94 Fun Facts About Clint Eastwood

In which city was Clint Eastwood born on 31 May 1930?

Eastwood was born in San Francisco on 31 May 1930, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital; the family moved around northern California during the Depression before settling in Piedmont.

In 1955, Eastwood had a bit part as a lab technician in which Universal monster film?

Revenge of the Creature gave him one of his first screen roles, but Universal soon dropped him, and he took labouring jobs between small parts.

Which character did Eastwood play in the CBS Western Rawhide from 1959?

Rowdy Yates was the ramrod under Eric Fleming's trail boss Gil Favor; when Fleming left after season seven, Rowdy took over as trail boss for the final season.

At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Eastwood famously improvised a routine talking to what?

An empty chair stood in for President Obama, and the idea reportedly came from a Neil Diamond song with a line about an empty chair that Eastwood heard in his hotel room.

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) was an unofficial remake of which Akira Kurosawa film, leading to a lawsuit?

Yojimbo was the film it copied, and fearing a suit over that, US distributors held A Fistful of Dollars back until 1967.

Which 1966 Sergio Leone film completed Eastwood's Dollars Trilogy?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has Eastwood's drifter turn in bandit Tuco for the reward, then shoot through the hangman's rope to free him, a con they repeat.

On A Fistful of Dollars, what did Eastwood persuade Sergio Leone to trim from his character?

His dialogue was trimmed because Eastwood wanted more mystery to the man, so he swapped whole pages of lines for a few terse words.

Sergio Leone shot much of his Dollars Trilogy in the deserts of which country?

Spain's Tabernas Desert, in Almería, resembles the American West, and the Western sets left behind there now run as theme parks with staged shootouts.

What was Eastwood's directorial debut, released in 1971?

Play Misty for Me finally let him direct a feature, years after CBS had let him direct only trailers for Rawhide.

Who directed Dirty Harry (1971), the first of five films about Inspector Harry Callahan?

Don Siegel was a keen backer of Eastwood directing, and he stood by to help when Eastwood shot his first film as a director.

Which handgun did Dirty Harry make famous?

A .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29 was little known outside the gun world until the film, after which shops struggled to keep it in stock.

Dirty Harry's villain was loosely inspired by which real-life murderer?

The Zodiac Killer terrorised the Bay Area in the late 1960s, taunted newspapers with coded letters and was never caught, much of it echoed in Scorpio.

Which US president borrowed Dirty Harry's line 'Go ahead, make my day' to warn Congress?

Ronald Reagan told business leaders in March 1985 that his veto pen was ready for any tax increase Congress might send: 'Go ahead, make my day.'

In Every Which Way but Loose (1978), Eastwood's brawler Philo Beddoe travels with a pet of what species?

An orangutan named Clyde rides along as Philo's sidekick, and though critics attacked the film, it became one of 1978's biggest box-office hits.

Which town elected Eastwood mayor in April 1986?

Carmel-by-the-Sea's zoning rules had frustrated him, and as mayor he relaxed one that effectively banned selling ice-cream cones.

Which character did Eastwood play in Unforgiven (1992)?

William Munny, a widower who has renounced his violent past, takes the bounty job because his hog farm is failing and his two children need a future.

Who won Best Supporting Actor for playing Sheriff 'Little Bill' Daggett in Unforgiven?

Gene Hackman first turned the role down because his daughters disliked his violent films, until Eastwood convinced him the movie didn't celebrate violence.

Who played FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in Eastwood's 2011 biopic J. Edgar?

Leonardo DiCaprio's Hoover talks fast, a habit some trace to the stutter the real Hoover had as a boy.

What was the day job of F.X. Toole, whose stories became Million Dollar Baby?

Cutman and trainer Jerry Boyd hid his writing behind the pen name F.X. Toole and published his first book, Rope Burns, at about 70.

Which actress won Best Actress for playing boxer Maggie Fitzgerald opposite Eastwood's Frankie Dunn?

Hilary Swank trained in the ring and weight room and gained 19 pounds of muscle for the role.

How is Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) unusual for a Hollywood war film?

It is almost entirely in Japanese because it tells the battle from the Japanese side, as a companion to Flags of Our Fathers, which shows the American side.

Walt Kowalski, Eastwood's character in Gran Torino (2008), is a widowed veteran of which war?

Walt Kowalski is haunted by memories of the Korean War, yet the bigoted widower ends up making a great sacrifice for his Hmong neighbours.

Walt Kowalski's prized Gran Torino in Eastwood's 2008 film is a model from which carmaker?

Ford built the Gran Torino, and when a gang pressures Walt's teenage neighbour Thao into trying to steal it, the grumpy veteran is drawn into the boy's life.

Which director dropped out of American Sniper in August 2013 before Eastwood took over?

Steven Spielberg couldn't fit his vision of the film into Warner Bros.' budget, and within weeks Eastwood was in talks to take over.

Which real Navy SEAL did Bradley Cooper play in Eastwood's American Sniper?

Chris Kyle was shot dead in 2013 at a Texas gun range by a troubled former Marine whom he and a friend had taken there to help.

Which 1968 war film paired Eastwood with Richard Burton?

Where Eagles Dare came from Alistair MacLean, who wrote the screenplay and the novel of the same story at the same time.

Which 1969 musical film co-starred Eastwood with Lee Marvin?

Paint Your Wagon has Marvin's Ben Rumson and Eastwood's Pardner find gold while burying a man, and a mining camp, No Name City, grows up around their claim.

Which real inmate did Eastwood play in Escape from Alcatraz (1979)?

Frank Morris escaped in June 1962 with brothers John and Clarence Anglin on a raft made of raincoats, and none of the three was ever caught or found.

Which 1974 film paired Eastwood with a young Jeff Bridges as a pair of thieves?

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot has Eastwood's ex-robber and his young car-thief partner pull the same heist again after the loot's hiding place vanishes under a new building.

Which French decoration did President Jacques Chirac present to Eastwood in Paris in 2007?

The Legion of Honour was Chirac's tribute to a filmmaker who, he said, embodied the best of Hollywood.

In which 1976 Western did Eastwood direct and star as a Civil War farmer avenging his murdered family?

The Outlaw Josey Wales co-starred Sondra Locke, who took a pay cut to join, beginning her years-long partnership with Eastwood on and off screen.

In The Mule (2018), Eastwood plays an elderly horticulturalist who becomes a courier for whom?

A Mexican drug cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, employed the real courier behind the film, Leo Sharp, who was sentenced at 90 to three years in prison.

Which singer delivered the theme song of Eastwood's TV Western Rawhide?

Frankie Laine later sang the Blazing Saddles theme, and nobody told him the film was a comedy.

Which Malpaso film starred Eastwood as a rodeo showman opposite Sondra Locke in 1980?

Bronco Billy (1980) cast Eastwood as the sharpshooting boss of a struggling Wild West show, with Locke as a runaway heiress; it was the fourth of her six films with him.

Which of the five Harry Callahan films did Eastwood direct himself?

Sudden Impact was his one turn directing Harry, and it cast Sondra Locke as an artist taking revenge on her attackers.

Which 1995 romance cast Eastwood opposite Meryl Streep as a National Geographic photographer?

The Bridges of Madison County's four-day affair starts when Kincaid stops at Francesca's Iowa farmhouse to ask directions to a covered bridge while her family is away.

In Space Cowboys (2000), four ageing ex-test pilots are sent into orbit to repair what?

An old Soviet satellite runs on a system Eastwood's Frank Corvin designed, so NASA finally sends the veterans, who were pulled from a space mission back in 1958.

Who played Nelson Mandela in Eastwood's rugby drama Invictus (2009)?

Morgan Freeman's Mandela backs the national rugby team's 1995 World Cup bid, believing sport can unite a racially divided South Africa.

Sully (2016) dramatises the Hudson River landing of which airliner?

US Airways Flight 1549 lost both engines to a flock of birds just after takeoff, yet everyone on board survived, and Tom Hanks played Captain Chesley Sullenberger.

Who played Mitch Leary, the assassin taunting Eastwood's agent in In the Line of Fire?

John Malkovich's killer torments Frank Horrigan with phone calls about Dallas, where the agent failed to stop the bullet that killed President Kennedy.

In High Plains Drifter, Eastwood's stranger orders the whole town coated in which colour?

Red covered every building on his orders, and the stranger also wrote the word Hell over the town's name on its sign.

In Pale Rider, what do the miners call Eastwood's stranger once he dons a clerical collar?

Preacher is what the miners call him, and he takes up their fight against a mining baron trying to drive them off their claims.

Who starred as Christine Collins, the mother handed the wrong boy, in Eastwood's Changeling (2008)?

Angelina Jolie signed on once Eastwood took over from Ron Howard, who had been set to direct the true story but chose to make Frost/Nixon instead.

Eastwood's 1988 film Bird was a biopic of which jazz musician?

Forest Whitaker played Charlie Parker and won Best Actor at Cannes for it; Eastwood took the Golden Globe for Best Director, though the film was a box-office disappointment.

Which Back to the Future character borrows the name Clint Eastwood after landing in the Old West of 1885?

Marty McFly gives the alias when he reaches the Hill Valley of 1885. He later survives a gunfight by wearing a stove door as a bulletproof vest.

Which singer-actor did Warner Bros. first plan to cast as Harry Callahan when it bought the Dirty Harry script?

Frank Sinatra, then 55, suited a script that made Harry a man in his fifties. Clint Eastwood was only 41 when the part came to him instead.

As a small-town California mayor in the 1980s, Clint Eastwood moved to overturn a law restricting the sale of what?

Ice cream cones were caught by a local ordinance against fast food. With Eastwood in office the treat came back to the streets, and the shoreline gained public restrooms.

Which musical remake did Clint Eastwood plan to direct with Beyoncé before Bradley Cooper made it in 2018?

A Star Is Born was Eastwood's project from 2011, and he asked Cooper to play the male lead. The singer's pregnancy delayed it and that version was never shot.

In Cry Macho, Clint Eastwood's ex-rodeo star shares a long road trip with a boy and what animal named Macho?

A rooster called Macho, the boy's fighting bird, rides along for the whole journey. Eastwood said the scenes were hard to film, and 11 birds shared the part.

Which two-time Oscar winner played Captain Chesley Sullenberger in Clint Eastwood's 2016 film Sully?

Tom Hanks later said the real pilot read an early script and asked for the crash investigators' real names to be taken out of it.

Clint Eastwood did his own climbing on which Swiss mountain's north face for a 1975 spy thriller he directed?

The Eiger gave The Eiger Sanction its title, and Eastwood refused a stunt double on a face that German speakers nickname the murder wall.

Clint Eastwood led the 1994 Cannes jury that gave the Palme d'Or to which American crime film?

Pulp Fiction took the festival's top prize for Quentin Tarantino, chosen by a jury that Eastwood headed and that included the French star Catherine Deneuve.

In the Line of Fire casts Clint Eastwood as an ageing agent of which body, taunted by an assassin?

The Secret Service is Horrigan's whole life: he was on President Kennedy's detail in Dallas in 1963 and has never forgiven himself.

Which 1960s sitcom had Clint Eastwood guest-star as himself while he was still a regular on Rawhide?

Mister Ed, the comedy about a talking horse, gave Eastwood an episode named after him. Mae West and George Burns also turned up on the show as themselves.

Which future Cagney & Lacey star played Harry Callahan's rookie partner Kate Moore in The Enforcer?

Tyne Daly turned the part down three times before accepting it. She was then allowed to read the script drafts and help shape her character.

Which future comedy superstar has a brief early role as a doomed rock singer in the fifth and last Dirty Harry film?

Jim Carrey plays Johnny Squares, whose death opens the case. Members of Guns N' Roses slip in uncredited as mourners at the character's funeral.

Which Smokey and the Bandit star teamed with Clint Eastwood in the 1984 buddy comedy City Heat?

Burt Reynolds broke his jaw during the shoot and was put on a liquid diet, losing over 30 pounds by the time filming wrapped.

Which star plays the escaped convict hunted by Clint Eastwood's Texas Ranger in A Perfect World?

Kevin Costner, approached to play the fugitive Butch Haynes, was the one who suggested that Eastwood should take the pursuing lawman's part himself.

Which Platoon star played the young detective partnered with Clint Eastwood's veteran cop in The Rookie?

Charlie Sheen's character rides a rare old Harley-Davidson head-on through the front door of a house in one of the film's big stunt scenes.

Which actor played rugby captain Francois Pienaar in Invictus and a reluctant psychic in Hereafter for Clint Eastwood?

Matt Damon was cast as the Springbok skipper despite being significantly smaller than the real Pienaar, and smaller still than the squad of the day.

With Million Dollar Baby, 74-year-old Clint Eastwood became the oldest person to win which Academy Award?

Best Director was his for the second time, the first having come for Unforgiven. He was also nominated for his acting that night and lost.

Clint Eastwood and Arnold Palmer led the investors who bought which California golf resort in 1999?

Pebble Beach went to a group fronted by the two stars and the sports executive Peter Ueberroth, returning the resort to American ownership after nine years.

Clint Eastwood, a licensed pilot, became known for beating the traffic by flying himself to the film studios in what?

A helicopter became his way of commuting to work. He earned FAA private licences for both fixed-wing aircraft and rotorcraft.

Clint Eastwood filmed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil on location in which Southern port city?

Savannah is where a local antiques dealer stood trial over a fatal shooting. Local entertainer The Lady Chablis played herself, and Eastwood let her ad-lib lines.

In the thriller Tightrope, Clint Eastwood plays a divorced police detective raising two daughters in which city?

New Orleans was also the real location, filmed in the fall of 1983. Eastwood's own daughter Alison plays Amanda, one of the detective's two girls.

Heartbreak Ridge ends with Clint Eastwood's Marine sergeant leading his platoon in the 1983 US invasion of which island?

Grenada inspired the script: its writer had read of American paratroopers there using a pay phone and a credit card to call in fire support.

In White Hunter Black Heart, Clint Eastwood plays a brash film-maker on an African shoot, based on which real director?

John Huston is thinly disguised as John Wilson, who keeps going out on safari and seems completely indifferent to the success of his own movie.

Which star of the cult TV series The Prisoner played the warden in Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz?

Patrick McGoohan is credited simply as the Warden, with no name. The same film gave Danny Glover his screen debut, as one of the inmates.

Which director remade The Beguiled in 2017, decades after Clint Eastwood played its wounded Union soldier?

Sofia Coppola wrote and directed her own version of the same novel, casting Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning.

In Coogan's Bluff, Clint Eastwood's deputy sheriff flies to New York to extradite a fugitive back to which home state?

Arizona is home for Coogan, whose story went on to inspire the television series McCloud.

Clint Eastwood narrated a 2012 Super Bowl halftime commercial about the US motor industry for which carmaker?

Chrysler ran the spot at halftime of Super Bowl XLVI. Several leading conservatives attacked it as an endorsement of the government's auto bailout.

Which future Oscar-winning director made his feature debut on a 1974 Clint Eastwood crime caper?

Michael Cimino had written the script, and Eastwood liked it so much that he meant to direct it himself until the two men met.

Which actor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Dave Boyle in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River?

Tim Robbins won on the same night that his co-star Penn took the lead acting prize, the only two wins from the film's six nominations.

In Million Dollar Baby, Frankie Dunn's pet name for Maggie, sewn on her robe, comes from which language?

Gaelic gives Frankie the nickname, shortened from an Irish phrase meaning pulse of my heart, and he does not tell Maggie what it means.

In Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski slowly befriends the family next door, who belong to which immigrant community?

Hmong co-workers at a Minnesota factory had befriended the screenwriter Nick Schenk years earlier, and he asked Hmong people for input on his script.

Which 2006 Clint Eastwood film shows the American side of the battle depicted in Letters from Iwo Jima?

Flags of Our Fathers follows the servicemen who raised the flag on the island and what instant fame did to them. The two films were shot back to back.

In Trouble with the Curve, Clint Eastwood's Gus Lobel fears his next assignment may be his last in what job?

A baseball scout near retirement, Gus is joined on the road by his daughter, and together they spot that a hyped young hitter cannot handle a curveball.

In The 15:17 to Paris, whom did Clint Eastwood cast as the three Americans who stopped a 2015 train attack?

The real men themselves, Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos, play their own parts. So does Mark Moogalian, a passenger shot while trying to stop the gunman.

Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell follows a security guard wrongly accused of planting a bomb at which 1996 event?

The Atlanta Olympics first brought Jewell praise: he found the device in Centennial Park and raised the alarm before suspicion turned on him.

Clint Eastwood's Changeling follows a mother who takes on which city's corrupt police department in 1928?

Los Angeles police had her confined to a psychiatric ward when she insisted that the boy they brought home was not her missing son.

Which veteran star of TV Westerns and detective shows joined Clint Eastwood's ageing astronauts in Space Cowboys?

James Garner had first worked with Eastwood four decades earlier, when the younger man guest-starred on Maverick. Here he plays a navigator turned pastor.

Which star of The Last Samurai played General Kuribayashi in Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima?

Ken Watanabe shot some of his scenes on Iwo Jima itself, where the crew needed special permission to film because thousands of the fallen still lie there.

In Firefox, Clint Eastwood's pilot steals a prototype hypersonic fighter whose weapons are controlled by what?

Human thought fires the missiles through a special helmet, a gadget since compared to modern brain-computer interface devices.

In Absolute Power, Clint Eastwood's Luther Whitney witnesses a White House scandal while plying what trade?

Jewel thief Whitney is robbing a billionaire's mansion when the president arrives with the owner's wife, and bodyguards end up shooting her dead.

Hospital nurses gave the newborn Clint Eastwood which nickname because he weighed over eleven pounds at birth?

Samson was the nurses' name for a baby of 11 pounds 6 ounces. Formally he was Clinton Eastwood Jr.

Between bit parts in the 1950s, Clint Eastwood earned a wage digging the foundations for what?

Swimming pools for private homes kept him in work between his early films. His earlier odd jobs included lifeguard, grocery clerk and forest firefighter.

In which 1955 monster movie does an uncredited Clint Eastwood lead the jet squadron that destroys the title beast?

Tarantula ends with his squadron dropping napalm on the giant spider at the edge of town, a finale staged with miniatures.

At the 1995 Oscars, Clint Eastwood received the honorary award for producers that is named after which Hollywood figure?

Irving Thalberg gives his name to a prize that was for decades a bust of the man himself rather than the familiar statuette. George Lucas was the previous recipient.

Which 1950s leading man took the main role in Breezy, the first film Clint Eastwood directed without starring?

William Holden was so happy to be asked that he worked for no salary, taking a share of the profits instead. The film made none.

Which Hollywood union wrote an Eastwood rule after Clint Eastwood replaced Philip Kaufman on a 1976 Western?

Directors Guild of America members were outraged by the sacking, so the rule now stops an actor or producer firing a director and taking over the job.

Earl Stone, Clint Eastwood's elderly courier in The Mule, is a celebrated grower of which flower?

Daylilies cost Earl his family's goodwill: he skips his daughter's wedding to collect a lifetime award for growing them.

Malpaso, the name of Clint Eastwood's production company, comes from what feature beside his California land?

A creek called Malpaso, a name meaning bad step, borders the 283 acres that Eastwood bought on Christmas Eve 1967.

Clint Eastwood appeared on The Merv Griffin Show in 1975 to champion which practice he had taken up?

Meditation in its Transcendental form was the cause: Eastwood appeared beside its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and kept up the habit every morning for years.

Which crime novelist wrote the books behind both Clint Eastwood's Mystic River and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island?

Dennis Lehane also wrote Gone Baby Gone and Live by Night, the two novels that Ben Affleck directed for the screen.