america's 100 best egacie~ I 29 I best man of action

After 40 years- in the saddle, Clint Eastwood is still braving new frontiers

BY I(ENNETH MILLER

N EARLY A QUARTER-CENTURY after Harry Callahan dared a thug to start shooting-and gave the phrase "Go ahead, make my day" a whole new meaning-the violence in Clint Eastwood's movies has a subtlety and impact that Dirty Harry could only dream of. Now, after spending the better part of his career playing the tough guyon-screen, Eastwood has become the gentle giant behind the scenes, directing a spate of critically acclaimed andaward~winning films. His 2006 companion

124 EDDIE ADAMS/CORBIS OUTLINE RD MAY 2007 movies, Letters From Iwo Jima and says film critic Richard Schickel. Flags of Our Fathers, take an un- So how did he get here? Did Dirty flinching look at war. Letters is a work Harry take an anger-management of extraordinary empathy, one of the class? Eastwood bristles at the idea first American films to tell a World that he ever shared the shoot-'em- War II story from the perspective up instincts of his early characters. ofJapanese soldiers. Unlike the prop- "I'm an actor playing a role," he told aganda pictures of the time, it grants biographer Douglas Thompson. "It's as much humanity and complexity a fantasy." to Iwo Jima's defenders as to the GIs who raised Old Glory atop Mount Straight Shooter Suribachi. Four decades ago, when peace and In the short span of one year, love were all the rage, Eastwood made Eastwood released two notable films. his mark in A Fistful of Dollars playing Not many 76-year-olds can conceive a hard-eyed, poncho-wearing drifter of that kind of success. But it's not whose Colt .45 does most of his talk- just the output, it's the distance ing. Then came the ruthless San that Eastwood has come. The action Francisco plainclothesman of the Dirty hero has transformed himself into an Harry movies, who favors a .44 mag- -artist, a creator of stereotype-busting num. But in real life, Eastwood literally .movies that provoke serious thought wouldn't hurt a fly: "When we see a and deep emotions in audiences bug at our house," his wife, Dina, has around the world. said, "we coax it out the window." "The journey he's made from his Other aspects of his personality are raffish beginnings is just astounding," more in line with his screen persona.

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What audiences love about Eastwood films, Eastwood also possesses a is that he embodies a certain ideal of relentless urge to claim new territory. American manhood: quietly c;onfident, "I was always reaching out for some- stubbornly independent, street-smart, thing different," he told one inter- self-amused and-even in his darkest viewer:"Half the fun of making a roles-essentially decent. "That hu- movie is doing something that's out- manness comes through in all his side your experience." work, both as a director and an actor," In an industry based on illusion, says Gene Hackman, who first paired Eastwood has risen to Hollywood's with him in Unforgiven (1992). zenith largely by daring to be himself. Like the protagonists of many of his The Long Ride The classic Eastwood character-detective or desperado, boxing coach or soldier-is a blend of dependable professional and intractable wan- derer. That mix has roots in Eastwood's own life. During the Depres- sion, his father, a bond broker, traveled Cali- fornia and Washington State pursuing jobs that

Eastwood's recent turns in the director's chair produced (from left): 2004's Million Dollar Baby, in which he costarred with Hilary Swank; 2003's Mystic River; and Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, both released in 2006. The four films garnered a total of seven Oscars, one for best director.

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never seemed to last. Clint attended at six-foot-four frame won him bit parts least half a dozen schools, and excelled in Revenge of the CreatUre, Tarantula at none of them. (Had he been a kid and a picture starring Francis the today, he has said, he might have been Talking Mule, but soon he was back diagnosed with attention deficit dis- to spadework. Then in 1959he landed order.) He wore a leather jacket, tin- the part of Rowdy Yates, sidekick to - kered with cars and hung with a tough the trail boss, in a new TV western crowd. Still, he learned to value hard series called Rawhide. He held on to work as a source of pride and self-suf- the role for seven years. ficiency. He bagged groceries and de- Eastwood's ambitious side, though, livered papers, toiled as a logger and grew frustrated with the show's con- steelworker, fought forest fires and straints. (In private he described his dug swimming pools. A jazz fanatic, character as "Rowdy Yates, idiot of he taught himself piano and played the plains.") In 1964, during a break for pizza and tips at an Oakland bar. in production, he found an escape Drafted into the Army during the route: the lead role in a low-budget Korean War, Eastwood did a hitch at cowboy movie, filmed in Spain by an Fort Ord, south of San Francisco, iconoclastic Italian named Sergio where his fellow soldiers suggested Leone. Surreal and visually innova- that with looks like his, he really ought tive, with minimal dialogue, A Fistful to tryout for the movies. After en- of Dollars featured Eastwood as a mys- rolling at Los Angeles City College, terious gunman who plays two crim- he did. His chiseled cheekbones and inal gangs off each other.

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The film became a smash in Europe, Eastwood to finally quit his day job. and he quickly shot two sequels with But he was not about to trade one Leone. (All three premiered in the trap for another. After a few more United States in 1967.)A new genre turns as an actor (Hang 'Em High, was born-the spaghetti western. Coogan's Bluff), he moved into the di- The succe'ss of the films allowed' rector's chair. His debut, 1971'sPlay Misty for Me, was a radical departure from his earlier films-'the complex story of a womanizing DJ stalked by a psychopathic female fan. He alternated such experimental work with reliably crowd-pleasing fare, including· the comedy Every Which Way But Loose, in which he shared top billing with an orangutan named Clyde. Airning High The longer Eastwood has worked, the more thoughtful and daring his projects have become. "Every movie I make teaches me something," he has said. "That's why I keep making them."

The screen legend enjoys time away from the set (from left), at son Kyle's concert in 2003; rehearsing for Eastwood: After Hours, a Night of Jazz at Carnegie Hall in 1996; at a 2002 movie premiere with wife Dina and daughters Morgan (left) and Franny (right); and on the golf course with Dina in 2000.

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Since becoming eligible for Social sical themes for his movies. "So many Security benefits, he has made such directors run around, trying to show must-see (and Academy Award-laden) off their authority," says Gene films as Unforgiven, about a gunslinger Hackman. "Clint's not like that. He's a haunted by his past; Mystic River, great listener and approaches every- about the repercussions of child abuse; thing in a practical way." and Million Dollar Baby, about a strug- gling female boxer and the broken- Behind the Scenes down trainer who takes her on. Off duty, Eastwood is unpretentious Eastwood has always declined to be and private. He stays away from pigeonholed as an actor, a filmmaker Hollywood, opting for the company or a man. After liberal critics de~ of old friends in his adopted home- nounced Dirty Harry as a "fascist," town, Carmel, California, halfway Eastwood came out with Magnum_ between L.A. and San Francisco. (He Force, in which Harry battles a cabal served as mayor from 1986 to 1988; o(vigilante cops. When Million Dollar after local authorities passed an ordi- Baby was released in 2004, social nance banning public consumption of conservatives complained that the film ice cream cones, he ran for office and endorsed assisted suicide for its turned the old administration out.) . paralyzed protagonist. Unruffled, East- He still dr;ops by the Hog's Breath wood replied that his movie simply Inn, the rustic eatery he once owned affirmed a basic American theme: an on San Carlos Street. "He doesn't make individual's right to live, or die, as she a big show of entering a restaurant," sees fit. Though a registered Republi- says Schickel, a longtime friend. "He can, Eastwoo'd makes no secret of his kind of slopes in, wearing his chinos support for reproductive choice, his and his little jacket." opposition to the Iraq war-or, when But come on, he's Clint Eastwood. discussing his last two movies, to war, Eventually people notice. "We were period. The best political label for him, playing golf one morning in Canada he says, is libertarian, with a small I. while we were making Unforgiven," When he's directing a movie, Hackman recalls, "and there was a Eastwood is like the teacher who's on crowd of about 50 people watching top of everything and brings· out the us. Clint was the first to tee off, and best in everyone. His film sets are leg- he missed the ball totally. Well, they endary for orderliness and efficiency. laughed, but he didn't get mad. He just "One of the first things he told me was, turned and gave a slight bow. That, I 'No great work can be done amidst think, exemplifies him." chaos,'" says Emmy Rossum, whose Eastwood, in fact, sees a well-played _performance as a troubled teenager in round of golf as an analogy for a well- Mystic River helped launch her career. lived life. "You have to trust your Eastwood often composes the mu- swing," he told interviewer Charlie 130 TRAILBLAZER

Rose. "Don't worry about what any- daily, following a spartan diet, and body else is doing out there. You'll do pumping formidable quantities of iron. _ okay with your own game. And some- "I saw him outmatch men a quarter body else will do okay with theirs." of his age," says Ryan Phillippe, who His taste for independence is mir- appeared in Flags of Our Fathers. "I rored in his romantic history. Though remember everyone was at the gym his first marriage lasted 25 years and and Clint had just finished on the produced two children, he has ac- bench press. [Actor] Barry Pepper knowledged that he strayed widely; sidled over to see if he could lift what he has another four kids by various Clint was lifting, and he couldn't paramours. In his own way, though, move the bar." he's really a family man. He's, on But Eastwood's most potent youth friendly terms with most of his exes elixir is his work. On the Flags set, he and offspring, and several of the wore an officer's uniform in case he youngsters have appeared in his was caught on-camera, and referred movies. Son Kyle,39,a composer, often to himself as Colonel Kumquat. H~ scores his father's films. took his turn behind the camera dur- A late but enthusiastic convert to ing difficult scenes, standing in a small monogamy, Eastwood has been mar- landing boat battered by waves. "Just ried since 1996 to Dina Ruiz, 41, a for- being in his presence," Phillippe jokes, mer newscaster whom he met when "makes you feel like less of a man." she interviewed him for a station in "I probably would have retired years Salinas, California. They have a ten- ago if I hadn't found interesting things year-old daughter, Morgan. to do," Eastwood said recently. "They Caring for a tween helps to keep keep saying yes to you, so you keep him fit, as does jogging several miles on going."

ILLEGAL BY ANY NAME

It took a lot of convincing, but Mai Xuan Can of Vietnam finally changed his son's name. According to the Associated Press, the boy's new name, Mai Hoang Long, or Golden Dragon, is quite different from his old name-Mai Phat Sau Nghin Ruoi, or Fined Six Thousand and Five Hundred, the amount the father owed for ignoring the government's two-child policy.

The new scourge in Malaysia is ridiculous na_mes,and the government is cracking down hard. Agence France-Presse reports that verboten names include Ah Gong, which means Unsound Mind; Sum Seng, Gangster; and Chow Tow,Smelly Head. 131