Eastwood, Clint

Eastwood, Clint (1930- ), American film actor and director, who went on to become Mayor of Carmel, California, from 1986 to 1988. Born Clinton Eastwood, Jr., in San Francisco, California, he first gained recognition when he starred in the television series Rawhide between 1959 and 1966. Eastwood became an international superstar in the film A Fistful of Dollars (1964), in which he played an unscrupulous hired killer in the Old West. He recreated the character in the films For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1967); he also played the leading roles in the musical Paint Your Wagon (1969) and in Play Misty for Me (1971), which he also directed.

Eastwood again gained worldwide fame in his role as the hard-bitten and law-bending police officer Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971) and in its sequels Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988). Other films include Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Bronco Billy (1980), Any Which Way You Can (1980), Heartbreak Ridge (1986, also director), Pink Cadillac (1989), White Hunter, Black Heart (1990, also director), and The Rookie (1990, also director).

He also produced many of his own films as head of his own production company. In 1992 Eastwood won an Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Director for Unforgiven, a critically acclaimed Western in which he also starred as a reformed gunman who comes out of retirement for one last job. The film also won an Academy Award for Best Picture. The following year he played an ageing secret service agent in the film In the Line of Fire, which was another success. Eastwood then directed A Perfect World (1993), acting alongside Kevin Costner, and The Bridges of Madison County (1995), the story of an ill-fated love affair, co-starring Meryl Streep. In 1996 he directed and starred in the William Goldman-scripted thriller Absolute Power, alongside Gene Hackman, and in 1997 directed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. He has continued to combine the roles of producer, director, and actor in such films as True Crime (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), Blood Work (2002), and the acclaimed female boxing drama Million Dollar Baby (2004; winner Academy Award, Best Picture, Best Director; Golden Globe, Best Director), but remained behind the camera for the murder thriller Mystic River (2003), starring Sean Penn. Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Language Film), two films by Eastwood depicting the Battle of Iwo Jima from both the American and the Japanese perspectives, were released in 2006.

Eastwood has been the recipient of a number of additional awards: the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1994; a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1996; the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award and an honorary César, both in 1998.