His breakthrough role—playing the Man with No Name in those spaghetti Westerns? He's in his midthirties when he does those. He doesn't direct his first movie, the still riveting Play Misty for Me, until he's 40. And Dirty Harry? He's 41 when he makes that (and even then, he gets the role only after Sinatra pulls out).But here's where things get really crazy. In 1993 he shows up at the Academy Awards with Unforgiven. He is 62 and has never won an Oscar. The film wins four, including Best Picture and Best Director.
And then this happens: The guy doesn't hang it up—he only starts getting stronger. He goes on a stunning run of creativity that a man half his age would kill for. Eastwood is now 79, and in the seventeen years since Unforgiven he has made fifteen movies. Three of those have been nominated for Best Picture, and he has been nominated for Best Director or Best Actor an additional four times. All told, he now has four Oscars, and his films have won another seven.
He has made sixty-six movies. He's acted in fifty-seven and directed twenty-nine. Now he's about to release his sixty-seventh: Invictus. He directed and produced it, and it's the true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and the captain of the overwhelmingly white South African rugby team (Matt Damon) used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to bring the country together.
It's an interesting article, if you have the chance, read the whole thing. I particularly like how he says we should stop calling each other racists and nutjobs and grow up... Clint Eastwood impresses me as someone who has paid attention to the world around him... someone who notices things, appreciates things, tries to understand... it's a good interview.
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