Clint Eastwood: The life story you may not know
Most well-known for his film roles of cowboys and cops, audiences first met the tall, taciturn, handsome Clint Eastwood on the small screen, when he played cowboy Rowdy Yates on the hit television Western series “Rawhide.”
From there, he was the inscrutable “Man without a Name” squinting under the sun in Sergio Leone’s Western movies and the scowling San Francisco detective in “Dirty Harry” movies who posed the famous challenge: “Go ahead, make my day.”
With the haunting “Play Misty for Me,” Eastwood first demonstrated his talent for directing is just as abundant as acting. Two of his four Oscars are awards for Best Director—for “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby”—and the other two Oscars are Best Picture awards won by the same movies. As a director, he is known for sticking to the budget and often finishing ahead of schedule. Actors say they like working with Eastwood for his reserved and supportive style. “He respects the actor,” Morgan Freeman has said. He’s also known for filming minimal takes—one take, or two “if you were lucky,” actor Tim Robbins said of the director.
With decades of work behind him and no sign of slowing down—the nonagenarian is still acting—Stacker took a look at the accomplishments and events of Eastwood’s life and compiled a list of 25 facts that you may not know. To put together the list, Stacker consulted newspaper and magazine articles, biographies, film archives, film recordings and reviews, and fan websites.
1950: Odd jobs and an Army stint
After high school, Eastwood found work as a logger, hay baler, truck driver, and furnace tender in a steel plant. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1950 and stationed at California’s Fort Ord, where he taught swimming lessons on base. After being discharged in 1953, Eastwood attended Los Angeles City College and worked in a gas station.
1953: Marriage to Maggie Johnson
Eastwood married Maggie Johnson, a Los Angeles model, in 1953. They had two children, Kyle and Alison. In 1964, while married to Johnson, Eastwood had a daughter, Kimber, with Roxanne Tunis, an actress and stuntwoman. Eastwood and Johnson divorced in 1984.
1958: Becoming Rowdy Yates
Eastwood’s breakout role came in 1958, when he landed the part of Rowdy Yates on the Western television series “Rawhide.” He would go on to play the cowboy for the show’s eight seasons.
1960s: Spaghetti Westerns
The actor headed to Italy in the 1960s to star in a series of spaghetti Westerns—”A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” —all directed by Sergio Leone. The stint in Europe brought Eastwood international attention.
1960s: The “Man with No Name”
Actors James Coburn and Charles Bronson both turned down the role of the “Man with No Name” that Eastwood played in the Sergio Leone Westerns. Eastwood wore the same sarape in each movie and is said to have never washed it
1967: Establishing Malpaso Productions
In 1967 Eastwood set up his own company, Malpaso Productions, which would produce his first Western, “Hang ’Em High,” in 1968. Malpaso Productions was behind more of Eastwood’s cowboy roles in “High Plains Drifter” in 1973, “The Outlaw Josey Wales” in 1976, and “Pale Rider” in 1985, as well as Eastwood’s portrayal of real-life prisoner Frank Lee Morris in the 1979 movie “Escape from Alcatraz.”
1971: “Dirty Harry” arrives on screen
Eastwood first took on the iconic role of hard-edged San Francisco detective Harry Callahan in 1971’s “Dirty Harry,” which led to the sequels “Magnum Force” in 1973, “The Enforcer” in 1976, “Sudden Impact” in 1983, and “The Dead Pool” in 1988.
1975: Relationship with Sondra Locke
In 1975, Eastwood began a 13-year relationship with actress Sondra Locke that would end bitterly. The couple made six films together, although while living with Locke, Eastwood had a son, Scott, and a daughter, Kathryn, with former flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves. In 1989, Locke filed a $70 million palimony lawsuit against Eastwood, seeking damages and an equal division of property. In a private settlement, Locke got money, property, and a directing contract at Warner Bros.
1978: Comedy with an orangutan costar
Venturing into comedy, Eastwood appeared in the 1978 movie “Every Which Way but Loose,” sharing the screen with a charismatic orangutan named Clyde. The pair reunited for a sequel, “Any Which Way You Can,” in 1980.
1986: Mayor of Carmel
The life-long Californian was elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1986, after running a campaign that promised to bridge the business and residential communities of the one-mile-square village. He was mayor of Carmel, which has no street addresses or street lights, for a single two-year term and did not seek reelection.
1988-1992: Directing prize-winning films
Adding to his growing list of award-winning directorial efforts, Eastwood made “Bird,” a 1988 biopic about jazz legend Charlie Parker that won him a Golden Globe, followed by the 1992 Western “Unforgiven,” which won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. In “Unforgiven,” Eastwood played an aging gunslinger taking on one last job.
1993: Two Oscars and a baby
Eastwood had been in a relationship with actress Frances Fisher since the early ’90s, soon after the two appeared together in “Pink Cadillac.” She was also one of his co-stars in the Oscar-winning “Unforgiven,” and in 1993, the couple welcomed a daughter, Francesca.