Biography of Clint Eastwood | Director and actor.

(San Francisco, 1930) American film director and actor. After finishing grammar school, at the height of the great depression, had to earn a living in various works: was a lumberjack, Mason and metalworker. After spending four years in the army, from 1954 he tried to make a place in Hollywood as a supporting actor. He made his debut in the Universal, in titles related to the series Francis Mule; his first performance was in Francis Joins of Wacs (1954), Arthur Lubin, followed by some work for television.

Clint Eastwood

But it was in Italy where made fame and Fortune with the character of the "man without a name", the hero of the great westerns of Sergio Leone: a fistful of dollars (1964), death was a price (1965) and the good, the bad and the ugly (1966), considered canonical works of the spaghetti western (low-budget productions based on the American western -made in Europe (, especially in Italy).

Of the three, the good, the bad and the ugly is the spaghetti western by excellence, halfway between the forceful exhibition effectiveness of the above and the bombast well understood from the rear until a time (1968). With the background far away from the civil war, three crook unscrupulous known by the nicknames of the title are dedicated to follow separately track that leads them to the location of a booty, sowing of corpses the arid landscapes that cross. In regards to the image, is a surprising film both in terms of planning and the picture in Technicolor and the widescreen Techniscope, work of Tonino delli Colli, in vigorous Nino Baragli Assembly. Filmed in Almeria, the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone deserves itself alone all the honours.

This kind of trilogy catapulted Eastwood to stardom, helping it to consolidate its image. His charisma, his high profile and somewhat ungainly and a face dry, with a narrow range of gestures but of great expressiveness, would develop you over time in one of the most appreciated actors of Hollywood.

Clint Eastwood in the good, the bad and the ugly (1966)
and as Dirty Harry (1971)

Returning to the United States, Eastwood founded the production company I Malpaso and it increased their prestige from their collaboration with director Don Siegel, especially through the character of Harry Callahan, a policeman with peculiar ways, hard, violent, self-sufficient and not devoid of cynicism. The first title of this series was Dirty Harry (1971), film which gave him the ultimate accolade and that it would roll four sequels.

Harry Callahan is the epitome of the harsh and violent staunch defender of the law. Action man, bitter and violent, is taken justice into their own hands and has no other output that rebel against rules that considered unfair. Driven by its own law, respects little or nothing the decisions of the authority. In Dirty Harry, Eastwood begins chasing a murderer, but arresting, Justice put it again in freedom. Callahan does not comply with this decision and starts his own private war against the offender, which ends with the death of this; then, Callahan pulls his plate to the ground.

Described by critics as fascistoid tone film, his followers only see in Callahan a character created on the basis of the principles of pure romanticism, with its own moral, independence of rules and freedom of action. Little by little, in the following films, the character acquired greater sense of humor and lost part of its violence. Following deliveries would be Harry, strong (1973), Ted Post, on a screenplay by John Milius and Michael Cimino; Harry, the executor (1976), by James Fargo; Sudden impact (1983) directed by himself; and the blacklist (1988) Buddg Van Horn.

Throughout the 1970s, Eastwood worked for other production companies that obtained important successes, as the legend of the nameless city (1969), with direction of Joshua Logan, an atypical western filmed in musical key that nevertheless managed to connect mainly to the public. Eastwood showed signs of possessing a special film smell not only to intervene in films that provided him with money and fame, but also to discover young values that offered the opportunity to intervene in a film with strong commercial presence; the case is Michael Cimino, who worked in a bounty of 500,000 dollars (1974).

In the field of interpretation, Eastwood was becoming an actor who connected with the ancient tradition of Hollywood, an artist whose presence was felt at the box office and that got to give personality to the films. Yet in the 1990s, more than one title won a public and critical acclaim as a result of the interpretation of Eastwood; such is the case of in the line of fire (1993), Wolfgang Petersen, which embodied a presidential bodyguard whom the years begin to weigh him physically and morally.

As director, Clint Eastwood earned little by little the respect of criticism by its classic approach to the realization and its ability to handle the action smoothly, without subtracting therefore psychological depth to the characters or dramatic and human force posed conflicts. Sometimes he joined their work of director of interpreter of his own films, unless an activity ahogase to another.

It began with shiver in the night (1971), and since the mid-1980s, a number of outstanding titles showed his mettle as a Director. Thus, he directed and starred in pale rider (1985), a western biblical reminiscences where he managed to update a genre that seemed exhausted by the changing tastes of the public. Your Birdfilm, based on the life of the saxophonist Charlie Parker (role brilliantly played by Forest Whitaker) obtained in 1988 a huge international success and increased respect for the criticism. In 1989, he directed and starred in a film that failed to gain the success that was expected, but showed their courage and originality in choosing approaches: White Hunter, black heart. Inspired in the filming of the African Queen, the legendary John Huston film, Eastwood was reserved the character of the own Huston, whose personality an accurate analysis.

At the same time suggestive and fertile career of Clint Eastwood as a director found in 1992 one of its more definite expressions in the unrepeatable without forgiveness. Dedicated to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, masters of the beginnings of Eastwood in the film as an actor, without forgiveness is a western that, decades after the apparent death of the genre, it manages to recover and collect all the tradition and Eastwood's own career. From the flat fordianos women are distributed in a painful choreography on the porches of the town to see the protagonists to reach, this masterpiece of Eastwood is a dark and Twilight Tour of the hero and his impossible redemption fatigue.

Without forgiveness (1992)

Eastwood is the old gunfighter with a blood-stained past, buried under the weight of the vivid horror, who tries to survive away from everyone, bringing forward to the two children he had with the only woman who could clean their conscience and pain and death inflicted in his youth. Requested to avenge an unjust aggression to a prostitute, Eastwood will again communicate with the world once more in a daunting via crucis, that must be painful contact with its darkest part, an impossible adventure in which has as companions to an old friend also apart of weapons (the amazing Morgan Freeman) and a young gunfighter short view and candidly fascinated by the legend of his mentor.

Without forgiveness is a flawless classicism, direct and transparent, irresistibly lyrical western; but it is also, at the same time, a dingy full of sound and fury, inevitably violent tragedy in which the purity of the objectives does not redeem the chaos and hatred that feeds the soul of its protagonist: the destructive ordeal of his final pop, true infernal evocation submerged in the ubiquitous visual tenebrism that presides over the film, is not only distressing in the context of fiction , but also in the bleak warning of the climate of violence that reigns in the United States in the Bush era. Tape received, among others, the Oscar for best film and best Director, and was consecrated to Clint Eastwood as one of the wisest filmmakers of the time.

If forgiveness is the ultimate western of Eastwood, somehow the bridges of Madison (1995) was its ultimate melodrama, in a decade that the creative talent of its director is located in a unique state of grace. The bridges of Madison is a brave melodramatic proposal based only on love of the cinema, a prolonged rondo between two characters (the own Eastwood and an excellent Meryl Streep) that evolve on camera fascinated by each one of the gestures, looks, words that address each other.

With Meryl Streep in the bridges of Madison (1995)

The tremendous emotional catharsis that is capable of eliciting Eastwood through the image is transparently revealed in the sweeping final third, that sentimental suspense reaches levels of unused nudity, something that is also found in the splendid a perfect world (1993), melodramatic thriller of sentimental initiation between an escaped inmate (Kevin Costner) and a child kidnapped by him in his flight. The overwhelming classicism of Eastwood takes you, throughout his filmography, to a clear recovery of the best traditions of American cinema, with a remarkable aesthetic honesty and ethics, something which, as already mentioned, derived from the passionate lessons learned of John Ford, as well as their brothers in blood Siegel and Leone.

After several decades of professionalism, Clint Eastwood is considered a master of the management, and is even appreciated that his interpretative work has improved over the years. Artistically ambitious, his style aims always to perfection, both interpretative and address, search that has been fought with the box-office success. His latest films include the aforementioned a perfect world (1993), midnight in the garden of good and evil (1997), imminent execution (1999) and Space Cowboys (2000).

In Million Dollar Baby (2004), winner of four Oscar

Mystic River (2003) received several awards both the Golden Globes and the Oscars, mostly for its male actors, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. The same thing happened with Million Dollar Baby (2004), a tragic drama about a woman who insists on be a boxer in order to succeed in life, which strikes up an intense relationship with a former boxer who is dedicated to training. Starring own filmmaker, and Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank, the movie won four statuettes in the 2005 edition of the Academy Awards: best director, best film, best actress and best supporting actor.

In 2006, the actor and filmmaker directed flags of our fathers and letters from Iwo Jima, two films that refer to a moment of history (the battle of Iwo Jima at the end of the second world war), but seen in the first case from the American perspective and the second from the Japanese. 76, Eastwood gave a new nut twist to his long career with a deep meditation on the essence of heroism, analyzed from a position of absolute independence.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas