Eastwood, Clint(on) (1930– )

US film actor and director. His breakthrough came in the Western A Fistful of Dollars (1964), after which he proved himself a box-office attraction in such films as Dirty Harry (1973), directed by his regular collaborator Don Siegel. In 1971 he started an accomplished directing career with Play Misty for Me, and his latter-day Western Unforgiven (1992) and boxing drama Million Dollar Baby (2005) both won Academy Awards for Best Film and Best Director.

A long-serving actor on the television series Rawhide, he gained a wider audience when Sergio Leone cast him as the ruthless ‘Man with No Name’ in the ‘spaghetti Western’ trilogy The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1965), A Fistful of Dollars (1966), and For a Few Dollars More (1966).

His directorial credits include the Westerns High Plains Drifter (1973), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), and Pale Rider (1985); the biopics Bird (1988) and White Hunter, Black Heart (1990); the dramas The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Mystic River (2003); and the World War II films Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers (both 2006).

Eastwood was mayor of Carmel, California, 1986–88. He was the recipient of the American Film Institute's life achievement award in 1996. Other films he has acted in include Coogan's Bluff (1968), Hang 'em High (1968), Paint Your Wagon (1969), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), Tightrope (1984), and In the Line of Fire (1993) among many others.