Biography: Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, and composer. Eastwood established his own production company, Malpaso, in 1967 with Irving Leonard, which has since produced the vast majority of films Eastwood has been involved in, producing with Warner Bros. since the mid 1970s. Eastwood served as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California from 1986–1988, where he supported small business interests and environmental protection. Twice married and the father of seven children by five women, Eastwood is also known for his strong passion for jazz and golf.

Following his breakthrough role as Rowdy Yates in the CBS television series Rawhide (1959–65), Eastwood starred as the laconic Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) in the 1960s, and as San Francisco Police Department Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) of the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, and several others as tough-talking, no-nonsense police officers, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.[1][2] Eastwood is also notable for his comedic efforts in Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), his two highest-grossing films after adjusting for inflation.

Throughout his career, which has spanned seven decades, Eastwood has received five Academy Awards including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, five Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, two Cannes Film Festival awards, and five People's Choice Awards, among other accolades. He won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture and received nominations for Best Actor for his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004). These films in particular, as well as others including Hang 'Em High (1968), Play Misty for Me (1971) (his directorial debut), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Pale Rider (1985), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and/or critical acclaim. He has directed most of his star vehicles, but has also directed films he did not act in, such as Mystic River (2003) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations and Changeling (2008), which received Golden Globe Award nominations. Eastwood has received considerable critical praise in France in particular, including for several of his films which were panned in the United States. In 1994 he received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal and in 2007 was awarded with the Légion d'honneur medal by the French.