Vintage photos of a young Clint Eastwood in the 1960s and 1970s

Clint East­wood, in full Clin­ton East­wood, Jr., (born May 31, 1930, San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia, U.S.), Amer­i­can motion-pic­ture actor who emerged as one of the most pop­u­lar Hol­ly­wood stars in the 1960s and went on to become a pro­lif­ic and respect­ed direc­tor-pro­duc­er. His roles and charis­ma made East­wood an endur­ing cul­tur­al icon of mas­culin­i­ty

Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, East­wood moved with his fam­i­ly a num­ber of times before they final­ly set­tled in Pied­mont, Cal­i­for­nia, in 1940.

He was draft­ed dur­ing the Kore­an War and sta­tioned in Cal­i­for­nia. Fol­low­ing his dis­charge from the army in 1953, East­wood moved to Hol­ly­wood.

A screen test with Uni­ver­sal in 1954 net­ted him a 40-week con­tract, but, after one renew­al and a series of bit parts in such movies as Taran­tu­la (1955) and Revenge of the Crea­ture (1955), his option was dropped.

He appeared in sev­er­al TV series before he got his big break in 1959 by being cast as Row­dy Yates in the pop­u­lar TV west­ern Rawhide (1959–65).

East­wood achieved inter­na­tion­al star­dom dur­ing this same peri­od when he played The Man with No Name, a lacon­ic, fear­less gun­fight­er whose sto­icism masks his bru­tal­i­ty.

These were three Ital­ian west­erns (pop­u­lar­ly known as “spaghet­ti west­erns”) direct­ed by Ser­gio Leone: Per un pug­no di dol­lari (1964; A Fist­ful of Dol­lars), Per qualche dol­lari in più (1965; For a Few Dol­lars More), and Il buono, il brut­to, il cat­ti­vo (1966; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).

In 1967 the three films played in the Unit­ed States and were imme­di­ate com­mer­cial suc­cess­es, estab­lish­ing East­wood as a box-office star.

For Eastwood’s first Amer­i­can west­ern,Hang ’Em High (1968)—Ted Post’s expert imi­ta­tion of the Leone for­mu­la, enlivened by a supe­ri­or group of char­ac­ter actors—he formed his own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Mal­pa­so.

He also worked with Don Siegel on the pop­u­lar police sto­ry Coogan’s Bluff (1968); it was Siegel who taught him most of what he need­ed to know about direct­ing, a debt East­wood often acknowl­edged.

He also worked with Siegel on the west­ern Two Mules for Sis­ter Sara (1970), the psy­cho­log­i­cal Civ­il War dra­ma The Beguiled(1971), and the prison-break film Escape from Alca­traz (1979).

Their best-known col­lab­o­ra­tion was Dirty Har­ry (1971), in which East­wood first por­trayed the ruth­less­ly effec­tive police inspec­tor Har­ry Calla­han.

The film proved to be one of Eastwood’s most suc­cess­ful, spawn­ing four sequels and estab­lish­ing the no-non­sense char­ac­ter Dirty Harry—known for such catch­phras­es as “Go ahead, make my day”—as a cin­e­ma icon.