Happy Birthday to the Living Legend: Clint Eastwood

Today we celebrate the birthday of The Man of men, one of the last true heroes of cinema who stood amongst some of the coolest actors such as Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Lee Marvin, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson and many more.  He truly is one of the greatest and coolest actors of all time and not to mention one of the best directors as well.  As he turns 81 today, he is still giving us great films; he is currently filming a biopic on the controversial life of J. Edgar Hoover starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

One of his first appearances was in the 1955 horror film Revenge of the Creature as Jennings, a Lab Technician who loses his lab mouse but then realises it's in his pocket.

He then got a break in the TV western show Rawhide which became a hit.  But then the first major lead role in a feature film came to Clint by Sergio Leone.  Sergio originally wanted Henry Fonda, James Coburn or Charles Bronson for his film but since he was still an unknown and did not have the budget, he got Clint (ironically all three actors got to star in his later films).  And with A Fistful of Dollars (the first in the dollar trilogy and an unofficial remake of Yojimbo), a legend was born!

This was the beginning of Clint behind the camera as he directed numerous great films after that such as High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, Bird, White Hunter Black Heart and many others.  Finally after years of great films, he wins an Oscar for directing and producing his masterpiece in 1992 (he was also nominated for best actor in the role), a script that had been in the works since 1976 as he wanted to wait until he was actually old enough to play the character.  It first went by the names of  'The Cut-Whore Killings' and 'The William Munny Killings' and then finally became Unforgiven.  He dedicated this film to his friend Don Siegel who died the year before.

After that, we got some different but very impressive Eastwood films such as Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, Changeling, Gran Torino, and Invictus.  Another great thing about Clint is that he’s a great human being.  Since Japan had recently been a victim of a devastating earthquake and tsunami and Clint's latest film Hereafter opened with a giant tsunami that hit Indonesia, Hereafter was understandably removed from cinemas in Japan.  So Clint Eastwood offered to donate all the money from the DVD sales of Hereafter to help Japan in this time of need.



He is an actor that has surpassed stardom, he is legendary.  I’ll always remember the first time I saw my first Clint Eastwood movie, my dad got me to watch Escape from Alcatraz and he told me “Son there are certain people in this world you don’t wanna mess with, Clint Eastwood is most defiantly one of them”.