Eastwood's biggest hits starred an orangutan
Clint Eastwood's top box-office wins were Every Which Way but Loose in 1978 and its sequel Any Which Way You Can—not Leone's Westerns or Dirty Harry. Those icon roles still minted a global star; later Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby each brought him Best Director and Best Picture Oscars.
Clinton Eastwood Jr. arrived on 31 May 1930 at San Francisco's Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, so large at birth that nurses dubbed him Samson. After Rawhide made him a TV cowboy, Sergio Leone's mid-1960s Dollars Trilogy cast him as the Man with No Name, and five Dirty Harry pictures locked in Harry Callahan. Westerns such as Hang 'Em High, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Pale Rider kept the gunfighter brand alive, while Escape from Alcatraz and The Bridges of Madison County showed other registers. In 1986 Carmel-by-the-Sea voters elected him mayor for a two-year term.
As a director-producer he took Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture twice—first with the revisionist Western Unforgiven in 1992, then with the boxing drama Million Dollar Baby in 2004. He also earned directing nominations for films he stayed off-camera in, among them Mystic River and Letters from Iwo Jima. Accolades tallied in the sources include four Oscars, four Golden Globes, three Césars, lifetime prizes from Venice and Cannes, an AFI Life Achievement Award, and French arts and Legion of Honour distinctions.
School years were rough: held back in Piedmont, moved after infractions, then odd jobs from lifeguard to firefighter before a Korean War Army draft interrupted Seattle University plans. A Fort Ord–linked Hollywood introduction led to an April 1954 Universal deal at one hundred dollars a week even though Arthur Lubin judged him quite amateurish yet striking at six-foot-four. From Revenge of the Creature bits to directing Juror #2 decades later, his career traced a long climb from rejected auditions to dual Oscar peaks.
Source: Clint Eastwood
