149 Facts About Clint Eastwood

An Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, Clint Eastwood won Best Director and Best Picture for his Western film Unforgiven and his sports drama Million Dollar Baby.

Clint Eastwood directed the biographical films Changeling, Invictus, American Sniper, Sully, and Richard Jewell.

Clint Eastwood's accolades include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three Cesar Awards, and an AFI Life Achievement Award.

Clint Eastwood is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry.

Clint Eastwood's family relocated three times during the 1930s as his father changed occupations.

Contrary to what Clint Eastwood has indicated in media interviews, they did not move between 1940 and 1949.

Clint Eastwood's father was a manufacturing executive at Georgia-Pacific for most of his working life.

Clint Eastwood attended Piedmont Middle School, where he was held back due to poor academic scores, and records indicate he had to attend summer school.

Clint Eastwood transferred to Oakland Technical High School and graduated on February 2,1949.

Clint Eastwood held a number of odd jobs, including lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy.

Clint Eastwood said that he tried to enroll at Seattle University in 1951, but instead was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War.

Don Loomis recalled hearing that Clint Eastwood was romancing one of the daughters of a Fort Ord officer, who might have been entreated to watch out for him when names came up for postings.

Clint Eastwood didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything.

In May 1954, Clint Eastwood made his first real audition for Six Bridges to Cross, but was rejected by Joseph Pevney.

In September 1954, Clint Eastwood worked for three weeks on Arthur Lubin's Lady Godiva of Coventry, won a role in February 1955, playing "Jonesy", a sailor in Francis in the Navy and appeared uncredited in another Jack Arnold film, Tarantula, where he played a squadron pilot.

In May 1955, Clint Eastwood put four hours' work into the film Never Say Goodbye and had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand in August 1955 with Star in the Dust, starring John Agar and Mamie Van Doren, the latter of whom he dated briefly.

Clint Eastwood joined the Marsh Agency, and although Lubin landed him his biggest role to date in The First Traveling Saleslady and later hired him for Escapade in Japan, without a formal contract, Clint Eastwood was struggling.

Clint Eastwood landed several small roles in 1956 as a temperamental army officer for a segment of ABC's Reader's Digest series, and as a motorcycle gang member on a Highway Patrol episode.

In 1957, Clint Eastwood played a cadet in West Point series and a suicidal gold prospector on Death Valley Days.

Clint Eastwood had a small part as an aviator in Lafayette Escadrille and played a major role as an ex-renegade of the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass : a film that Clint Eastwood considers the low point of his career.

In 1958, Clint Eastwood was cast as Rowdy Yates in the CBS hour-long western series Rawhide, the career breakthrough he had long sought.

Clint Eastwood was not especially happy with his character; Clint Eastwood was almost 30, and Rowdy was too young and cloddish for his comfort.

Clint Eastwood made his first attempt at directing when he filmed several trailers for the show, but was unable to convince producers to let him direct an episode.

Clint Eastwood thought the film would be an opportunity to escape from his Rawhide image.

Clint Eastwood signed a contract for $15,000 in wages for eleven weeks' work, with a bonus of a Mercedes-Benz automobile upon completion.

In January 1966, Clint Eastwood met producer Dino De Laurentiis in New York City and agreed to star in a non-Western five-part anthology production, The Witches, opposite De Laurentiis's wife, Silvana Mangano.

Two months later Clint Eastwood began work on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, again playing the mysterious Man with No Name.

Clint Eastwood signed to star in the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High alongside Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle, Ed Begley, playing a man who takes up a marshal's badge and seeks revenge as a lawman after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead.

Jennings Lang arranged for Clint Eastwood to meet Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who later became Clint Eastwood's close friend, forming a partnership that would last more than ten years and produce five films.

Clint Eastwood was paid $750,000 for the war epic Where Eagles Dare, about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the Alps.

Clint Eastwood was cast as Two-Face in the Batman television show, but the series was canceled before filming began.

Clint Eastwood then branched out to co-star in a musical, Paint Your Wagon.

Clint Eastwood starred with Shirley MacLaine in the western Two Mules for Sister Sara, directed by Don Siegel.

Around the same time, Clint Eastwood starred as one of a group of Americans who steals a fortune in gold from the Nazis, in the World War II film Kelly's Heroes, with Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas.

Kelly's Heroes was the last film Clint Eastwood appeared in that was not produced by his own Malpaso Productions.

Clint Eastwood next turned his attention towards Breezy, a film starring William Holden and Kay Lenz about love blossoming between a middle-aged man and a teenage girl.

Clint Eastwood teamed up with Jeff Bridges and George Kennedy in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a road movie about a veteran bank robber Thunderbolt and a young con man drifter, Lightfoot.

Clint Eastwood's acting was noted by critics, but was overshadowed by Bridges who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Clint Eastwood reportedly fumed at the lack of Academy Award recognition for him and swore that he would never work for United Artists again.

Clint Eastwood plays Jonathan Hemlock in a role originally intended for Paul Newman, an assassin turned college art professor who decides to return to his former profession for one last "sanction" in return for a rare Pissarro painting.

Clint Eastwood blamed Universal Studios for the film's poor promotion and turned his back on them to make an agreement with Warner Bros.

Clint Eastwood refused the part of a platoon leader in Ted Post's Vietnam War film, Go Tell the Spartans and instead decided to make a third Dirty Harry film, The Enforcer.

Clint Eastwood directed and starred in The Gauntlet opposite Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney, and Mara Corday.

Clint Eastwood's character, Philo Beddoe, is a trucker and brawler who roams the American West searching for a lost love accompanied by his best friend, Orville Boggs and an orangutan called Clyde.

Clint Eastwood starred in Escape from Alcatraz, the last of his films directed by Siegel.

Clint Eastwood directed and played the title role in Bronco Billy, alongside Locke, Scatman Crothers, and Sam Bottoms.

Clint Eastwood has cited Bronco Billy as being one of the most relaxed shoots of his career and biographer Richard Schickel argued that Bronco Billy is Clint Eastwood's most self-referential character.

Clint Eastwood directed and starred in Honkytonk Man, based on the eponymous Clancy Carlile's depression-era novel.

Clint Eastwood portrays a struggling western singer Red Stovall who suffers from tuberculosis, but has finally been given an opportunity to make it big at the Grand Ole Opry.

Clint Eastwood is accompanied by his young nephew to Nashville, Tennessee, where he is supposed to record a song.

Around the same time, Clint Eastwood directed, produced, and starred in the Cold War-themed Firefox.

Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, which is considered the darkest and most violent of the series.

Tightrope had Clint Eastwood starring opposite Genevieve Bujold in a provocative thriller, inspired by newspaper articles about an elusive Bay Area rapist.

Clint Eastwood next starred in the crime comedy City Heat alongside Burt Reynolds, a film about an ex-cop turned private eye and his former police lieutenant partner who get mixed up with gangsters in the Prohibition era of the 1930s.

Clint Eastwood made his only foray into TV direction with the Amazing Stories episode "Vanessa in the Garden", which starred Harvey Keitel and Locke as a married couple.

Clint Eastwood would revisit the Western genre when he directed and starred in Pale Rider, a film based on the classic western Shane and follows a preacher descending from the mists of the Sierras to side with the miners during the California Gold Rush of 1850.

Clint Eastwood portrayed a United States Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant veteran of the Vietnam War who realizes he is nearing the end of his military service.

Clint Eastwood starred in The Dead Pool, the fifth and final film in the Dirty Harry series.

Clint Eastwood began working on smaller, more personal projects and experienced a lull in his career between 1988 and 1992.

Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean and Spike Lee, son of jazz bassist Bill Lee and a long time critic of Clint Eastwood, criticized the characterization of Charlie Parker remarking that it did not capture his true essence and sense of humor.

Clint Eastwood directed and starred in White Hunter Black Heart, an adaptation of Peter Viertel's roman a clef, about John Huston and the making of the classic film The African Queen.

Clint Eastwood directed and co-starred with Charlie Sheen in The Rookie, a buddy cop action film released in December 1990.

An ongoing lawsuit, in response to Clint Eastwood allegedly ramming a woman's car, resulted in no Clint Eastwood films being shown in cinemas in 1991.

Clint Eastwood won the suit and agreed to pay the complainant's legal fees if she did not appeal.

Clint Eastwood revisited the western genre in Unforgiven, a film which he directed and starred in as an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime.

Clint Eastwood played Frank Horrigan in the Secret Service thriller In the Line of Fire, directed by Wolfgang Petersen and co-starring John Malkovich and Rene Russo.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film marked the highest point of Clint Eastwood's directing career, and the film has since been cited as one of his most underrated directorial achievements.

At the 1994 Cannes Film Festival Eastwood received France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal, and in 1995, he was awarded the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award at the 67th Academy Awards.

Clint Eastwood expanded his repertoire by playing opposite Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County.

Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the political thriller Absolute Power, alongside Gene Hackman.

Clint Eastwood played the role of a veteran thief who witnesses the Secret Service cover-up of a murder.

Later in 1997, Clint Eastwood directed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, based on the novel by John Berendt and starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and Jude Law.

The roles that Clint Eastwood has played, and the films that he has directed, cannot be disentangled from the nature of the American culture of the last quarter century, its fantasies and its realities.

Clint Eastwood plays Steve Everett, a journalist and recovering alcoholic, who has to cover the execution of murderer Frank Beechum.

Clint Eastwood directed and starred in Space Cowboys alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and James Garner.

Clint Eastwood played one of a group of veteran ex-test pilots sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite.

Clint Eastwood played an ex-FBI agent chasing a sadistic killer in the thriller Blood Work, loosely based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Michael Connelly.

In 2003, Clint Eastwood was named Best Director of the Year by the National Society of Film Critics.

At age 74, Clint Eastwood became the oldest of eighteen directors to have directed two or more Best Picture winners.

Clint Eastwood received a nomination for Best Actor, as well as a Grammy nomination for his score, and won a Golden Globe for Best Director, which was presented to him by daughter Kathryn, who was Miss Golden Globe at the 2005 ceremony.

Clint Eastwood directed two films about World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima released in 2006.

At the 64th Golden Globe Awards Clint Eastwood received nominations for Best Director in both films.

Clint Eastwood next directed Changeling, based on a true story set in the late 1920s.

Clint Eastwood ended a four-year "self-imposed acting hiatus" by appearing in Gran Torino, which he directed, produced and partly scored with his son Kyle and Jamie Cullum.

Clint Eastwood next directed Jersey Boys, a musical biopic based on the Tony Award-winning musical of the same name.

Clint Eastwood directed American Sniper, a film adaptation of Chris Kyle's eponymous memoir, following Steven Spielberg's departure from the project.

Clint Eastwood directed the biographical thriller The 15:17 to Paris, which saw previously non-professional actors Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos playing themselves as they stop the 2015 Thalys train attack.

Clint Eastwood next starred in and directed The Mule, which was released in December 2018.

Clint Eastwood played Earl Stone, an elderly drug smuggler based on Leo Sharp, Eastwood's first acting role since Trouble with the Curve in 2012.

Later retitled simply Richard Jewell, Clint Eastwood directed and produced the film, through Warner Bros.

Clint Eastwood is one of few top Hollywood actors to have become a critically and commercially successful director.

Clint Eastwood usually avoids actors' rehearsing and prefers to complete most scenes on the first take.

In preparation for filming Clint Eastwood rarely uses storyboards for developing the layout of a shooting schedule.

Clint Eastwood has indicated that he lays out a film's plot to provide the audience with necessary details, but not "so much that it insults their intelligence".

Clint Eastwood has developed the art of underplaying to the point that anyone around him who so much as flinches looks hammily histrionic.

Clint Eastwood is fond of low-key lighting and back-lighting to give his films a "noir-ish" feel.

Clint Eastwood is a former Republican who has sometimes supported Democrats, and has long shown an interest in California politics; he is currently a registered Libertarian.

Clint Eastwood won election as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, in April 1986.

Clint Eastwood earned $200 per month in that position which he donated to the Carmel Youth Center.

Clint Eastwood served for two years and declined to run for a second term.

Clint Eastwood delivered a primetime address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, where he drew attention for a speech he delivered to an empty chair representing President Barack Obama, which he later regretted.

On February 22,2020, Clint Eastwood announced that he would be endorsing Democrat Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 presidential election.

Clint Eastwood dabbled in music early on by developing as a boogie-woogie pianist and had originally intended to pursue a career in music by studying for a music theory degree after graduating from high school.

In late 1959, Clint Eastwood produced the album Cowboy Favorites, released on the Cameo label, which included some classics such as Bob Wills's "San Antonio Rose" and Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In".

An audiophile, Clint Eastwood owns an extensive collection of LPs which he plays on a Rockport turntable.

Clint Eastwood composed the film scores of Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Grace Is Gone, Changeling, Hereafter, J Edgar, and the original piano compositions for In the Line of Fire.

Clint Eastwood wrote and performed the song heard over the credits of Gran Torino and co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, a song recorded in 1999 by Diana Krall.

Clint Eastwood was nominated for Best Original Score, while the song "Grace is Gone" with music by Clint Eastwood and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager was nominated for Best Original Song.

On September 22,2007, Clint Eastwood was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival, on which he serves as an active board member.

Studios, Burbank was renamed the Clint Eastwood Scoring Stage in the 1990s.

Twice divorced, Clint Eastwood has had numerous casual and serious relationships of varying length and intensity over his life, many of which overlapped.

Clint Eastwood has eight known children by six women, only half of whom were contemporaneously acknowledged.

Clint Eastwood refuses to confirm his exact number of offspring, and there have been wide discrepancies in the media regarding the number.

Tunis and Clint Eastwood would keep up a "healthy relationship" until her death in 2023.

In 1975, Clint Eastwood and married actress-director Sondra Locke began living together; she had been in a marriage of convenience since 1967 with Gordon Leigh Anderson, an unemployed homosexual.

Locke claimed that Clint Eastwood sang "She Made Me Monogamous" to her and confided he had "never been in love before".

Clint Eastwood finally divorced Johnson in 1984; Locke would remain married to Anderson until her death in 2018.

When Locke and Clint Eastwood separated in 1989, Locke filed a palimony lawsuit and later sued for fraud, reaching a settlement in both cases.

Clint Eastwood was married for the second time in 1996 to news anchor Dina Ruiz, who gave birth to their daughter Morgan that same year.

Clint Eastwood has been a health and fitness fanatic since his teens.

Clint Eastwood gave tips on fitness and nutrition, telling people to eat plenty of fruit and raw vegetables, take vitamins, and avoid sugar-loaded beverages, excessive alcohol, and overloading on carbohydrates.

Clint Eastwood eventually sold the pub in 1999 and now owns the Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant, located in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Clint Eastwood is an avid golfer and owns the Tehama Golf Club.

Clint Eastwood is an investor in the world-renowned Pebble Beach Golf Links west of Carmel and donates his time to charitable causes at major tournaments.

Clint Eastwood is an FAA licensed fixed wing and rotary craft private pilot and often flies his helicopter to the studios to avoid traffic.

In 1973, Clint Eastwood told the film critic Gene Siskel, "No, I don't believe in God".

In 1975, Clint Eastwood publicly proclaimed his participation in Transcendental Meditation when he appeared on The Merv Griffin Show with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation.

Clint Eastwood and Garner donated the undeveloped property to the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey in November 1983 with the stipulation that some of the land be used for senior housing.

Clint Eastwood later bought another parcel in the Highlands, together totaling 650 acres.

Clint Eastwood paid to lower the levees along the southern side of the Carmel River to protect the Mission Ranch resort he owned, along with the neighboring Mission Fields residential neighborhood on the north side of the river, both of which were flooded in 1994.

On June 28,2016, Clint Eastwood finally donated the remaining Odello East land.

Clint Eastwood purchased 550 acres, known as the Canada Woods development, immediately east of the Odello Ranch.

Clint Eastwood is known to have purchased property in two other states.

Clint Eastwood owns a 5,700-square-foot house in Sun Valley, Idaho, and a 1.13-acre, oceanfront manor in Kihei, Hawaii.

Clint Eastwood previously occupied homes in Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Tiburon, and Pebble Beach.

Clint Eastwood has contributed to over 50films during his career as actor, director, producer, and composer.

Clint Eastwood has acted in several television series, including his co-starring role in Rawhide.

Clint Eastwood started directing in 1971, and made his debut as a producer in 1982 with Firefox, though he had been functioning as uncredited producer on all of his Malpaso Company films since Hang 'Em High in 1968.

Clint Eastwood has contributed music to his films, either through performing, writing, or composing.

Clint Eastwood has mainly starred in western, action, and drama films.

Clint Eastwood has been recognized with multiple awards and nominations for his work in film, television, and music.

Clint Eastwood is one of only two people to have been twice nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for the same film the other being Warren Beatty.

Clint Eastwood has directed five actors in Academy Award-winning performances: Gene Hackman in Unforgiven, Tim Robbins and Sean Penn in Mystic River, and Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby.

Clint Eastwood received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1996, and received an honorary degree from AFI in 2009.

In 2007, Clint Eastwood was presented with the highest civilian distinction in France, Legion d'honneur, at a ceremony in Paris.

In February 2010, Clint Eastwood was recognized by President Barack Obama with an arts and humanities award.

Clint Eastwood has been awarded at least three honorary degrees from universities and colleges, including an honorary degree from the University of the Pacific in 2006, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Southern California on May 27,2007, and an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 22,2007.

On February 26,2009, Clint Eastwood received the Cannes Film Festival's Honorary Golden Palm Award at a private ceremony in Paris.

Clint Eastwood won the Golden Pine lifetime achievement award at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Gerald Fried.