in Italy), such as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). As an actor, Eastwood is best known for his starring roles in action films, in which he portrays a strong, silent, often violent hero. He has played a leading role in more than 40 movies, including Dirty Harry (1972), Magnum Force (1973), The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976), and In the Line of Fire (1993). Films in which he is both director and star include Play Misty for Me (1971), Sudden Impact (1983), the Academy Award-winning Unforgiven (1992), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), True Crime (1999), and Blood Work (2002). Eastwood scored a critical and box-office success as director of Mystic River (2003), a haunting cinematic parable of violence and revenge. The following year he directed and starred in Million Dollar Baby, the saga of a young female boxer and her grizzled trainer, which garnered Academy Awards for best director and picture. He also directed Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (both: 2006), two movies centered on the World War II battle for Iwo Jima that explore the experiences and echoes of the conflict from the American or Japanese perspective, respectively. A gifted musician who has written scores for a number of his films, he served as mayor of Carmel, Calif., from 1986 to 1988.

Bibliography: See Clint Eastwood: Interviews (1999), ed. by K. Coblentz; biographies by J. Ryder (1987), B. McCabe (1996), and R. Schickel (1996); studies by L. Pfeiffer and B. Zmijewsky (rev. ed. 1988) and P. Smith (1993).

Eastwood, Clint (1930– ) US film actor and director. Following the long-running television series Rawhide, Eastwood revitalized his career playing the no-nonsense drifter in the ‘spaghetti Westerns’ A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967). Dirty Harry (1971) and its four sequels were tough and uncompromising. As a director, he earned praise for The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Bird (1988). Eastwood won Academy Awards for best director, best actor, and best picture for Unforgiven (1992).