Clint Eastwood Biography

His parents were Mr. Clinton Eastwood and Margaret Ruth Eastwood. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, after going from city to city with his father in search of work during the Great Depression.

They could not afford to pay higher education so, after finishing school, he had to start work on various tasks such as lumberjack, bricklayer, pianist, forest fire-fighter, metal workers and many others.

He performed his military service as a swimming instructor at Fort Ord. This allowed him to save a few dollars with which they could pay for some drama classes at Los Angeles College.

Notably, he was heavily influenced by two friends who met at the military camp, David Janssen, who was later famous for his role as actor in the series “The Fugitive”, and Martin Milner; he made another series entitled “Life of Riley.

Thanks to them managed to get a contract with Universal for $ 76 a week, forty weeks a year guaranteed employment. At that time the major studios had a call from the Star-system, which aimed to train and polish future stars.

In 1953, at 23, he married Maggie Johnson, which would be the mother of his children Kyle and Alison, and a year after debuting in a movie called “Revenge of the creature” with the director Jack Arnold, and again with him in the film “Tarantula”. The same year (1955), he worked on films such as “Francis in the Navy” or “Lady Godiva”.

He spent six years working in television, in a series called “Rawhide.” This made him very popular in the media.

But his great leap to fame was in 1964 when James Coburn rejected the role of “Magnificent Stranger” by Sergio Leone filmed in shot in Almeria, Spain. The film eventually titled “For a fistful of dollars.”

Anecdotally, Eastwood and the rest of the cast had to make their own costumes, which would include buying the famous poncho seen in the films of Leone.

With the famous spaghetti westerns films called “A Fistful of dollars”, “For a few dollars more” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Clint Eastwood bagging the $270,000 pay check for the three movies. Eastwood stamp on these classic films changed westerns forever.

Back in the US he worked for his first time with actors of the stature of Richard Burton, Lee Marvin, Shirley MacLaine, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland, and was soon an action film star.

In 1971, he decided to direct his first film, “Shivers in the night.”

That same year, Don Siegel offered the role that marked his career interpretation, “Dirty Harry”, which returns to the man hard and merciless of the previous films, but turned into law enforcement.

In 1986 he entered political life as mayor for the Republican Party, of Caramel, the city resident and one year later leaving office for lack of time to make their films, both as director and actor.

In 1986 he created his own production company Malpaso Productions.

It was then that he met the actress Sondra Locke, ending up in love and leading the break with his wife Maggie Johnson, after 35 years of marriage.

The love affair between Clint and Sondra, expired in 1989, because of his romance with the actress Frances Fisher (”Titanic”), they would have a daughter.

Experiencing as a director and moving towards a more creative movies he made several films follow “Firefox,” “Sudden Impact”, “The Pale Rider”

For his successful work, in 1991 he received the Irving G. Award Thalberg award at the Oscar’s.

Then there were a series of films that will make him one of the most prominent artists of the 90’s after “Bird” and “white hunter, black heart,” he directs what some consider his best film, The Unforgiven which eventually became the classic western, which he was awarded a Golden Globe for best director, and 4 Oscar’s including best film and best director he was also a candidate as best actor.

In “A Perfect World” he shared the bill with one of the interpreters of fashion at that time, Kevin Costner, after which he filmed “The Bridges of Madison, where the quality of interpretation is reaffirmed by sharing the bill with Meryl Streep .

He directed his own daughter in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (1997) and in 2000 with renowned actors, Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland, he stars in and directs “Space Cowboys,” second biggest blockbuster in the United States that year.

“Mystic River”, a film directed in 2003, then return to classic Eastwood drama. This movie gets six nominations for Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, winning two awards (for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor).

In 2004, he directed and starred alongside Morgan Freeman in “Million Dollar Baby,” an excellent film and that lets him win his second Oscar for best director, in addition to achieving the prize for best film.

In 2006 he returned as a director and directed two movies called “Flags of Our Fathers” (based on the novel written by one of the children survivors of the battle) and “Letters From Iwo Jima.” The film Letters From Iwo Jima accounts the experiences of the Battle of Iwo Jima from both American and Japanese respectively.

Letters From Iwo Jima won the 2007 Golden Globe in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. Eastwood was nominated twice for best director prize, but it was not granted.

His latest role in Gran Torino, is considered to be amongst his finest work, many consider his lead character to be a retired Dirty Harry, making “Get off my lawn” sound suspiciously like “Do you feel lucky punk?”

In addition to its facets as an actor, director and producer, Clint Eastwood composes jazz and owns several sports and hospitality businesses, including a luxury resort in the town of Monterey Country.

Clint has a reputation for being a male athlete, has always fostered an image that sport is part of his life despite his age and maintains a good physical condition.