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Clint: The Man and the Movies
A Los Angeles Times ""Must Read Book for Summer""
""This is the biography of Clint Eastwood we've been waiting for."" - Sir Christopher Frayling, author of Sergio Leone
From the acclaimed film critic and New York Times bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, a revelatory portrait of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in movie history and an imposing icon of American culture for six decades.
C-L-I-N-T. That single short, sharp syllable has stood as an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, on-screen and off-screen, for more than sixty years. Whether he's facing down bad guys on a Western street (Old West or new, no matter), staring through the lens of a camera, or accepting one of his movies' thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture), he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old-school stripe and one of the most accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint.
To read the story of Clint Eastwood is to understand nearly a century of American culture. No Hollywood figure has so completely and complexly stood inside the changing climates of post-World War II America. At age ninety-five, he has lived a tumultuous century and embodied much of his time and many of its contradictions.
We picture Clint squinting through cigarillo smoke in A Fistful of Dollars or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; imposing rough justice at the point of a .44 Magnum in Dirty Harry; sowing vengeance in The Outlaw Josey Wales or Pale Rider or Unforgiven; grudgingly training a woman boxer in Million Dollar Baby; and standing up for his neighbors despite his racism in Gran Torino. Or we feel him present, powerfully, behind the camera, creating complex tales of violence, morality, and humanity, such as Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, and American Sniper. But his roles and his films, however well cast and convincing, are two-dimensional in comparison to his whole life.
As Shawn Levy reveals in this masterful biography-the most complete portrait yet of Eastwood-the reality is richer, knottier, and more absorbing. Clint: The Man and the Movies is a saga of cunning, determination, and conquest, a story about a man ascending to the Hollywood pantheon while keeping one foot firmly planted outside its door.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
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Clint: The Man and the Movies
A Los Angeles Times ""Must Read Book for Summer""
""This is the biography of Clint Eastwood we've been waiting for."" - Sir Christopher Frayling, author of Sergio Leone
From the acclaimed film critic and New York Times bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, a revelatory portrait of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in movie history and an imposing icon of American culture for six decades.
C-L-I-N-T. That single short, sharp syllable has stood as an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, on-screen and off-screen, for more than sixty years. Whether he's facing down bad guys on a Western street (Old West or new, no matter), staring through the lens of a camera, or accepting one of his movies' thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture), he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old-school stripe and one of the most accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint.
To read the story of Clint Eastwood is to understand nearly a century of American culture. No Hollywood figure has so completely and complexly stood inside the changing climates of post-World War II America. At age ninety-five, he has lived a tumultuous century and embodied much of his time and many of its contradictions.
We picture Clint squinting through cigarillo smoke in A Fistful of Dollars or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; imposing rough justice at the point of a .44 Magnum in Dirty Harry; sowing vengeance in The Outlaw Josey Wales or Pale Rider or Unforgiven; grudgingly training a woman boxer in Million Dollar Baby; and standing up for his neighbors despite his racism in Gran Torino. Or we feel him present, powerfully, behind the camera, creating complex tales of violence, morality, and humanity, such as Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, and American Sniper. But his roles and his films, however well cast and convincing, are two-dimensional in comparison to his whole life.
As Shawn Levy reveals in this masterful biography-the most complete portrait yet of Eastwood-the reality is richer, knottier, and more absorbing. Clint: The Man and the Movies is a saga of cunning, determination, and conquest, a story about a man ascending to the Hollywood pantheon while keeping one foot firmly planted outside its door.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
""This is the biography of Clint Eastwood we've been waiting for."" - Sir Christopher Frayling, author of Sergio Leone
From the acclaimed film critic and New York Times bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, a revelatory portrait of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in movie history and an imposing icon of American culture for six decades.
C-L-I-N-T. That single short, sharp syllable has stood as an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, on-screen and off-screen, for more than sixty years. Whether he's facing down bad guys on a Western street (Old West or new, no matter), staring through the lens of a camera, or accepting one of his movies' thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture), he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old-school stripe and one of the most accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint.
To read the story of Clint Eastwood is to understand nearly a century of American culture. No Hollywood figure has so completely and complexly stood inside the changing climates of post-World War II America. At age ninety-five, he has lived a tumultuous century and embodied much of his time and many of its contradictions.
We picture Clint squinting through cigarillo smoke in A Fistful of Dollars or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; imposing rough justice at the point of a .44 Magnum in Dirty Harry; sowing vengeance in The Outlaw Josey Wales or Pale Rider or Unforgiven; grudgingly training a woman boxer in Million Dollar Baby; and standing up for his neighbors despite his racism in Gran Torino. Or we feel him present, powerfully, behind the camera, creating complex tales of violence, morality, and humanity, such as Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, and American Sniper. But his roles and his films, however well cast and convincing, are two-dimensional in comparison to his whole life.
As Shawn Levy reveals in this masterful biography-the most complete portrait yet of Eastwood-the reality is richer, knottier, and more absorbing. Clint: The Man and the Movies is a saga of cunning, determination, and conquest, a story about a man ascending to the Hollywood pantheon while keeping one foot firmly planted outside its door.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
"Film critic Levy (King of Comedy) argues in this sharp biography that Clint Eastwood is 'an inkblot in whom we see a variety of opposing ideas at once.' . . . Levy has a knack for memorable phrasing . . . It makes for a solid account of the good, the bad, and the ugly in the life of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars." — Publishers Weekly
"This is the biography of Clint Eastwood we've been waiting for, bringing us closer to the man himself, and what makes him tick, than ever before." — Sir Christopher Frayling, author of Sergio Leone
"...a fascinating, well-researched portrait of a complicated visionary talent." — Library Journal (starred review)
Kirkus Reviews
2025-04-17 A film critic’s biography of a cinema legend.
Fans of Clint Eastwood have long had a surfeit of biographies about him to choose from. Levy, a film critic whose previous books include volumes on Robert De Niro and Paul Newman, adds to this trove with this admiring work. He’s clearly a fan, praising Eastwood for his “dogged work ethic” and for being “an honest-to-Pete American icon,” yet he also notes Eastwood’s “let’s call itcomplex history of wives, partners, and children” and the wide range in quality of the many films he has acted in and directed. Levy covers Eastwood’s peripatetic upbringing in Northern California, where he was a mediocre student and cared only about “girls, hot rods, and the piano”; his early love of jazz and “meat-and-potatoes Hollywood films”; his acting success, from television’sRawhide to the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone to his iconic role as detective Dirty Harry; and his maturation as an accomplished director. The book is repetitive, with Levy describing the plot of every Eastwood picture, the critics’ reactions, and his own assessment. Levy tends to gush: He says of the revisionist WesternUnforgiven, “If the devildoes get the best lines, this is a film filled with devils, made by angels, depicting Hell with heavenly gifts,” noting that the dialogue is “just as fine and bejeweled as you like.” Yet his glasses aren’t so rose colored that he can’t see the clunkers, writing, for example, that the comedyAny Which Way You Can “makes you feel as if you’re stuck with a drunk who insists on telling the same joke over and over and telling it more loudly each time.” And he doesn’t skimp on details from Eastwood’s colorful personal life, including multiple infidelities and “eight children some forty-two years apart by six different women…that he knew of.”
An evenhanded if overly effusive appreciation of Clint Eastwood’s career.
