For other uses, see Clint Eastwood (disambiguation).
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Source: Wikipedia

For other uses, see Clint Eastwood (disambiguation).

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer, pianist, and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959-1966). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of a certain type of masculinity.
For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.
In addition to directing many of his own star vehicles, Eastwood has also directed films in which he did not appear, such as Mystic River (2003) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations, and Changeling (2008). He has received considerable critical praise in France, including for several films which were not well received in the United States, and he has been awarded two of France's highest honors: in 1994 he became a recipient of the French Republic's Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 2007 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur medal. In 2000, he was awarded the Italian Venice Film Festival Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.
Since 1967, Eastwood has run his own production company, Malpaso, which has produced all except four of his American films. He also served as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California from 1986 to 1988. Eastwood has eight children by six different women, although he has only married twice.

Early life
Main article: Early life and work of Clint Eastwood
Eastwood was born in San Francisco, California, to Clinton Eastwood, Sr. (1906-70), a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth (Runner) Eastwood (1909-2006), a factory worker. He was nicknamed "Samson" by the hospital nurses as he weighed 11 pounds 6 ounces (5.2 kg) at birth. Eastwood is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry and was raised in a working class home with his younger sister, Jeanne (born 1934). His family moved often as his father worked at jobs along the West Coast. The family finally settled in Piedmont, California, where Eastwood attended Piedmont Junior High School. Shortly before he was to enter Piedmont High School, he rode his bike on the school's sports field and tore up the wet turf; this resulted in his being asked not to enroll. Instead, he attended Oakland Technical High School, where the drama teachers encouraged him to take part in school plays. However, Eastwood was not interested. He worked at a number of jobs, including lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy.
In 1951 during the Korean War, Eastwood was drafted by the United States Army and assigned to Fort Ord in California, where he served as a lifeguard. While on leave in 1951, he was a passenger on a Douglas AD bomber that ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Point Reyes. Escaping from the sinking aircraft, he and the pilot swam 3 miles (5 km) to safety.
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