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Clint Eastwood
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Height
6' 4"
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Spouse
'Dina Ruiz' (31 March 1996 - present)
'Maggie Johnson' (19 December 1953 - 1978) (divorced)
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
How many would ever have thought that a tall, laconic, squinty star of spaghetti Westerns and cop thrillers would end up directing art movies? Not many, we'd guess. In truth, though, that's been just another phase, just a natural extension of a career that has consistently confounded expectations. Reportedly an easygoing but shiftless young man who'd already worked in a variety of dead-end menial jobs (such as gas-station attendant) before reaching Hollywood in 1955, Eastwood wangled a contract at Universal thanks to director Arthur Lubin, and played bit parts that year in Francis in the Navy, Tarantula and Revenge of the Creature
Universal subsequently dropped Eastwood, but in 1959 he signed to star in the TV series "Rawhide," which kept him busy for the next six years. During the 1964 hiatus, he flew to Italy to star in a Western quickie, and thought no more of it until he found out that A Fistful of Dollars was a titanic success. He went back the next summer and again donned his flat-brimmed sombrero and ragged poncho in a sequel, For a Few Dollars More and again for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (both 1966). That year, all three were finally released in the U.S., and "The Man With No Name" (as his character was billed) suddenly found himself atop the box-office charts. His icy, tightlipped, implacable character-a triggerhappy gunman with his own moral codestruck just the right chord with 1960s audiences, who were just discovering in Humphrey Bogart a Hollywood relic with similar existential appeal. (It hardly mattered that Eastwood's character parodied the traditional Western-movie hero.)
Finally a star in his own country, Eastwood thereafter wisely varied his roles-though singing in the ambitious Western musical Paint Your Wagon (1969) may have stretched things a bit too farand began a fruitful collaboration with director Don Siegel that resulted in such excellent and distinctive films as Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled and of course, Dirty Harry (both 1971), which spawned four sequels, virtually invented the loosecannon cop genre, and gave him the screen character for which he will always be remembered. (Ironically, he only took the role after Frank Sinatra dropped out at the last minute.)
In 1971, Eastwood made his directorial debut with the chiller Play Misty for Me and continued to wield the megaphone frequently thereafter. Eastwood also set up his own production company, Malpaso, and for the next 15 years churned out hit after hit, alternating action films with offbeat comedies; notable in this period were High Plains Drifter (1973), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Gauntlet (1977), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Escape From Alcatraz (1979, directed by Siegel), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985, a return to Westerns and a thinly disguised reworking of Shane), and Heartbreak Ridge (1986).
As Eastwood neared 60, his star began to dim, but he continued to surprise. He directed Bird (1988), a critically acclaimed biography of jazz great Charlie Parker; starred in and directed White Hunter, Black Heart (1990, playing a film director modeled after John Huston); and assumed the same chores on The Rookie (1991, with Charlie Sheen). Extremely canny about alternating mass-audience movies with more personal, limited-appeal projects, Eastwood managed to combine both types of films with Unforgiven (1992), a revisionist Western that won rave reviews-as well as Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director-and did extremely well at the box office. Following this personal triumph, he agreed to act in someone else's movie for the first time in years and delivered one of the best performances of his career as an aging Secret Service man (who just happens to play jazz piano) in In the Line of Fire (1993). Definitely on a winning streak, he then teamed up with Kevin Costner to costar in and direct A Perfect World (also 1993). In 1995, Eastwood won the Academy's Irving Thalberg award, then directed and acted opposite Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County (1995). He has also served as mayor of his hometown of Carmel, California. It may be revealing that this superstar of shoot-'em-ups both urban and Western has said for years that his own favorite of his films is the cerebral and highly stylized The Beguiled |  |
