Playboy Interview: Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is walking around Mission Ranch, the quiet, secluded property he owns only a few miles from his home in Carmel, California. He purchased the ranch on the Monterey Peninsula in 1986 when businessmen planned to turn the 22-acre site into a condominium development. He enjoys talking about the history of the place--it was one of the first California dairies and, during World War Two, an Army and Navy officers' club with a rollicking reputation.

As soon as Eastwood bought the ranch, he hired craftsmen to turn the series of buildings on the site into a quaint hotel overlooking meadows that join the wetlands and Carmel River Beach. "It would have been wrong to sell this," he says slowly, softly and emphatically, his startlingly blue eyes squinting once more, his craggy face and 6'4" frame somehow giving the words weight, even a touch of menace.

Eastwood's on-screen persona--the flinty, confident, silent loner--mirrors his life in a way that's uncommon among movie stars. Even more uncommon has been his longevity and success. His remarkable 40-year career is unrivaled. He entered the nation's consciousness as a no-talent television heartthrob on "Rawhide." Even when he switched to motion pictures, critics had no use for him.

"Eastwood doesn't act in motion pictures, he is framed in them," Vincent Canby wrote in "The New York Times" in 1968. In 1971 Pauline Kael said "Dirty Harry" was a film imbued with "fascist medievalism." Eastwood seemed oblivious to the attacks and widened his focus to include directing.

By the mid-Eighties many of Eastwood's early critics had reversed themselves. In his review of "Pale Rider," Canby wrote, "I'm just now beginning to realize that, though Mr. Eastwood may have been improving over the years, it's also taken all these years for most of us to recognize his very consistent grace and wit as a filmmaker." Norman Mailer wrote, "Eastwood is an artist. You can see the man in his work, just as clearly as you can see Hemingway in 'A Farewell to Arms.'"

In the youth-dominated entertainment industry, Eastwood continues to confound people. He's 66 years old and still a major boxoffice draw and sex symbol. As an actor, he remains the longest-running success story in Hollywood. He is such an archetypal movie star it's almost easy to forget that he's one of our most successful directors as well, having presided over more than 20 films.

He stars in his new movie, "Absolute Power," which opens this month. It is based on a best-selling novel by David Baldacci about a skilled career burglar who inadvertently witnesses a murder in which the president of the U.S. participates. What especially appealed to Eastwood was the troubled relationship in the film between the burglar and his daughter. His next directorial effort is an adaptation of John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

Born on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, the older child of Clinton and Ruth Eastwood, Clinton Eastwood Jr. endured a hardscrabble, Depression-era childhood that profoundly affected him. Because his father had difficulty finding job, the family moved from one northern California town to another with a one-wheel trailer in tow. Young Clint attended eight grammar schools and later described himself as having been a lonely, in troverted child.

In Oakland, California Eastwood attended Oakland Technical High School, where, aside from swimming and basketball, his major interest was jazz. He played piano for free meals at a club in Oakland and after graduating from high school in 1948 worked as a lumberjack and firefighter in Oregon and a steelworker in Seattle. His motto was "never to be dependent on anyone else."

He was drafted into the Army in 1951 and was made a swimming instructor at Fort Ord, California. While there he met several actors, including David Janssen and Martin Milner, who encouraged him to go to Hollywood after his military stint.

Following his discharge in 1953, he enrolled at Los Angeles City College under the GI Bill and started making the rounds as an actor. On the basis of his rugged looks, Universal signed him on as a contract player.

After 18 months of playing bit parts in "Francis the Talking Mule" movies and "Revenge of the Creature" (1955), Eastwood was dropped by Universal. He pumped gas and dug swimming pools in the San Fernando Valley Hills and thought about returning to college. While he was eating with a friend in the basement of the CBS television studios, a producer asked him to test for the role of good guy Rowdy Yates in "Rawhide," the TV series about cattle drives on the Great Plains that ran from 1959 to 1966. It was the beginning of Eastwood's lucrative career as a gunslinger.

In 1964, during a four-month break in the "Rawhide" production schedule, Eastwood accepted an offer of $15,000 to fly to Spain and star in "A Fistful of Dollars," directed by Sergio Leone. As the Man With No Name, Eastwood went out of his way to depart from his clean-cut television cowboy image and play a smoldering, enigmatic, violent loner.

The film was an unexpected hit. Two other successful spaghetti Westerns by Leone followed: "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." By the late Sixties, the three films had established Eastwood's reputation as an international superstar, initially more popular abroad than at home.

Returning to Hollywood, Eastwood formed his own production company, Malpaso, and signed on to make "Hang 'Em High" (1968), as a man who survives his own hanging and wreaks revenge on the nine men responsible. Although similar to the spaghetti Westerns, the movie had even darker undertones because it featured a different type of hero--a cowboy who drew his gun first. "I do everything John Wayne would never do," he said at the time. "I play the hero, but I shoot the guy in the back." The movie--for which Eastwood was paid $40,000 plus 25 percent of the profits--was one of his highest-grossing films for that period.

By 1969 Eastwood was one of the world's top box-office draws. He began a partnership with action director Don Siegel, making such successes as "Coogan's Bluff," "Two Mules for Sister Sara," "The Beguiled" and "Dirty Harry." "Dirty Harry," the 1971 film about Harry Callahan, a San Francisco detective who takes the law into his own hands, not only launched three sequels but, to the amazement of Eastwood and Siegel, also seized the mood of many Americans who were as enraged about urban violence as they were about a legal system that failed to control thugs.

It was Siegel who encouraged Eastwood to direct his first feature film, "Play Misty for Me" (1971), a thriller about a disc jockey (played by Eastwood) who becomes involved with a psychotic fan. There followed a series of films that he directed, many of them darkedged. Eastwood starred in many of these films, including "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976), plus "Bronco Billy" (1980) and "Honkytonk Man" (1982)--which spoofed Eastwood's tough-guy persona--and the mystical Western "Pale Rider" (1985). There were some duds, too, including a James Bond--style mishap, "The Eiger Sanction" (1975).

Eastwood then proceeded to make some even more striking films, including "Bird" (1988), about the destructive life of jazz musician Charlie Parker (played by Forest Whitaker), and "White Hunter, Black Heart" (1990), in which Eastwood gave a broad performance as a macho, self-absorbed director, a character based on John Huston.

"Unforgiven" (1992) is the most acclaimed film of Eastwood's career, winning an Academy Award as best picture and earning him an Oscar as best director. It was followed by "In the Line of Fire" (directed by Wolfgang Petersen) and two more films, "A Perfect World," in which he co-starred with Kevin Costner (despite good reviews, the film was a box-office disappointment) and "The Bridges of Madison Country," in which he played a "National Geographic" photographer who has a brief affair with an Iowa housewife played by Meryl Streep.

Over that long career Eastwood had kept his personal life more discreet than most movie stars--until the end of his relationship with Sondra Locke, an actress and director who appeared in six Eastwood films and was his lover and companion for 14 years. In the spring of 1989 Eastwood changed the locks on their Bel-Air home and hired movers to pack and move her clothes while she was on location directing a film.

She retaliated with a palimony suit. In a later, highly public lawsuit she would allege that Eastwood had duped her into dropping the palimony case by dangling a bogus three-year development deal to direct at Warner Bros. Locke said she was undergoing chemotherapy at the time and in a vulnerable state. After the deal, she pitched more than 30 projects; Warner Bros, rejected all of them. Locke said she later learned that her $1.5 million deal was secretly financed by Eastwood. The case was resolved last September when Eastwood gave Locke an undisclosed monetary settlement.

Eastwood has been marries twice and seems to have seven children--the number is unconfirmed and Eastwood is reticent about the issue. In 1953 he married Maggie Johnson, a swimsuit model. After a long estrangement, they divorced in the mid-Eighties and she reportedly received a $25 million settlement. The couple have two grown children, Kyle, a musician, and Alison, an actress.

The new biography by Richard Schickel mentions the fact, first published in 1989, that Eastwood has another grown daughter, Kimber, born in 1964 to a woman who had an affair with Eastwood and remained somewhat friendly with him. In recent years Kimber has granted press interviews, saying at times that her father is financially and emotionally supportive. He also has a son and daughter born to Jacelyn Reeves, a former flight attendant living in the Carmel area, who, according to Schickel, wanted children but did not want to share Eastwood's public life. He supports the family.

And Eastwood has a three-year-old daughter, Francesco, with Frances Fisher, the stage and film actress who had the top female role in "Unforgiven."

Last March, after a quiet courtship, Eastwood married then 30-year-old David Ruiz, a television reporter in Salinas. The couple had their first child, a daughter, Morgan, on December 12. Eastwood has joked that he December Ruiz "for her money."

We sent writer Bernard Weinraub, whose most recent article in Playboy was about the life and death of producer Don Simpson, to get the press-shy actor to open up. Weinraub reports:

"Eastwood has numerous homes--in Bel-Air, in Shasta Country [the old Bing Crosby estate] and in Sun Valley, Idaho. But the one he favors is in Carmel, a quaint oceanside town that he first visited in his Army days. Around Carmel--where he was mayor from 1986 to 1988--Eastwood is treated with a mixture of deference and friendliness. Everyone calls him Clint.

"Friendly but a little moody, Eastwood is an unpredictable interview--terse one moment, talkative the next. He doesn't like to be pressed too hard. There's no nervous chatter. He says exactly what he wants to say, and that's it.

"He's thoroughly unpretentious. What you see on-screen is pretty much what you see offscreen. There's no entourage. He drives himself to the airport. He doesn't mix with the Hollywood crowd. Many of his friends are golf buddies in Carmel--an accountant, a salesman, a schoolteacher. His loyalties seem to run deep. He has used the same talent agent and publicity honchos for decades. He keeps the same film crew.

"As reserved as he is, the one time he became animated was when his wife appeared. Dina Ruiz is outgoing and laughs easily. 'If he doesn't tell you anything, just call me. I'll tell you everything,' she said to me. Eastwood rolled his eyes in mock horror."

[Q] Playboy: For years now, you've been considered the archetypal macho guy. How does that feel?

[A] Eastwood: It's a burden only when other people impose their thoughts about who I am. Macho was a fashionable word in the Eighties. Everybody was kind of into it, what's macho and what isn't macho. I really don't know what macho is. I never have understood it. Does it mean somebody who swaggers around exuding testosterone? And kicks the gate open and runs sprints up and down the street? Or does handsprings or whatever? Or is macho a quiet thing based on your security? I remember shaking hands with Rocky Marciano. He was gentle, he didn't squeeze your hand. And he had a high voice. But he knew he could knock people around, it was a given. That's macho. Muhammad Ali is the same. If you talked with him in his younger days, he spoke gently. He wasn't kicking over chairs. I think some of the most macho people are the gentlest.

[Q] Playboy: Meryl Streep said of you, "I've never encountered anyone who gave less of a damn what any critic, movie wag or trend hound says about him or his work."

[A] Eastwood: Well, I don't know. You never purposely make a movie for an empty house. You make it hoping people will see it and enjoy it. But I'm philosophical. At some point you commit yourself to a project and you have to do the project the way you see it. There's a line from the director character in White Hunter, Black Heart, patterned after John Huston. He tells a writer, "When you make a film, you must forget that anyone's ever going to see it. Just make the film. And stay true to it." I believe that. You have to tell the story the way you see it and hope people want to come along on the journey. You cannot tell a story and say, "OK, I've got to be careful now because audiences may not like this." Then you become delusional and don't know what you're making anymore. I've always believed that the great thing about a movie theater is the big exit sign that everyone can see. And don't let the door hit you on the rear as you walk out.

[Q] Playboy: So you've never cared about what's trendy or fashionable?

[A] Eastwood: Oh, absolutely not. I hate trends, I hate fads. And the movie business loves fads, so for 40 years I've been stuck in a business that loves fads. I wasn't a fad. When I came in, it was predicted that I'd go nowhere. And the pictures that were turning points in my career, such as Fistful of Dollars, were against the fad. Westerns were out of favor. You just have to go with your instincts. I didn't make Dirty Harry because I thought the country needed a detective movie. I just felt it was a good movie.

I know that Hollywood is loaded with people who love fads, the studios especially. Independence Day was the big picture last year, so I'm sure there are dozens more like it on the drawing board. Would I like to make a movie like that? Not particularly.

[Q] Playboy: You once said, "There's a rebel Lying deep in my soul. Anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go in the opposite direction."

[A] Eastwood: That just about sums it up.

[Q] Playboy: Do you consider yourself an artist?

[A] Eastwood: I've never thought about that. If making movies is an art, I guess I'd be considered an artist. But I don't know if it's an art or as craft or whatever anybody wants to call it. A lot of people get pompous and claim a film director has to be an auteur. Or are you really just a craftsman who is in a leadership capacity and who guides people along? Besides, isn't there an art to everything? There's an art to a plumber fixing a sink well. Or a mechanic working on cars. There's an art to it if you know how to do it and you do it well. A good bartender could be an artist. A bad one is not.

[Q] Playboy: When you're on a movie set away from home, how inevitable is it that people--the actors, the director, the crew--will have romances?

[A] Eastwood: I don't know if it's common. It does happen, though. When you're a young person making movies, it's easy to be exposed to it, to be tempted when you're away from home.

[Q] Playboy: Have you been tempted?

[A] Eastwood: [Smiles] Well, I guess maybe in my youth.

[Q] Playboy: Not in your later years?

[A] Eastwood: When you get into directing films it becomes a little different because directing is so time-consuming. Once an actor learns his part he has a lot of time on his hands. If you're a young actor and you're playing a romantic scene with somebody, I suppose that temptation would be there. But film directors don't have much time on their hands.

[Q] Playboy: Still, don't women throw themselves at you more than they would at an average guy?

[A] Eastwood: I can't say. I suppose people fantasize about movie stars. I fantasized about Rita Hayworth and Linda Darnell. But sure, it's something an actor might face regardless of his age. It's the same thing that an older executive feels with a 21-year-old girl chasing him around. He wonders, Does she like me for my personality and looks or is it for something else?

[Q] Playboy: And when women throw themselves at you--

[A] Eastwood: Today I'm very happy and married to the best woman I have ever known, and that wouldn't cross my mind.

[Q] Playboy: But you admit it happens.

[A] Eastwood: Oh, yeah. There are a lot of people who throw themselves at you. At a certain time in your life that's flattering, and you're impressed by it. At other times you're realistic about it. You realize it doesn't add up to a whole lot.

[Q] Playboy: Are you at least flattered?

[A] Eastwood: I think I'm a realist about it. You're a movie actor, people know you. I've been around a long time. Although I appeal to a wide age group, a younger actor would get the younger audience going for him.

[Q] Playboy: It must cheer you up that this still goes on when you're 66 years old.

[A] Eastwood: [Laughs] I don't think about that. Age is biological, but it's also psychological. A lot of people are old before their time because they think old.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel when you see actors who are afraid to play their age?

[A] Eastwood: I cringe. Some people can't face it. Like Cary Grant. He just decided one day he didn't want to act anymore because he could no longer play romantic characters. Other people say, "What the hell, I'll just play character parts and play them till I'm 90." And there are other people who insist they can play 45-year-olds for the rest of their life as long as they have a lot of hair dye and stuff like that. But that's not very interesting to me. You've got to be what you are.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have much privacy?

[A] Eastwood: When you study to be an actor you try to watch people and observe humanity. Then, when you become more well known, you're the one studies and you can't study people anymore. You go places and people interrupt you and say, "Oh God, you're sitting by yourself. I though maybe I'd give you some company." Which is the last thing you probably want. You're probably sitting by yourself for a reason. It could be that your dog not run over, or you could be in a terrible mood. Everybody reserves to have his moment of privacy. As a well known person you don't get it, but you deserve it.

[Q] Playboy: You have never been part of the Hollywood world--the premieres, parties, restaurants and all of that. Why not?

[A] Eastwood: I've gone to a few. I've always maintained a residence here in Monterey Country; it's sort of my home base, except when I'm working. I got to restaurants in L.A. once in a while. I don't hold with the fashion that you have to hate L.A. to be happy in the world. I mean, to me, you're happy wherever you are and where things are going well.

[Q] Playboy: What do you like about Carmel?

[A] Eastwood: It's a smaller town, a smaller community. It's not quite like a small town in mid-America where there may be nothing to do except to hand around the local store and drive the strip with your hair in curlers. There are things to do here--there are rock festivals, jazz festivals, car races, anything a person wants to do. It has exquisite views. You're close to San Francisco, and you're reasonably close to L.A. It's a nice place to be.

[Q] Playboy: Your career choices in recent years, as an actor and as a director, don't show much of a pattern. You don't seem to say, I'm doing a comedy this year, I'll do an action film next year.

[A] Eastwood: I don't look for anything in particular. What I look for is an interesting story. I'm not sirring there saying, "Well, I'm looking for something to direct." With Absolute Power, I liked the gimmick of the book--the guy is outside the law, so he can't go to the police when he sees a situation involving a high-up government official. It's a little different. I haven't done a suspense-oriented film for a while.

[Q] Playboy: Your next film is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which you'll direct but not appear in. What appealed to you about that book?

[A] Eastwood: I liked the atmosphere of Savannah. The central character, the journalist, goes down there and takes us on a journey. It's a town with a tremendous history and an interesting social structure.

[Q] Playboy: When you tackle something that seems so outside your experience, do you get nervous?

[A] Eastwood: No. Half the fun of making a movie is doing something that's outside your experience. In fact, if you do something outside your experience, you have a much better chance of bringing a fresh eye to it.

[Q] Playboy: If you look at the work of Clint Eastwood, director and actor, do you see many common threads?

[A] Eastwood: I sometimes find myself attracted to characters who are searching for some sort of redemption, some sort of reconciliation with their soul. But I don't know if it's a common thread. A lot of the characters I play are outsiders, a lot of them are rebelling against conditions in society. A lot of the people I've played have been lonely for one reason or another, either by their own choice or through fate. Like in Bridges of Madison County. He's a loner. I seek out that sort of character. I guess I relate to those kinds of people. In terms of a story, basically, when I look at a character I want him to have something that's bothering him. As in In the Line of Fire--a Secret Service guy is guarding the president, who's been threatened. That's a plot. But it isn't half as interesting as a Secret Service guy who's living with guilt because he was guarding another president when that president was killed years ago.

[Q] Playboy: And what about your career disappointments?

[A] Eastwood: I've had several films that were disappointing. Some were risky to begin with, and I knew the odds were against them. I suppose Honkytonk Man and Bird would be included in that group. There was Paint Your Wagon. I did that in the Seventies. That was just a big waste of money and effort. A blatant waste.

[Q] Playboy: Don Siegel, who direcrted you in Dirty Harry, once said, "You can't push Clint. It's very dangerous. For a guy who's as cool as he is, there are times when he has a violent temper."

[A] Eastwood: I don't know if I have a violent temper. I don't think I do at this stage in my life. But, yeah, certain things bug me, and I get as bugged as the next person.

[Q] Playboy: Give an example.

[A] Eastwood: It happens once a picture. If you can go through a movie and lose your temper only once or twice, you're lucky. On the set of Absolute Power we were trying to get this particular scene done, and everything was falling apart. People were talking on the radios and everyone looked like they were walking around chasing their tails. I just let go. I didn't say, "Hey, you're all fired." I just let everybody know I was unhappy at that moment.

[Q] Playboy: Meryl Streep has echoed what lots of other people have said about you. She said your set is the quietest she's ever worked on and that you work so unnervingly fast that the rehearsal may end up in the film.

[A] Eastwood: Yeah, I know. I don't think that's a particularly bad reputation to have in a business that loves excess so much. I do like a quiet set. I think it's better for the actors. I don't depend on nervous energy or insecurity to drive the wagon ahead. I believe there's a comfort zone in which actors work best, and if you keep that atmosphere, actors will sometimes do something brilliant during rehearsal. That doesn't mean I'll use it in a picture, but I might. I remember when Meryl saw Bridges of Madison County. She said, "You know what I love? You used all my mistakes, too." And I said, "Yeah, but they were genuine mistakes." They were human mistakes, not an actor's mistakes. They are more like real life.

[Q] Playboy: You were married more than 25 years to your first wife. What happened?

[A] Eastwood: We just separated. We were separated for ten years of that marriage.

[Q] Playboy: What is your relationship with her like now?

[A] Eastwood: We're in business together--we have a partnership in a restaurant and some properties. We get along terrifically. She lives in this area and we talk a lot, and naturally we have certain things in common, because we have two children. We see each other at events and get along much better than when we were married.

[Q] Playboy: You received a lot of media attention about the situation with Sondra Locke.

[A] Eastwood: I know. I guess maybe I'm the only one who finds it weird that she's still obsessed with our relationship and putting out the same old rhetoric almost ten years later. But I always think it's best to take the high road and not get involved with that. There are two sides to this whole thing. And I've endured a lot of sensationalist reporting, people making up things out of thin air. She's been married for 29 years, but nobody puts that in their stories. She never wanted children, so she had a tubal ligation, which women opt for mostly after they've had children. I've been accused of forcing that on her--if anybody believes that.

[Q] Playboy: She accused you of forcing her to have a tubal ligation?

[A] Eastwood: Yeah. It's constantly thrown out there--some tabloid called me about it the other day, or called my agent about it. But it's the same old stuff, and you get on with your life. It's kind of unfortunate. She plays the victim very well. Unfortunately, she had cancer and so she plays that card. But every time these things come up, it makes me knock on wood that I'm here and not there.

[Q] Playboy: Do the tabloids drive you crazy?

[A] Eastwood: With the tabloids it's a kind of lazy journalism. They don't really want to know your story; they prefer to write about Clint Eastwood and the accusations against him. They regurgitate this stuff. As far as the legal action with Sondra goes, it was my fault. I have to take full responsibility because I thought I was doing her a favor by helping her get a production arrangement with Warner Bros. I prevailed upon Warner Bros, to do it and it didn't work out. So she sued Warner and then she sued me and finally at some point I said, Wait a second, I would have been better off if I hadn't done anything and had let her go ahead and file the palimony suit against me. I tried to help. I thought she would get directing assignments, but it didn't work out that way. So her attorney accused me of going into collusion with Warner Bros, and said that they purposely didn't want her to do anything. I should have known that it would never work out, that it would come back to haunt me. Even if it had worked out, it would have come back to haunt me, because you don't know if somebody is ever going to be satisfied.

[Q] Playboy: She said the breakup, after all those years, was sudden.

[A] Eastwood: It wasn't sudden. I mean, it was sudden, but it had been coming along for some time. She has a husband. He's gay and was having problems with one of his friends, so she was getting drawn into it all the time. She was constantly on the phone and couldn't go anywhere, and pretty soon we just grew apart. She was busy trying to solve his problems and we didn't spend that much time together. I decided I was tired of it. That's the way things happen sometimes. It was an unhealthy existence, and I didn't want any part of it. My son was living with me in Los Angeles at the time, and I just wanted to be with my family. I didn't want to be with someone who had some strange thing going on. And I don't mind what anybody does, but when it's affecting me and my family relationships, then I have to do something.

[Q] Playboy: Her husband is gay?

[A] Eastwood: She admitted that during the trial. They were buddies from school days or something. I mean, it's just a different scene. I can't explain in without going into a. ... I mean, your eyes might not stay in their sockets. They're liable to come too far out of your head. They were pals when they were kids, and they both believe in fairy tales and call each other Hobbit and stuff like that. And so they hang out together, and I guess she's supportive of him and he's supportive of her, and somehow they feed each other. She didn't like my son living with me and it just got messy. It just wasn't the kind of existence I wanted.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel burned by the whole thing?

[A] Eastwood: Yeah, I guess so. But you go on about your business. I'm going on with my life, and if other people can't get on with theirs, that's their problem.

[Q] Playboy: How is your relationship with Frances Fisher? Is it friendly?

[A] Eastwood: Good, yeah. It's friendly.

[Q] Playboy: You have a child with her?

[A] Eastwood: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Was the breakup acrimonious?

[A] Eastwood: We were just having a rough time getting along. I love the child, she loves the child. We have that together. Frances is a fine actress. Very successful. Hardworking. I give her a lot of credit. We had a nice relationship, but it was never meant to go to marriage.

[Q] Playboy: Is it complicated having a serious relationship with an actress, especially if you're a director?

[A] Eastwood: Yes, it is. Very complicated. It's better just to hire people and work with people. But if you're with an actress, especially if you're a director with a certain amount of control, there's sometimes a resentment if you hire somebody else. The attitude is, "Am I not good enough for you to hire me?" Of course it has nothing to do with ability; it has to do with how you see the project.

[Q] Playboy: So if you want to cast The Bridges of Madison County--

[A] Eastwood: Exactly. She would have loves to play the part Meryl played.

[Q] Playboy: Was that an issue? (continued on page 162)Clint Eastwood(continued from page 64)

[A] Eastwood: Enough said.

[Q] Playboy: So is this your final marriage? Is Dina the last Mrs. Eastwood?

[A] Eastwood: This is it. win, lose or draw.

[Q] Playboy: Does the age disparity concern you? She's 31, you're 66.

[A] Eastwood: Nothing to worry about there. I mean, it's never been an issue. I don't think about that. You're as old as you feel, and I feel great. Certainly if you're a man there are advantages to being older. You're a little more giving and patient. You're not as self-oriented, always out for the brass ring like when you were younger. None of us knows how long fate gives you on the planet. People get so concerned about age, about the future, they don't live out their moment today. Moment to moment. I'm immensely happy with Dina, and I feel I've finally found a person I want to be with. We have a great time.

[Q] Playboy: How did you meet?

[A] Eastwood: She's an anchorwoman with an NBC affiliate here, and she interviewed me after Unforgiven. She seemed very charming and nice and I liked her, but it was a friendly thing and then we just went our separate ways. But I liked her very much. I remembered her. And I think she felt the same way. I went to a function by my self some time later. I walked in and they said, "Oh, why don't you sit with Dina, she's also by herself." So we sat down and talked and laughed and danced and what have you, but we didn't arrange a date or anything. Then I went to another charity function, and again she was there. And we got talking again and by this time I was between relationships, and so we went out and had a beer and talked. The next few times we just went out and grabbed a beer and sat and talked. We started to date occasionally after Bridges of Madison County. The one thing we always maintained was a really good level of respect for each other. I've been supportive of her with her job and she's supportive of me with my job. They don't cross or collide. She's a really smart woman.

[Q] Playboy: Do you prefer to be with somebody who's not in the movie business?

[A] Eastwood: You said it. There's no agenda, no work thing. If I introduce her to friends who are producers, there's no work in that for her. They're just friends. And she's here, she loves it here. I love it here. It's very nice.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of women have appealed to you?

[A] Eastwood: I've liked women who were smart and OK-looking, and I've liked women who were good-looking and not too smart. I'm no different from any other guy. It's a cliché that an extremely attractive woman has to be a bimbo with a brain the size of a peanut. That's wrong. Just because a woman is attractive doesn't mean she isn't smart. But I think what a man wants from a woman is pretty much what a woman wants from a man. Respect. That's the ultimate to me. Sure there's infatuation. But a person has to respect herself and has to respect you and what you do, and you have to respect each other. If one or the other doesn't, it becomes problematic.

[Q] Playboy: What role does your family play in your life?

[A] Eastwood: I like them very much. It seems their existence keeps me young. If you have a two-year-old around the house, it keeps you thinking, keeps you young, watching the learning process. My older kids are all off in different directions, but I try to see them as much as I can. I'm seeing my daughter Alison in L.A. tonight. I see the older ones on holidays and on certain occasions when they want something. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about having a three-year-old and a brand-new daughter?

[A] Eastwood: It's so much easier when you're in your 60s. When you're young, life is selfish, everything is selfish. You're talking about your next job, what's going to happen to your career and, when you get a break, especially in the acting profession, how long it's going to last. Every actor thinks his last job was his last job. It takes years before that syndrome subsides. And I don't have that. It's a great thing. I'm not compelled to work like I did when I was younger. Check it out with older men who have kids. They have more time, and more patience. Of course, you also get to a certain age and you go, "OK, this is going to be nice, but here's the reality of it: They're going to be here forever, you'll be asked for things forever, you'll feel sometimes like it's a one-way street."

[Q] Playboy: Having been mayor of Carmel, have you ever been asked to run for governor or senator?

[A] Eastwood: There was a lot of talk like that, but only because Reagan was president at the time and everybody thought, Well, here's another movie actor who is going to try to do something political. But I didn't want to do that. George Murphy and Reagan and all those guys quit acting when they went into politics.

[Q] Playboy: Why didn't politics appeal to you as a way of life?

[A] Eastwood: It's a lot of work and a lot of frustration, and being a politician is about the last thing I'd want to do. I like independence. I revere independence. And I'm not that good a politician. I get along with people, but to sit there and fudge the truth and promise to do something and know you're not going to do it--that's not what I want to do.

[Q] Playboy: Are there issues you feel strongly about?

[A] Eastwood: I don't think there should be two four-year terms for the president. I think someone should be president for one six-year term with no chance to run again. I feel that only two years of a four-year term are put to good use. The rest is running for the next four years, and that's very expensive and counterproductive. I think term limitations would be great. I know a lot of congressmen and senators hate to hear that, but I think it's good to have new blood. I quit after one term as mayor because I wanted new blood to come in. when people get in term after term, they forget the meaning of public servant. Then bad things start happening.

[Q] Playboy: How would you characterize yourself politically?

[A] Eastwood: I sertarian Everyone leaves everyone else alone. Neither party seems to have the ability to embrace that sort of thing.

[Q] Playboy: Are you pro-choice?

[A] Eastwood: I've always been pro-choice. It's an individual decision. I don't believe organizations should start taking over the decision-making process for the individual. Absolute power corrupts.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about another issue. During the Sixties and Seventies, did you see a lot of drugs and craziness in Hollywood?

[A] Eastwood: I had friends who died using drugs, and I've had a lot of friends who had problems along the way. I had a particularly close friend who became reclusive and finally gave up. It was very sad.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever take drugs?

[A] Eastwood: No, never did. I'm not much of a drinker, either. A glass of wine, a beer, a shot of Patron tequila--that's a treat every now and then. I have a buddy who says, "Anything better than a good glass of beer and a piece of ass would kill me." [Laughs]. Maybe there's something to that. I mean, how good do you want life to be? I've always liked life, anyway. People who get into drugs are trying to escape themselves. I've never wanted to escape.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk a bit about your childhood. What was your mother like?

[A] Eastwood: I say this without prejudice: She's an extremely giving lady and she was always very flexible, very supportive, when I was growing up. I was always taught to be respectful of her. My father was big on basic courtesies toward women. The one time I ever got snotty with my mother when he was around, he left me a little battered. [Grins] Yeah, he taught me little things--like I should leave the toilet seat down out of respect for my mother. I was lucky. I was taught values. I was raised in a good family.

[Q] Playboy: You grew up during the Depression. What impact did that have on you?

[A] Eastwood: Tremendous impact, tremendous. So many people were unemployed and struggling, and there was no welfare state. People were dying to work, really wanted to work in any kind of job. Nowadays it's different. A friend of mine stopped a guy who was carrying a need work sign on the road and asked him if he wanted a job. The guy asked how much he'd be paid, and my friend said $6.80 an hour. The guy said, "Can't do it, not enough." That wouldn't have happened then.

[Q] Playboy: Did growing up worrying about money affect you?

[A] Eastwood: It made me sort of fiscally conservative. When you have some dough, you should put it away for a rainy day, and you should try to manage your money. The first movie actor I met was Cornel Wilde. We were at a party, and he asked, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, I'm trying to be an actor, studying to be an actor." I was a kid at the time, in my early 20s. And he said, "Save your money." I said, "I don't have any." But he said, "If you ever get any money, make sure you save it so you don't have to do all the crap people are going to ask you to do someday." I've always remembered that.

[Q] Playboy: You struggled for some time as a bit player at Universal, then got Rawhide. Then you went off to Italy to make the spaghetti Westerns. Did it upset you that people years later--maybe even now--still saw you essentially as a Western star?

[A] Eastwood: It didn't upset me. I knew that I was different, I knew I wasn't a cowboy. But if you portray a cowboy and people think you're a cowboy, that's fine. That's what every actor strives for. If you're playing a fireman and they believe you're a guy who's with the fire department, that's fantastic. People are always trying to typecast you. I guess I came in in kind of an oddball way too, going off to Italy like that to do those low-budget Westerns. When the movies came out, they were actually more revered--at least for that time--than American-made Westerns. But some people wondered, What the hell kind of crap is this? What are they doing to our Western movie? As for being a Western actor, years ago I was asked if I was afraid of being typed when I started Rawhide. I had been unemployed for a long time, I had been struggling as an actor, and I said, "Are you kidding? Just get me the job and I'll worry about getting untyped later." But in reality everyone is typed for something.

[Q] Playboy: You're one of only a handful of people who have had extraordinary longevity as stars--for you, 40 years. What's the secret? Good looks?

[A] Eastwood: Not at this age.

[Q] Playboy: Is it the roles you choose?

[A] Eastwood: When I first came on, maybe 30 years ago, I was a sort of an upstart out of television who was doing these Italian-made Westerns. But after the third one, after The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it was time to come back here. And instead of doing a picture more grand in scale, I did a smaller picture, Hand 'Em High, which was about capital punishment. Then I did medium-sized pictures throughout the Sixties. And several expensive films, such as Where Eagles Dare and Paint Your Wagon--with varying success. I started to branch out in the Seventies with The Beguiled, trying offbeat things. The next two, Play Misty and Dirty Harry, were commercial, and then in the Eighties I did Bronco Billy and Honhytonk Man. I was always reaching out for something different. And even Every Which Way but Loose, which is a comedy with an orangutan and the sort of stuff people don't necessarily take seriously in cinema, was a reach. I was moving away from gunplay and that kind of stuff, and I think those reaches throughout my career have gotten me some attention. They've kept me interested. I think it's easy for a person to fall into complacency and say, "I could have stayed in Italy and done 25 Westerns instead of three." I could have come back here and done a whole mess of cop dramas, but that would have been boring for the public and boring for me. If you're not going to look interested, there's no reason to expect the audience to be interested.

[Q] Playboy: In terms of casting women, you rarely seemed to go after conventional beauties: Geraldine Page in The Beguiled, Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me, Kay Lens in Breezy, Bernadette Peters in Pink Cadillac.

[A] Eastwood: If you get too conventional with glamour girls, all of a sudden it becomes a Hollywood picture rather than a picture that relates to anything realistic. There are beautiful girls who are not models or actresses, but they seem like Barbies. It can kill a movie if you glam things up.

[Q] Playboy: You often make the commute from Carmel to Los Angeles by piloting your own helicopter. When did you start flying?

[A] Eastwood: I was introduced to helicopters in 1968 or 1969. I was on the set of Paint Your Wagon, in Baker, Oregon, and the pilot used to pick me up in the front yard of the home I was renting and we'd fly a half hour to work. He gave me a chance to fly a little. I liked it. Finally about eight years ago I got a license and bought a helicopter at the Paris Air Show.

[Q] Playboy: What makes flying a helicopter special?

[A] Eastwood: There's great freedom to it. It's sort of the last seat-of-your-pants flying. You can actually go places and land places and not be obliged to have an airport. It's nice to be able to land at a friend's house. And when you're flying you're out on your own, there are no phones, you just kind of relax and think. You're just a number in the sky. It's nice up there.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about music. We heard you playing piano the other day and you play very well.

[A] Eastwood: I used to listen to a lot of rhythm and blues on the radio. When I was growing up in northern California there was a big classic-jazz revival in the Bay Area. I would lie about my age and go to Hambone Kelly's. I'd stand in the back and listen to Lu Watters and Turk Murphy play New Orleans jazz. I used to think I was really a black guy in a white body.

[Q] Playboy: Who were your favorites?

[A] Eastwood: I grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. Big favorites. I still listen. I was raised on Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, all that crowd, and Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner.

[Q] Playboy:Bird was an unexpected film for you.

[A] Eastwood: It was unexpected because it was out of the genre. People think, If he's not going to be in the picture, he should make a film about something he understands or has done before. But I like music, I love music. Doing a story about a musician was very logical for me. And it came as a shock only to someone who didn't know I was interested. But those are all swings at bat. You don't always get the home run. Sometimes a game can be put together with base hits. That's what happened with Bird.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you want to make a movie about Charlie Parker?

[A] Eastwood: I had seen him when I was a kid. I liked him very much. I thought he was one of the most confident players I'd ever seen. It was a whole new era of music--this is when New York bop was coming out. I saw him in Oakland, California. He was on tour with Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Hank Jones. It was an interesting era for me. At that time I was 16 years old in the Forties and it just kind of knocked me out. And I didn't know about Charlie Parker. I just knew his name. But he came out and started playing. In those days, musicians didn't wear fancy outfits like today. Everybody just wore a suit and tie, everybody. They just played. And you listened. The excitement came out of what they played. Parker got up there and started playing, and I said, "I don't know what this is, but I want to find out about it." He opened up a whole new world. I'd never seen an artist that confident about what he was doing, so completely in control. He was brilliant and innovative. Yet there was great emotion and sensitivity. I bought a lot of his records over the years. When that script became available, I decided it was a story I would like to tell.

[Q] Playboy: You've written the main themes for Bridges of Madison County and other films. Lennie Niehaus, the composer who scores a lot of you pictures, said you actually think like a jazz musician while directing films, preferring improvisation over constant rehearsal and placing an emphasis on ensemble work over individuality.

[A] Eastwood: Jazz has always represented a sort of freedom of expression for me. But a musician has an advantage over an actor. He holds the saxophone or trumpet and channels into it. We just have to stand there and deliver whatever there is. Being behind the camera is certainly a safer feeling than acting in front of it.

[Q] Playboy: You still tend to play heroes. Could you play a salesman or a dry cleaner or an average guy?

[A] Eastwood: I doubt it. Let's say I wanted to play a remake of Dr. Kildare or someone like that. Old Dr. Kildare, middleaged doctor, whatever. Eventually, when the last reel comes up, no matter how nice the story is, many people in the audience will expect old Dr. Kildare to shoot somebody. Fortunately, a lot of reviewers have called attention to the fact that I fought my way out of a certain genre, and that's been nice. But still there's a group out there saying: "Eastwood as Dr. Kildare? Let's pass on this one and catch the next one." I entered some projects, such as White Hunter, Black Heart, knowing they would probably not be hard-core commercial films. But I had to make them anyway.

[Q] Playboy: Any parts you wish you'd had?

[A] Eastwood: There are some you turn down because you don't feel instinctively right about the material, or maybe you think you aren't the right guy. One interested me a while back. The Killing Fields. You remember the one, where the guy is a New York journalist who goes into Cambodia. I liked the script a lot and thought it would make a good movie. But I thought, If you cast Clint Eastwood in a film called The Killing Fields, you know damn well that that's going to send a message to a lot of people who want to see Clint Eastwood gun down 30 people every reel. And they're going to be terribly disappointed. You're going to get that crowd and that crowd only.

[Q] Playboy: In the Dirty Harry films you mete out justice to murderers. You take the law in your own hands, mirroring the discontent in a country that was portrayed as being run by bleeding hearts. Pauline Kael said it was fascist.

[A] Eastwood: People can call things what they want. In those days everybody wanted to put a label on things. The picture was ahead of its time. This is a guy who's having bureaucratic obstacles thrown up within the police force, judicial system, city politics and all that. Everybody understood that frustration. If there was irresponsibility in Dirty Harry, there's irresponsibility in Robin Hood, Tom Mix and the Old Testament. There's violence in them all.

[Q] Playboy: Is that why you think that picture struck a nerve?

[A] Eastwood: It showed compassion for the victim, which wasn't stylish at the time.

[Q] Playboy: What did you think when you first read "Go ahead, make my day"?

[A] Eastwood: I thought, Yeah, this is definitely the key line of the movie.

[Q] Playboy: Other stars, including Mel Gibson and Jack Nicholson, have come to you for advice before directing a film. What did you tell them?

[A] Eastwood: Get more sleep than your actors.

[Q] Playboy: You were once asked if you ever woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror and said, "Can this possibly be me?" Your reply was, "It's like waking up with a hooker--how the hell did I get here?"

[A] Eastwood: Actually, it's like waking up with an ugly hooker.

I hate fads. And the movie business loves fads. I wasn't a fad. When I came in, it was predicted I'd go nowhere.

It's the same old stuff, and you get on with your life. It's kind of unfortunate. She plays the victim very well.