CLINT EASTWOOD
‘HE’S A LAID-BACK DAD’
His kids open up about the Hollywood tough guy’s laid-back side.
He became world-famous as trigger-happy cop Dirty Harry Callahan and Western antihero The Man with No Name, but to Clint Eastwood’s seven kids, he’s just “Dad.” “People ask me what it was like growing up with him as a father, but he wasn’t different from any other dad,” daughter Alison Eastwood, 44, recently told Closer at the 2nd Annual Art for Animals fundraising event in Hollywood. “He’s way laid-back. Probably too laid-back. Don’t tell him, though!”
It probably wouldn’t make his day to hear this, but “Clint is kind of a hippie dad,” an insider tells Closer. “He’s all about letting his kids do their own thing.” For most, that’s meant following in their 86-year-old father’s show business footsteps — or bootsteps, in the case of son Scott, 30, who starred in this year’s Western Diablo, or daughter Francesca, 22, who plays her first lead in the new shoot’em-up Outlaws and Angels. “It’s cool to touch on something that’s the same genre,” she told Closer at the film’s LA premiere, adding that Clint is “a tough guy, but he’s also a dad — he’s the real deal, a real person.” Agrees Francesca’s mom (and Angels co-star) Frances Fisher: “He’s a completely different person offscreen. He’s easygoing.”
It’s no surprise Clint’s kids feel right at home on movie sets, because he often brought them along when he was shooting films. Fran-
HE PLAYS TOUGH GUYS ON THE BIG SCREEN, BUT AT HOME WITH HIS KIDS, THE HOLLYWOOD ICON IS A REAL SOFTIE
cesca made her big-screen debut as Clint’s daughter at 5 in 1999’s True Crime (“I guess it was like take your kids to work day,” she jokes), and Alison recalls, “He used to let me do the clapboard in front of the cameras — that was a lot of fun.” Notes Laura Linney, who just worked with Clint for the third time on his upcoming drama Sully, “Clint’s kids visited him a lot on [1997’s] Absolute Power. He’s fantastic with them — he’s so proud.”
Despite his low-key style as a dad, Clint expects his kids to pull their own weight. “He’s all for giving a helping hand, but not a handout,” the insider says. “All his kids work, and he insists they pave their own way.” And pay their own way: “My first car cost $1,000, and I had to buy every car after that,” Scott says. “Dad was pretty old-school.”
Even though he’s one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Clint didn’t always impress his children. His youngest daughter, Morgan (now 19), used to ask him to drop her off a few blocks away from her school. “The first couple of times it happens, you think, Hey, they’re ashamed of me!” Clint admits.
But with time comes respect. “As a teenager, you think your parents are dorky,” says Alison. “But as my brother [Kyle, 48] and I matured, we realized how much they meant to us.” These days, “My dad and I are good friends — we laugh a lot,” Alison says. “We have a lot to share.” Dirty Harry…sharing? “His fans see a different side of Clint,” the insider says. “And that’s the way he likes it.”
— Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows and Meagan Sargent
“I want the same thing for them that every parent wants — to have a good, healthy life.”