Born: San Francisco, 31 May, 1930 --

Films as director and producer, unless otherwise noted:

The most successful of all actors turned directors, Eastwood has fashioned a creditable body of work while making only one film that transcends its genre, the commercial limitations of the art form, and its director's rigidly codified public personality.

Unforgiven was duly honored by public and Oscar alike, and remains an all too unique chapter in his nevertheless still fascinating career. An often no more than efficient director both stylistically and financially, Eastwood began his directing career while blazing brightly as one of Hollywood's most popular American stars, an heir to John Wayne, and an actor who appealed to both men and women.

Though he found fame through the spaghetti westerns he made for Sergio Leone, it was as a disciple of Don Siegel that he made his directorial debut, with Play Misty For Me. This film, coming as it did from an international sex icon, was an odd tale, one bespeaking an almost paranoid suspicion of women within a view of sexuality that foreshadowed Fatal Attraction in its account of a female stalking her prey with unlimited patience, while also anticipating the reliance on the stalker as a fundamental figure in the films of the '90s. In fact, this thriller showed more the influence of Siegel (who has a cameo) than Leone, and Eastwood starred in Siegel's The Beguiled, which has a similarly paranoid view of womankind. In the end, Misty had more to say about the screen actor as besieged public figure (and about Eastwood's affection for jazz) than it did about the genre with which it was theoretically aligned. Suspicion of women also crops up in Breezy, a businessman-meets-hippy tale staring an icon from an earlier era, William Holden.

Eastwood's career can be divided broadly into three phases. From 1971 through 1976 Eastwood was an actor-turned director still better known for his acting. His directorial projects, usually popular with the public but designed simply to support and continue that popularity, alternated with blockbusters made with other directors who increasingly proved to be cronies, men of little creative distinction who could be relied on to serve the star's needs.

But with The Outlaw - Josey Wales, on which he took over the direction after filming started, a new Eastwood emerges, one who makes lengthy, deliberately paced films that emphasize groups or ensembles over Eastwood as sole star. This phase announced the collaboration, personal and professional, with actress Sondra Locke. Yet in the end this phase also proved to be a creative nullity , though coincidentally it came at a time when other directors (Woody Allen) and stars (Robert DeNiro) were experiencing similarly long and inexplicable dry spells. Yet at least Eastwood was exploring unusual characters, some comic, some tragic, while in the other side of his career as mere superstar he was appearing in a string of bread and butter hits.

After the Locke years, Eastwood endured a rough transition. Anomalies such as the hit aspiring Heartbreak Ridge , A Perfect World, and The Rookie paired the aging Eastwood as a mentor to younger actors, and the narrative content of these films seemed more explicitly political than his elegiac westerns. But with the watershed achievement of Unforgiven, written by David Webb Peoples, a new, mature set of tones invaded his work: feelings of melancholy, twilight moods of loss, regret, memory, and the desire to change. What is most interesting in the otherwise routine if entertaining Absolute Power is the mood of remorse over his daughter that Eastwood's character feels, and the continued use of Gene Hackman as a linchpin of near successful malice, the moral mirror of the star but whose evil is much greater then that found in the unconventional characters Eastwood cast himself as, men who are deemed "officially" evil by society (thieves, alcoholic reporters).

Also interesting in Absolute Power is its confirmation that Eastwood has always been better on screen with great actors, be it Richard Burton, or in this case Ed Harris, than with similar "stars" such as Burt Reynolds , types whom he has been all too often pair for strictly commercial reasons.

The mood of regret reappears in True Crime, and offsets the concurrent thread in Eastwood's directorial career, that of official adaptor of popular novels, on par with fellow actor turned director Robert Redford. Eastwood lacks the visual zest and attention to detail to qualify - at this point - for the Pantheon, but his films show much more thematic variety within narrative consistency than they at first seem to offer, a sign that Eastwood, behind his pose as a simple man, is in fact working out complex ideas and responses to life.

For more information, go to The Eastwood Web Site, or check out Eastwood's Filmography.