This actor and director from San Francisco, California (USA) has gained fame for portraying rude characters. First, as a cowboy in Italian Westerns, then as a tough cop. He currently has a net worth of $375 million. Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born on May 31st, 1930 in San Francisco, USA. Son of Clinton Eastwood, Sr. (1906-1970), a metalworking sector worker, and Margaret Ruth Eastwood (1909-2006), an employee of an IBM factory. He weighed 114.64 lb. at birth, which is why the hospital nurses called him “Samson.” He has English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry.
Beginnings.
According to a CBS news release on the Rawhide series, Universal Studios was filming in Fort Ord when an assistant met Eastwood and helped him get a meeting with the director of the series. According to his official biography, a man named Chuck Hill succeeded in casting Eastwood at Universal Studios in Hollywood to be known by cameraman Irving Glassberg.
This facilitated him to make an audition with the director Arthur Lubin, who despite being impressed with his 633,202′ height, initially questioned his interpretive abilities, and recommended him to attend acting classes. Clint Eastwood’s first role was a short acting lab assistant in the 1955 film Revenge of the Creature.
After a short time, away from the cameras, Eastwood obtained in the summer of 1958 the secondary role of Rowdy Yates in the television series CBS TV series Rawhide. Rawhide premiered in January 1959, and in a few weeks, became a hit. Although the series never won an Emmy, it enjoyed great acceptance during the years in which it was issued, from 1959 to 1965.
1960s.
At the end of 1963, Eastwood’s casting partner in Rawhide, Eric Fleming, rejected an offer to star in a Spanish-Italian western Per un pugno di dollari, which was to be shot in Spain, and would be directed by the then unknown Sergio Leone. Actor Richard Harrison was convinced that Eastwood could play a cowboy convincingly, and proposed it for the role.
The actor saw the opportunity to escape his image in Rawhide. He signed a $ 15,000 contract for eleven weeks, plus the gift of a Mercedes-Benz car at the end of the shoot. Per un Pugno di Dollari, turned out to be a milestone in the development of spaghetti westerns, portraying a wilder and more desolate western United States than in American Western films, and where American stereotypes were changed from the West Hero, by a morally ambiguous anti hero.
1970s.
Eastwood rolled Dirty Harry, a film by Don Siegel. The film, written by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink, focuses on a tough New York City police inspector (a city that was later replaced by San Francisco) called Harry Callahan who intends to stop by any means a psychotic killer. Dirty Harry, is perhaps the most memorable Clint Eastwood’s character.
Awarded Director.
The Unforgiven (1992), and Million Dollar Baby (2004) gave him recognition as a filmmaker. He won the Academy Awards for both films as best Director, and best Motion Picture in their corresponding year.
