New York Times
"Editors Choice,"
Los Angeles Times
"Must Read Book for Summer," and a
New Yorker
"Best Book of the Year So Far"
"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
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
Pale Rider
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.