Clint Eastwood Shows No Sign Of Slowing Down Ahead Of His 90th Birthday

May 29, 2020

Academy Award-winning legend Clint Eastwood turns 90 this Sunday, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Eastwood first made a name for himself acting in Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti westerns,” only to become one of Hollywood’s most respected directors.

And now, despite entering into what most would deem a filmmakers twilight years, Eastwood continues to direct and act in critically acclaimed films. To commemorate Eastwood’s birthday and his unstoppable work ethic, we’ll look back on highlights from the star’s six-decade career and Eastwood’s feelings about retirement as he approaches 90.

Whereas some Hollywood greats get their first taste of showbusiness early on in life, Eastwood had to endure the worst years of The Great Depression since he was born on May 31. 1930 in San Francisco, CA. While his family initially traveled and looked for work during this period, they eventually settled in Piedmont, where Eastwood would graduate from high school in 1949, according to Biography.com.

But it wasn’t until after graduating and serving in the military that Eastwood found his way to Los Angeles where he first starred in movies like Revenge of the Creature and Francis in the Navy. Despite landing only minor roles at first, and despite having little acting practice, Eastwood got his big break when he was cast the TV Western Rawhide in 1958, according to Biography.com.

Eastwood’s role as a handsome, no-nonsense cowboy threw the young actor into the spotlight, and from then on he continued to land similar parts in westerns and gritty action films like Dirty Harry in the 1970s.

One of Eastwood’s more modern classics is Million Dollar Baby, which he both directed and starred in as a cantankerous boxing trainer who trains a waitress from the Ozarks to be prize winning athlete. By this time in his career, Eastwood was already 74 years old — for most actors and directors that means retirement. And yet,  Eastwood was still producing excellent work as Million Dollar Baby shows.

Not only did the film win a number of Oscars, as Biography.com reports — Best Picture and Best Director Academy Awards for Eastwood and Oscars for actors Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman — but the film also received widespread critical acclaim in the press. 

The late film critic Roger Ebert called the film “a masterpiece,” writing that “the film is Eastwood's 25th film as a director, and his best [...The film] finds the simplicity and directness of classical storytelling; it is the kind of movie where you sit very quietly in the theater and are drawn deeply into lives that you care very much about.”

After such a long, prolific career in Hollywood, it’s still tempting to ask whether Eastwood might be thinking about retirement, especially leading up to his 90th birthday. But Eastwood shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, Eastwood’s most recent project was the 2018 crime film The Mule, which the then-88-year-old both directed and starred in. And as recently as January of this year, Eastwood put rumours of his retirement to rest yet again.

“I like doing it, it’s nice to be able to have a paying job,” Eastwood told presenter Alison Hammond on the U.K. TV show This Morning in January. “I like being in films, I like making films and I started directing films because I thought one day I’m going to look up on screen and say, ‘That’s enough Eastwood, you’d better do something else.’ So I thought, ‘If I direct, I can let other people be on screen.’”

And for that, we can be thankful. Who knows? Maybe Eastwood has another masterpiece or two up his sleeve.

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