EASTWOOD AT 90 YEARS
Actor-director still going
Up to now,
I’ve been an actor who directs. As time goes on, I think I’ll probably become a director who acts.
CLINT EASTWOOD, in 1990
There was a natural grace to the way Clint Eastwood arranged his lanky, 6-foot-4 frame on the hotel sofa. It was present as well in the ease with which he was handling this interview. The year was 1990 and Eastwood had come to Toronto to talk about his new film, White Hunter Black Heart, but because he had just turned 60, an age that sees many Hollywood careers winding down, it seemed only natural that our conversation should turn to his own future.
“Up to now, I’ve been an actor who directs.” His voice was reflective. “As time goes on, I think I’ll probably become a director who acts.”
That was about all he had to say about his advancing age. In another five years he’d be collecting social security, but he would not be going quietly into the night.
Those coming decades would unleash the most creative and astonishing chapter of Eastwood’s career. And now, as he turns 90 on May 31, he shows no inclination to retire.
He made that clear in London not that long ago while promoting his most recent movie, Richard Jewell. “It’s nice to have a paying job,” he said laconically.
Since turning 60, Eastwood has given us 26 movies. Two were best picture winners at the Oscars and both reflected his readiness to push the envelope. Unforgiven, his final western, scrutinized violence with a moral honesty far removed from the blood-splashed excesses of his early performances as The Man With No Name. As for the thoroughly contemporary Million Dollar Baby, it courageously waded into the assisted-dying debate.
Eastwood’s first directing job came with the 1971 noir shocker, Play Misty For Me. He would do his share of commercial popcorn fare, some of it awful, but his creative curiosity would also lead him to subject matter no other major filmmaker would dream of tackling — be it the supernatural in Hereafter (scripted by Peter Morgan, the man who wrote The Crown), or the Japanese side of a bloody conflict in Letters from Iwo Jima.
Indeed, when we talked in 1990, it was on behalf of a script that had languished for nearly four decades. Nobody had wanted to touch White Hunter Black Heart, a story about a megalomaniac director openly based on the legendary John Huston. Nobody, that is, until Eastwood came along.
“I know people tend to be trend followers, but by the same token, I tend to avoid being one,” he told me at the time. “Just doing this film is pushing it a bit. After all, this is an era when it is more comfortable to do genre films and blow 17 guys up.”
With language like this he was quietly consigning a character like his Magnum-toting cop, Harry Callahan, into the shadows. He was more anxious to be remembered for Bird, his reverently conceived biography of jazz great Charlie Parker.
Eastwood’s favourite studio, Warner Bros., had reluctantly given Bird the green light, but would later balk over Mystic River, an unsettling crime story about tragedy and retribution in a blue-collar world. Eastwood was finally forced to work with a pitifully small budget, but thanks to his own frugality, and the willingness of cast members to accept huge pay cuts, he delivered a masterpiece.
True, he has had his enemies — among them legendary New Yorker critic Pauline Kael who was implacable in her hostility. But there are fans galore within the industry — among them Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Judi Dench and Gene Hackman. Hilary Swank, who delivered an Oscar-winning performance as a doomed young boxer in Million Dollar Baby, is a fervent admirer. “I learned so much from Clint,” she once said. “He makes an environment in which people can be as creative as possible.” She had experienced his human face.
In 1996, Eastwood invited the media into his private world — the Mission Ranch in Carmel, the California town where he served a term as mayor. The ranch was his own unique hotel property — a 22-acre site he purchased in 1986 to thwart a projected condominium development. There was a wild deer roaming the front yard as journalists arrived to interview Eastwood about his new suspense thriller, Absolute Power — but when he and I sat down for our session in an old-fashioned frame cottage, he kept wanting to talk about the ranch.
He had fallen in love with it when he visited it in the 1940s as a young member of the U.S. military. Decades later he had the power and the wealth to save it. And now he was happily talking about the joy he experienced restoring the original structures and supervising the design of the gardens.
“I thought it would be a shame to tear it down because the property is so nice, with the wetlands out front and the river down below,” he said softly. “It cost an arm and a leg, but I do love this place.”
When he was finally coaxed into giving a few thoughts about movie making, he was economical in his answers. A script had to be “interesting” before he would take it on — simple as that. And yes, with Absolute Power, he was attracted to the role of an aging master burglar because “I’m old-fashioned enough to like character-driven stories.”
He was most eloquent talking about a director’s responsibilities to both cast and crew. He believed in quiet and calmness during shooting. “I don’t know why I’m this way. It’s just that I believe in a comfortable set because I believe that actors’ insecurities rise or fall on how hectic everybody makes everything. A lot of the time acting is a very insecure business even for experienced people.”
And oh yes, “every film seems to have its different challenges. I guess that’s what still makes this job exciting ... why I still believe in the future!”
And with Eastwood at 90, that future still beckons.