Name: Clint Eastwood
Age: 74
Nationality: American
Claim to fame: A Living movie legend who only gets better with age

AT an age when most people can barely walk without the support of a cane, Clint Eastwood walked home tall and elegant with a fistful of Oscars on Sunday last. Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, the story of a female fighter, won four Oscars, all in major categories of Best Picture, Directing, Lead Actress (Hillary Swank) and Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). Eastwood’s triumph sent the five-time Oscar nominated movie legend Scorsese, 62, home empty-handed, yet again, reinforcing his image as an Oscars outsider, whose movie The Aviator won five Oscars and only one of which was a high profile one — that of Cate Blanchett’s in the supporting actress category.

Eastwood dismissed the media’s attempt to create a rivalry between him and Scorsese and quoted a line from Unforgiven: “Deserves got nothin’ to do with it.” Clearly the superstar is underplaying his importance as a producer, director and actor, for his 1992 western Unforgiven garnered him an Oscar for director and nomination for best actor. “I’m just lucky to be here, lucky to still be working. I’m just a kid, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet,” Eastwood said as at 74 he became the oldest recipient of the directing Oscar.

A native Californian, Eastwood has been associated with Warner Bros. for almost 30 years and delivers his films consistently on time and at a modest budget. He got his major break playing a cattle driver Rowdy Yates in 1959 in the television western series Rawhide. That led to spaghetti stardom in a string of Sergio Leone westerns, beginning with A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and in 1966 came The Good, The Bad and The Ugly which is probably his most famous movie to date.

The year 1971 proved to be one of his best years in films. He starred in the thriller Play Misty for Me (1971) and The Beguiled (1971). But it was the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971) that gave Eastwood one of his signature roles and invented the loose-cannon cop genre that has been imitated countless times. His The Enforcer (1976), is often considered to be the best ‘Dirty Harry’ sequel, and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), considered to perhaps be one of the quintessential westerns. By the late seventies, Eastwood’s movies were loosing their edge despite some great ones like Escape from Alcatraz (1979), but with the fourth sequel to ‘Dirty Harry’, Sudden Impact (1983), that made him a viable star for the eighties. But Eastwood surprised yet again when Unforgiven won him an Oscar. Then came In the Line of Fire (1993), a big hit followed by a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995). But since then his films have been good but not always successful at the box office. Among them were the badly received True Crime (1999), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) and Blood Work (2002), and the well-received Space Cowboys (2000).

With his recent success, Eastwood has once again proved his critics wrong. The old cowboy is surely a Hollywood force to be reckoned with.