CLINT EASTWOOD

From the Dollars trilogy to Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood’s star status has long been secure. But it’s as a director, with Oscar winners like Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby that he’s truly found his place. As his latest, the controversy-stirring Richard Jewell arrives, Total Film meets the luckiest punk in Hollywood.

"WHEN YOU START ACTING, YOU NEVER THINK IT’S GOING TO END… AND THEN YOU LOOK BACK AND GO, ‘WHY AM I STILL HERE?’"

There are legends, and then there’s Clint Eastwood. The hair may be wispy-white, the frame a little fragile and slow-moving, but he’s still utterly distinct when Total Film meets him at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. This year, the 89-year-old actor-producer-director has hit a huge milestone: 65 years working in Hollywood.

Discharged from the army in 1953, he started with bit-parts – “a one-liner if I was lucky,” he grins, popping a mint in his mouth. Those one-liners soon became full-blown roles – from cowboy Rowdy Yates on TV show Rawhide to Sergio Leone’s ‘Spaghetti westerns’, playing the Man With No Name in A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and 1966’s glorious The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

Yet the real turning point came five years later in 1971. Not only did he nab his second iconic role – the maverick Magnum .44-carrying cop in Dirty Harry – but he also made his directorial debut in the icecool tale of obsession, Play Misty For Me. Defiantly taking control of his career, he never looked back.

Early Eastwood-directed efforts were largely in the western genre that fitted him like a pair of well-worn chaps – films like High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider. But he gradually looked elsewhere, whether it was jazz musician Charlie Parker (Bird) or even Dirty Harry adventure Sudden Impact, the third of the series’ four sequels.