Clint Eastwood Biography

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American actor, film director, film producer and composer. He has received five Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and five People's Choice Awards—including one for Favorite All-Time Motion Picture Star.

Eastwood is primarily known for his alienated, morally ambiguous, anti-hero acting roles in violent action and western films, particularly in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Following his role on the long-running television series Rawhide, he went on to star as the Man With No Name in the Dollars trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns and as Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry film series. These roles have made him an enduring icon of masculinity. Eastwood is also known for his comedic efforts in Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980), his two highest-grossing films after adjustment for inflation.

For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director, producer of the Best Picture and received nominations for Best Actor. He also received Oscar nominations as Best Director for Mystic River (2003) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2007), along with a Golden Globe for his direction of Bird (1988). These films in particular, as well as others such as Play Misty for Me (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Gran Torino (2008) have all received great critical acclaim and commercial success. He has directed most of his movies since the early 1970s and all of his films dating back to 1993's A Perfect World.

He also served as the non-partisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California from 1986-1988, tending to support small business interests on the one hand and environmental protection on the other.

Early life
Eastwood was born in San Francisco, California, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a steelworker and migrant worker and Margaret Ruth Eastwood (née Runner) (1909 - 2006), a factory worker. Clint was born a relatively large baby at 11 pounds. Eastwood has English, Scottish, Dutch and Irish ancestry. He was raised in a "middle class Protestant home" and moved often as his father worked at a variety of jobs along the West Coast. The family settled in Piedmont, California, during Eastwood's teens, and he graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1949.

He worked at a pulp mill in Springfield, Oregon when he was 18 or 19. Eastwood then worked as a gas station attendant, as a fireman, and played ragtime piano at a bar in Oakland. In 1950, during the Korean War, Eastwood was drafted into the U.S. Army, and was aboard a military flight that crashed into the Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco (Drake's Bay). He escaped serious injury, but had to remain behind to testify at a hearing investigating the cause of the crash. This kept him from being shipped to Korea with the rest of his unit. During his military service, Eastwood became friends with fellow soldiers and future actors Martin Milner and David Janssen.

Film career
Clint Eastwood began acting during the mid-1950s , with uncredited appearances in B-films such as Revenge of the Creature, Tarantula, and Francis in the Navy. Later on, he was credited for his roles in several more films, including Ambush at Cimarron Pass, which he has dismissed as "probably the lousiest Western ever made." Around the time the film was released Eastwood described himself as feeling "really depressed" and regards it as the lowest point in his career.

He seriously considered quitting the acting profession and returning to school to start doing something with his life. His break came when he won the role of Rowdy Yates in the TV series Rawhide, which ran from 1959 to 1966. As Rowdy Yates (whom Eastwood privately described as "the idiot of the plains"), he became a household name across the United States. He did not make another theatrical film until he was contacted by Sergio Leone in 1964, although he did make several guest appearances on TV, including the western comedy series Maverick, in which he fought James Garner in the "Duel at Sundown" episode.