Clint Eastwood

Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in music and mechanics, but was an otherwise bored student; this resulted in being held back a grade. In 1949, the year he graduated from high school, his parents and younger sister Jeanne moved to Seattle. Clint spent a couple years in the Pacific Northwest himself, operating log broncs in Springfield, Oregon, with summer gigs life-guarding in Renton, Washington. Returning to California in 1951, he did a two-year stint at Fort Ord Military Reservation and later enrolled at L.A. City College, but dropped out to pursue acting.

During the mid-1950s he landed uncredited bit parts in such B-films as La Revanche de la créature (1955) and Tarantula (1955) while digging swimming pools and driving a garbage truck to supplement his income. In 1958, he landed his first consequential acting role in the long-running TV show Rawhide (1959) with Eric Fleming. Although only a secondary player the first seven seasons, he was promoted to series star when Fleming departed--both literally and figuratively--in its final year, along the way becoming a recognizable face to television viewers around the country.

Eastwood's big-screen breakthrough came as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy of excellent spaghetti westerns: Pour une poignée de dollars (1964), ...et pour quelques dollars de plus (1965), and Le Bon, la Brute et le Truand (1966). The movies were shown exclusively in Italy during their respective copyright years with Enrico Maria Salerno providing the voice of Eastwood's character, finally getting American distribution in 1967-68. As the last film racked up respectable grosses, Eastwood, 37, rose from a barely registering actor to sought-after commodity in just a matter of months. Again a success was the late-blooming star's first U.S.-made western, Pendez-les haut et court (1968). He followed that up with the lead role in Un shérif à New-York (1968) (the loose inspiration for the TV series Un shérif à New York (1970)), before playing second fiddle to Richard Burton in the World War II epic Quand les aigles attaquent (1968) and Lee Marvin in the bizarre musical La Kermesse de l'Ouest (1969). In Sierra torride (1970) and De l'or pour les braves (1970), Eastwood leaned in an experimental direction by combining tough-guy action with offbeat humor.

1971 proved to be his busiest year in film. He starred as a sleazy Union soldier in Les Proies (1971) to critical acclaim, and made his directorial debut with the classic erotic thriller Un frisson dans la nuit (1971). His role as the hard edge police inspector in L'Inspecteur Harry (1971), meanwhile, boosted him to cultural icon status and helped popularize the loose-cannon cop genre. Eastwood put out a steady stream of entertaining movies thereafter: the westerns Joe Kidd (1972), L'Homme des hautes plaines (1973) and Josey Wales hors-la-loi (1976) (his first of six onscreen collaborations with then live-in love Sondra Locke), the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force (1973) and L'inspecteur ne renonce jamais (1976), the action-packed road adventures Le Canardeur (1974) and L'Épreuve de force (1977), and the prison film L'évadé d'Alcatraz (1979). He branched out into the comedy genre in 1978 with Doux, dur et dingue (1978), which became the biggest hit of his career up to that time; taking inflation into account, it still is. In short, La sanction (1975) notwithstanding, the 1970s were nonstop success for Eastwood.

Eastwood kicked off the 1980s with Ça va cogner... (1980), the blockbuster sequel to Every Which Way but Loose. The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact - Le retour de l'inspecteur Harry (1983), was the highest-grossing film of the franchise and spawned his trademark catchphrase: "Make my day." He also starred in Bronco Billy (1980), Firefox : L'Arme absolue (1982), La corde raide (1984), Haut les flingues! (1984), Pale Rider, le cavalier solitaire (1985) and Le maître de guerre (1986), all of which were solid hits, with Honkytonk Man (1982) being his only commercial failure of the period. In 1988, he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, La dernière cible (1988). Although it was a success overall, it did not have the box office punch the previous films had. About this time, with outright bombs like Pink Cadillac (1989) and La relève (1990), it seemed Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He then started taking on low-key projects, directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie Parker that earned him a Golden Globe, and starring in and directing Chasseur blanc, coeur noir (1990), an uneven, loose biopic of John Huston (both films had a limited release).

Eastwood bounced back big time with his dark western Impitoyable (1992), which garnered the then 62-year-old his first ever Academy Award nomination (Best Actor), and an Oscar win for Best Director. Churning out a quick follow-up hit, he took on the secret service in Dans la ligne de mire (1993), then accepted second billing for the first time since 1970 in the interesting but poorly received Un monde parfait (1993) with Kevin Costner. Next was a love story, Sur la route de Madison (1995), where Eastwood surprised audiences with a sensitive performance alongside none other than Meryl Streep. But it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Subsequent films were credible, but nothing really stuck out. Les pleins pouvoirs (1997) and Space Cowboys (2000) did well enough, while Jugé coupable (1999) and Créance de sang (2002) were received badly, as was Minuit dans le jardin du bien et du mal (1997), which he directed but didn't appear in.

Eastwood surprised again in the mid-2000s, returning to the top of the A-list with Million Dollar Baby (2004). Also starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, the hugely successful drama won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. He scored his second Best Actor nomination, too. His next starring vehicle, Gran Torino (2008), earned almost $30 million in its opening weekend and was his highest grosser unadjusted for inflation. 2012 saw him in a rare lighthearted movie, Une nouvelle chance (2012), as well as a reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012).

Between acting jobs, he chalked up an impressive list of credits behind the camera. He directed Mystic River (2003) (in which Sean Penn and Tim Robbins gave Oscar-winning performances), Mémoires de nos pères (2006), Lettres d'Iwo Jima (2006) (nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), L'échange (2008) (a vehicle for Angelina Jolie), Invictus (2009) (again with Freeman), Au-delà (2010), J. Edgar (2011), Jersey Boys (2014), American Sniper (2014) (2014's top box office champ), Sully (2016) (starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger) and Le 15h17 pour Paris (2018). Back on screens after a considerable absence, he played an unlikely drug courier in La Mule (2018), which reached the top of the box office with a nine-figure gross, then directed Le Cas Richard Jewell (2019). At age 91, Eastwood made history as the oldest actor to star above the title in a movie with the release of Cry Macho (2021).

Away from the limelight, Eastwood has led an aberrant existence and is described by biographer Patrick McGilligan as a cunning manipulator of the media. His convoluted slew of partners and children are now somewhat factually acknowledged, but for the first three decades of his celebrity, his personal life was kept top secret, and several of his families were left out of the official narrative. The actor refuses to disclose his exact number of offspring even to this day. He had a longtime relationship with similarly abstruse co-star Locke (who died aged 74 in 2018, though for her entire public life she masqueraded about being younger), and has fathered at least eight children by at least six different women in an unending string of liaisons, many of which overlapped. He has been married only twice, however, with a mere three of his progeny coming from those unions.

His known children are: Laurie Murray (b. 1954), whose mother is unidentified; Kimber Eastwood (b. 1964) with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis; Kyle Eastwood (b. 1968) and Alison Eastwood (b. 1972) with his first ex-wife, Margaret Neville Johnson; Scott Eastwood (b. 1986) and Kathryn Eastwood (b. 1988) with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Eastwood (b. 1993) with actress Frances Fisher; and Morgan Eastwood (b. 1996) with his second ex-wife, Dina Eastwood. The entire time that he lived with Locke she was legally married to sculptor Gordon Anderson.

Eastwood has real estate holdings in Bel-Air, La Quinta, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cassel (in remote northern California), Idaho's Sun Valley and Kihei, Hawaii.