Clint Eastwood

Clinton Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, Academy Award winning film director, film producer and composer. Eastwood is famous for his "tough guy" roles, including Dirty Harry and the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. As a director, Eastwood has become known for high-quality dramas imbued with a pessimistic tone, such as Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Million Dollar Baby.

Early life

Born in San Francisco, California on May 31 1930 of Scottish, Irish, Dutch, and English descent, Eastwood was shaped in childhood by the Great Depression, which in turn left its mark on his later films.

Related Topics:
San Francisco, California - May 31 - 1930 - Scottish - Irish - Dutch - English - Great Depression

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Clint Sr., a sometime steel worker in the San Francisco Bay Area, was forced in the 1930s to seek work over a wide area of coastal and inland California. According to film scholar David Kehr, the Eastwoods, with only child Clint Jr., spent much of the decade in motion, an experience that would inform such movies as 1982's Honkytonk Man, with its migrant, "Okie" families. From his working-class childhood and upbringing, Eastwood the artist drew upon a perspective that was often far more archetypically middle-American than those of other California-born actors and directors. When he needed a mid-American backdrop from the 1950s for his 1988 film Bird, Eastwood used the elm-lined streets of central Sacramento, a distinctly un-Hollywood setting which he remembered from living there briefly as a child. That leafy cityscape, with its early 20th century clapboard houses, seems worlds removed from the hilly vistas and intellectual pretentions of the Bay Area and also from the sun-drenched glitz of Los Angeles, where Clint Jr. would live as a young man.

Related Topics:
San Francisco Bay Area - Honkytonk Man - Bird - Sacramento - Los Angeles

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After high school, Eastwood was drafted into the United States Army. It was following his discharge that he moved to Southern California to enroll at Los Angeles City College. He studied primarily business administration, but eventually dropped out.

Related Topics:
United States Army - Southern California - Los Angeles City College

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