Clint Eastwood.

Clint Eastwood. I INTRODUCTION Clint Eastwood, born in 1930, American motion-picture actor, director, and producer. Eastwood rose to fame with his tough-guy characters in a series of Westerns and renegade-cop movies beginning in the 1960s, but he has also earned a reputation as a gifted director, producer, and even composer. II EARLY CAREER Clinton Eastwood, Jr., was born in San Francisco, California. He first gained recognition as an actor in the Western television series Rawhide (1959-1966). Eastwood became a film star with his role as a hired killer in the movie Per un pugno di dollari (made in Italian by director Sergio Leone and dubbed in English as A Fistful of Dollars, 1964). The film is part of a genre known as a spaghetti Western, referring to its Italian origins. Eastwood recreated the character, referred to only as The Man with No Name, in the movies Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More, 1965) and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 1966). Other films of the late 1960s starring Eastwood included the Western Hang 'Em High (1968), the drama Coogan's Bluff (1968), and the comedic musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). III 1970S AND 1980S In 1971 Eastwood starred in the thriller Play Misty for Me, a film that also marked his directorial debut. During this period the actor moved from cowboy films to urban dramas, finding popular acclaim in his role as the hard-bitten, law-bending police officer Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971) and its sequels, Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983, which he also directed and produced), and The Dead Pool (1988). Other movies Eastwood appeared in during the 1970s and 1980s included Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976; also directed), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Any Which Way You Can (1980), Honkytonk Man (1982; also directed), and Pale Rider (1985; also directed and produced). Showing his range of interests, Eastwood directed and produced Bird (1988), a study of the life of American jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. IV 1990S TO TODAY In the 1990s Eastwood started to show his exceptional versatility. He began the decade acting in and directing White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), a film inspired by the life of motion-picture director John Huston. Eastwood's critical breakthrough as a director and producer was with Unforgiven (1992), a Western about a reformed gunslinger (played by Eastwood) who comes out of retirement for one last job. The film won four Academy Awards, including best director and best picture. In 1993 Eastwood starred as a Secret Service agent in the drama In the Line of Fire and directed and acted in A Perfect World, a film about the pursuit of a kidnapper. Eastwood added composing to his repertoire with the romantic film The Bridges of Madison County (1995), a movie that he not only directed, produced, and starred in but for which he also wrote the music. He filled the same roles for the action movies Absolute Power (1997), True Crime (1999), and Space Cowboys (2000). Eastwood earned further acclaim as a director and producer with the chilling drama Mystic River (2003), which earned him Academy Award nominations for best director and best picture and brought Sean Penn his first Oscar for best actor. Eastwood won his second Oscar for best director with Million Dollar Baby (2004), a film about an aging boxing trainer (Eastwood) and his female pupil that also won Academy Awards for best picture, best actress (Hilary Swank), and best supporting actor (Morgan Freeman). Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, two World War II films by Eastwood depicting the Battle of Iwo Jima from both the American and the Japanese perspectives, were released in 2006. Eastwood heads his own production company, Malpaso. He has been the recipient of a number of career awards, including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1994, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1996, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1998. From 1986 to 1988 Eastwood served as mayor of Carmel, California. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.