There’s still a Clint in his eye at 90... Actor and director Clint Eastwood is turning 90. looks back at how the man with no name became a Hollywood legend
SUCCESS did not come overnight for Hollywood star Clint Eastwood. He worked as a golf caddy, truck driver, logger, grocery clerk, gas station attendant, hay baler, forest firefighter and swimming instructor and was also a projectionist in the military during the Korean War before he got his big acting break.
Clint has admitted that he was a bit of a loser.
“For years, I bummed around trying to get an acting job,” he once recalled. “They told me my voice was too soft, my teeth needed capping, I squinted – all that tearing down of my ego.
“If I walked into a casting office now, a stranger, I’d get the same old cr*p. But now I’m Clint Eastwood.”
Clinton Eastwood Jr was born in San Francisco in 1930 and celebrates his 90th birthday on May 31.
He appeared fleetingly in B-movies like Revenge of The Creature, Tarantula, Francis in the Navy and Lady Godiva of Coventry in 1955 after landing a screen test with Universal.
Most of his early roles were uncredited, but his luck changed in 1958 when at the age of 28 he was cast as likeable cowboy Rowdy Yates in American TV series Rawhide.
The role became his when a studio executive spotted him visiting a friend on a CBS lot and decided he “looked like a cowboy”.
The TV Western brought the 6ft 4in tall actor widespread recognition and he remained with Rawhide until 1965, filming 217 episodes in total.
He added a different twist to his cowboy image when he went on to appear in Italian director Sergio Leone’s hugely successful spaghetti westerns of the 1960s including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Clint said: “I was tired of playing the nice, clean-cut cowboy in Rawhide. I wanted something earthier. Something different from the old-fashioned Western.”
He found what he was looking for with A Fistful of Dollars and said: “It definitely had satiric overtones.
“The hero was an enigmatic figure and that worked within the context of this film. In some films he would be ludicrous. You can’t have a cartoon in the middle of a Renoir.”
The poncho his cowboy characters wore in the movies was Clint’s idea and it was never washed.
He also wore the cowboy boots and gun from his Rawhide days.
The movies brought Clint international recognition although everyone’s favourite cowboy is actually allergic to horses – as well as cats and dogs.
“I’ve actually had people come up to me and ask me to autograph their guns,” he has said.
Clint went on to invite cinema audiences to “go ahead, make my day” as maverick cop Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry movies, sang to the trees in movie musical Paint Your Wagon with Lee Marvin, co-starred with an orangutan called Clyde in Every Which Way But Loose and discovered British pubs while filming Second World War thriller Where Eagles Dare with Richard Burton.
In fact, he loved pubs so much he opened his own – the Hog’s Breath Inn – back home in Carmel, California, with friends.
Clint also starred alongside Meryl Streep in the 1995 movie The Bridges of Madison County, but later admitted: “I said to myself ‘This romantic stuff is really tough. I can’t wait to get back to shooting and killing.’”
Directing has led to him winning Oscars for films such as Million Dollar Baby starring Hilary Swank when he was a mere 74 and 1993 Western, Unforgiven.
Gran Torino in 2008 also went on to earn almost $30m in its opening weekend.
Clint, who has been married twice and has eight children, is not a fan of birthdays though and turned down a party for his 80th saying he would rather just enjoy a drink with his wife.
He once said: “Growing up I never knew what I wanted to do. I was not a terribly good student or a very vivacious, outgoing person. “I was just kind of a backward kid. I grew up in various little towns and ended up in Oakland, California, going to a trade school.
“I didn’t want to be an actor because I thought an actor had to be extrovert – somebody who loved to tell jokes and talk and be a raconteur. And I was something of an introvert.
“My mother used to say ‘You have a little angel on your shoulder’.
“I guess she was surprised I grew up at all, never mind that I got to where I am.
“The best I can do is quote a line from Unforgiven – ‘Deserves got nothing to do with it.’”
Clint’s pub, Hog’s Breath Inn, in Carmel