Film Career
Clint Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco to a factory worker and a steelworker.
He is of Scottish, English, Dutch and Irish descent. He was raised in a middle class home and moved often throughout California as his dad was somewhat of a migrant worker. He graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1949 and began work as a gas station attendant and firefighter. He was drafted in 1950 and suffered through a water landing crash in the Pacific Ocean and was not sent to the Korean War.
Film Career
Clint Eastwood began his career as an actor in the early 1950s and initially starred in several B-films like “Revenge of the Creature” and “Tarantula”. In 1958, he got his first big role in a feature film called “Ambush at Cimarron Pass”. He later began working on a television series called “Rawhide”.
This is when he began to be famous. In the 1960s, he found numerous lead roles, mostly in Western movies. These rocketed him to international stardom. He maintained roles in “tough guy” films during the 1960s and worked alongside Richard Burton. Many of his roles set the stage for the Dirty Harry series of movies.
The 1970s and beyond
Clint Eastwood continued to do Westerns throughout the 1970s but branched out to play in the thriller “Play Misty for Me” and finally found work playing a tough police detective in “Dirty Harry”. This is regarded as Eastwood’s most memorable character and it led to four sequels in the 1970s and 80s. He began directing in the 1970s and directed “High Plains Drifter” and “The Outlaw Josey Wales”.
In 1978, he starred in “Every Which Way but Loose”, an offbeat comedy set in the American West. The sequel, “Any Which Way You Can” was also popular.
During the 1980s, he continued to work in tough guy films, including the Western film “Pale Rider”. In the 1990s, he directed and starred in the room “Unforgiven”—a film that was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
In the 2000s, Clint Eastwood has continued to work in directing. He is directing a film called “The Changeling” and is working on numerous other projects, primarily as a director. He’s been married twice and has seven children by five different women. He is currently married to Dina Ruiz and has an ten-year old child with his wife.