Original subtitles

It's the 29th of March 1993

and the 65th Academy Awards are under way.

This award is for the best director.

After 39 years in the business,

62-year-old movie legend Clint Eastwood

is nominated for his first ever Oscars.

It's up for nine Academy Awards nine.

Nine!

And the Oscar goes to Clint Eastwood for Unforgiven.

APPLAUSE

The toughest of tough guys, here is the king of understatement

laughing off his colossal achievement.

This is pretty good. This is all right.

LAUGHTER

That's somebody else doing cartwheels with the Oscar in his hand.

Over his seven decade career...

The movies have been around for about a century

and for half a century of them Clint Eastwood has been there as well.

..he's starred in iconic macho films like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly...

You've got to ask yourself a question.

..and Dirty Harry...

Do I feel lucky?

..and directed world-class actors like Tom Hanks

in Sully: Miracle on the Hudson about a remarkable real life rescue.

Sully!

Sully.

Sully, where are you?

But behind the camera, we reveal a hidden story

kept from the press for decades of Clint Eastwood's chaotic love life...

It does appear to have been a semi open marriage.

..fathering eight children by six mothers...

People started digging around

and they turned up the identity of his love child.

..and leaving dozens of women in his wake.

He put all of her things into cardboard boxes

and put them out in the driveway.

Break-up's which became increasingly bitter and public.

Battles with women, hostilities, lawsuits.

And how, astonishingly, at his lowest ebb...

Sondra Locke writes a book called The Good, The Bad and the Very Ugly.

..these personal battles inspired him to raise his game.

Once turmoil came back to his life,

he made one of the greatest films of his career.

I would put him up there with Chaplin, with Welles, Hitchcock, with Ford.

And how he has mellowed into old age,

finally giving his children the love and support they deserve.

This is Clint Eastwood, the true story.

Clint's life began in San Francisco in one of America's darkest hours.

Clint Eastwood was born in 1930, the first full year of the Depression.

His family was just as poor as everybody else.

His father never sustained a career,

but was constantly moving on from place to place, from job to job.

His education was under constant upheaval,

which left its mark on him.

He kind of developed a life as a loner

and really didn't have a lot of friends because they were always moving.

Not many words. He's never used many words from that day to this.

So his teachers sent him to drama lessons, as he describes here.

I remember I had terrible anxieties about doing this play

because I wasn't a very extroverted type of character.

In fact, pretty heavy on the introverted side.

But he had an artistic side,

which would sustain him through his life.

The only thing he did feel good about

was he was skilful as a musician.

His mother loved music and she played Fats Waller Records.

He liked to play jazz piano.

So while other kids were hanging out in restaurants

and basketball courts, he was playing piano.

Both his parents encouraged him.

He had a very close relationship with his mother.

Talked to her every day on the telephone, didn't matter where he was.

He was filming in Africa, in the jungle somewhere, or Grenada,

mum got a telephone call.

His father had all these aphorisms,

like you must always outrun yourself.

Rules for life. And Eastwood would quote them.

But this creative loner was often in trouble at school.

He was a tough kid and when kids at that age fight...

..it's usually a sign of rage, anger.

They felt that they had been robbed of childhood.

All the depression babies had similar issues.

After scribbling obscene graffiti and burning an effigy

on the sports field, Clint was kicked out of school.

So he did odd jobs.

- Lumberjacked. - Filled shelves.

He worked at Bethlehem Steel.

He applied to go to college, studying music,

but his plans were cut short.

- NEWS REPORT: - Through the summer of 1950,

American GIs fought on courageously against overwhelming odds.

The Korean War began.

He was drafted into the army.

But he gets lucky and he ends up as a swimming instructor.

Based in California, where a chance encounter

with an actor he knew would help transform his fortunes.

The guy he bumped into was David Janssen,

who was a contract player with Universal.

He said, "Come to Universal, see if you can get a job."

Clint was accepted into Universal's talent school.

Clint Eastwood photographed very well.

The most important and useful thing he learned was how to ride a horse.

It also teaches you how to make the camera love you.

And that's really important. Camera loves star.

They gave out report cards and at the bottom it says,

"This is a very nice boy."

Under contract with Universal, Clint had a series of small roles.

His first film is The Revenge of the Creature,

where he is wearing a lab coat,

and it's an incredibly corny scene by today's standards.

Are you sure you fed them all this morning?

Sure. I always feed them. I...

How did he get in here?

That's it. End of part.

So that was his first performance.

A subsequent one was in Tarantula.

Which was a huge horror film in the 50s.

And he's the pilot.

He has to drop napalm on this hapless giant tarantula.

So basically all he has to say is...

Dropping napalm, follow an order.

That's it. And you can't even see him.

It's very difficult to see in his early parts

any sense of star quality.

After just a year, he was dropped.

Clint went back to odd jobbing,

taking occasional bit parts in films, as he recounts here.

Well, you despaired every time you saw yourself in one of those things.

LAUGHTER

They they weren't exactly...

..the high grade pictures of the day.

But in 1958, US TV station CBS needed actors

for their new TV Western.

So Clint's agent put him up for this new series, Rawhide.

Clint won the role, his first Wild West adventure,

with a blistering theme tune...

# Rawhide

# Don't try to understand them... #

..playing hunky sidekick, Rowdy Yates.

A kind of can do wrangler with a cattle herd,

the number two star of the show.

He's the romantic interest. He always gets the girl.

It's a large city, though, a large population.

I figure half that population is women.

Rawhide was a hit,

soon becoming one of the most watched TV shows in America.

Because of that, it just made Clint a household name very early on.

Before long, Clint became fascinated by what went on behind the camera.

Clint Eastwood is ambitious and he always was.

So I think he wanted to be a director

from the moment that he was a star.

Quite early on, Clint Eastwood asks the producers,

"Can I please direct an episode?"

Either the studio agreed, then backtracked,

or gave an outright "No".

Accounts differ, but it didn't happen.

That is the signal moment in Clint's life

when he realises he can't be in Hollywood,

he cannot be controlled.

Rawhide would remain a hit in America for six years.

But while Clint's career took off,

his private life would become hopelessly tangled.

It does appear to have been a semi open marriage.

Whether everyone knew everything that was going on, I don't know.

And a call from Italy

would offer him his first leading role in a movie.

He just stood there and mumbled his lines.

And then we thought,

"Oh, my God, if this man is to be the hero of the film,

"what's going to happen?"

It's 1063 and 33-year-old Clint Eastwood

is enjoying TV success in Rawhide.

Off screen, Clint enjoys plenty of success with women too.

Clint was very much the ladies' man.

When he met Maggie Johnson, what Maggie had was a great personality.

Sense of humour, exuberance.

The pair met on a blind date in 1953 and married the same year.

Marriage didn't prevent Clint from wandering

and another girl who he had been involved with

gave birth not that many months later, a baby daughter, Laurie.

Her mother gave Laurie up for adoption

and Clint didn't find out that his daughter existed

until she got in touch with him more than 30 years later.

It seemed that Clint was just a guy who couldn't say no.

One relationship stood out from the rest.

Clint had the affair with Roxanne Tunis,

who was a regular on the set of Rawhide,

acting as a stunt woman.

An open secret on set,

this affair would carry on for more than a decade...

Commitment always seems to have been an issue with him.

..and result in another daughter, Kimber,

whose paternity Clint would not acknowledge

until she was in her 20s.

And still, Maggie stuck by him.

The publicity about Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates

is of happily married to Maggie,

home-loving, healthy,

and this is presented as the all-American family.

The loner in Clint valued his privacy,

but that didn't stop him pursuing more fame.

His Rawhide co-star, Eric Fleming,

was approached to star in an Italian Western

and he said that Clint might be the perfect person to do it.

His agent advised him not to do it, and he said,

"You can't make a Western in Italy, it's ridiculous."

Clint ignored his advice.

The working title was The Magnificent Stranger,

to be shot on location in Spain.

And the Italian director was a then largely unknown Sergio Leone.

He offers him $15,000,

which to Clint, you know, a depression kid, is like $1 million.

Plus he gets to go to Spain.

Everything no-one else wanted to do, he wanted to do.

Sergio Leone had found his lead, the man with no name,

and Marianne Koch was his co-star.

She played a young mother whose son is terrorised by bandits.

He sees this child being kicked across the street.

If he'd been John Wayne or Gary Cooper, he'd have intervened immediately,

but he just looks and sort of nods,

drinks a little bit from the well.

Now nearly 90, Marianne is a radio host.

She gave us an exclusive audio interview about the filming.

This was Sergio Leone's first impression of Clint.

He answered, "I think I suddenly could understand the feelings

"Michaelangelo must have had standing in front of the marble rock

"that was to become his famous sculpture of David."

Clint Eastwood came ready to help this ultra low budget production.

He brought with him a pair of black jeans, brown riding boots.

He brought the cigars.

And considering he doesn't smoke and has never smoked,

that was quite a thing for him.

He also snuck out some props from the Rawhide set,

including the gun and the spurs.

And right from the start, he wanted input on the script.

He went through the script with Sergio

and crossed out most of the lines of dialogue.

He said, "No, no, no, no." He says, "You don't need this."

Clint Eastwood's one of the few actors in the history of the movies

who fought for less lines.

He realised you get more mystery from the central character

if you prune the script.

Marianne herself did not detect his star quality right away.

He just stood there and mumbled his lines.

And then we thought,

"Oh, my God, if this man is to be the hero of the film,

"what's going to happen?"

When filming finished,

the movie was still known as The Magnificent Stranger.

And here, Clint recalls the surprising moment

when he discovered that it was a hit.

I read in the trades and a variety of reports

that this picture, Per Un Pugno Di Dollari,

is doing sensational business.

Well, I didn't think anything of it

because I had made a film called Magnifico Straniero.

LAUGHTER

And then all of a sudden, some weeks later,

they start reporting more on it and finally it said

A Fistful Of Dollars starring Clint Eastwood.

And I said, "Clint Eastwood?!"

LAUGHTER

And then all of a sudden, the calls started coming in.

Marianne's doubts were soon removed.

He had this amazing screen presence, which you can't learn.

It's a gift. It's a talent.

His thoughts and moves projected directly to the audience.

The shy, mumbling young actor Clint

had transformed into a nameless, near wordless hero...

The dialogue didn't really matter

because it was a nod, a smile, a glance.

Not just silent, you know, strong and silent type,

he's downright uncommunicative.

..blurring the boundaries between the fictional man with no name

and Clint Eastwood himself.

He's a macho guy but he's soft spoken

because real macho guys don't have to show you that they're tough guys.

On a budget of just $200,000,

Sergio Leone had created one of the first ever spaghetti westerns,

as these European cowboy movies came to be known.

Because Leone was making these movies in Spain and Italy,

they were outside of Hollywood,

I think it really influenced Clint as a Hollywood outsider as well.

And Leone was fast becoming a mentor to Clint.

I remember that he said, "I'm going to be a director one day."

It was almost a bit ridiculous

because he was a no name actor at that time.

There was a very decisive part in him

that knew what he wanted to do with himself during his lifetime.

He learnt very, very quickly from Leone

how to make the best of a small budget

and your resources that you had.

This was invaluable, absolutely invaluable.

They made a sequel, another smash hit in Europe,

and followed up with a global sensation -

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

Everybody wants to see this film and Clint Eastwood.

They can't sell tickets fast enough.

The final showdown of the film is considered by many

a masterclass in cinema.

It's an extraordinary scene and it's a model example of editing.

Faces staring at each other.

Hands.

Eyes.

And then you think that it's all over and we're starting again.

Followed by a showdown off screen.

Clint and Leone fell out over money and never worked together again.

This was the final outing for the man with no name,

but just the beginning for the macho persona

that Clint Eastwood would inhabit over a lifetime in film.

Clint Eastwood embodies everything, audiences in general,

but I think white male American audiences in particular

really wish they were.

Self-contained, capable, but emotionless.

This man, who made his own rules,

lived by his own rules, survived by his own rules,

was what a lot of people aspire to be.

Clint wanted to live by his own rules too.

This was his time to make his move.

He wanted to be more like Leone,

who produced his own films and delivered them.

Hollywood, at that time especially, was into giant budgets.

It was a limousine type film-making.

Whereas he was more into a pick-up truck kind of attitude.

So along with business partner, Irving Leonard,

in 1967 Clint Eastwood launched his own company, Malpaso Productions,

named after a creek near his home.

It's not the first thing that you think a lot of movie stars would do,

take the first good money and set up a production company

instead of buying a beautiful house or a big car.

Here, Clint explained his intention.

I want to do these smaller films

and I felt that I could control my destiny a little bit

by maybe looking up some pieces of material that other people had overlooked.

Malpaso's debut film was another western - Hang 'Em High.

He cashed in on the cult following of the spaghetti westerns

and it brought it to an American western audience.

In a nod to A Fistful Of Dollars,

the film opens with a hangman's noose.

It starts off where he gets hanged.

That was never done before in Hollywood.

You could never hang somebody because of the morals code.

And a dashing last minute rescue.

With this scene, Clint established himself as a risk taker,

someone who wouldn't be told no.

But it's a great opening.

And you know, it just like... It shocks people.

Like Janet Leigh in Psycho.

I mean, here's the star of the film and they're killing him in the opening shot.

It paid off.

Hang 'Em High bagged United Artists'

biggest opening weekend to that date.

So it created Malpaso as a real player in Hollywood, a powerhouse.

From now on, Clint set a pattern of making, on average,

a film a year throughout his life.

And another repeating pattern

of Clint's alleged affairs with his leading ladies.

First, with Inger Stevens.

There were lots of glamorous girls about.

He likes the attention and he gets a lot of attention.

Again, a year later on Paint Your Wagon.

He was enamoured by Jean Seberg

and they had quite an intense affair.

It didn't seem to bother Clint or infringe on his marital status.

To complicate matters, he and Maggie now had their own son, Kyle,

and there was his daughter Kimber from his ongoing affair with Roxanne Tunis.

It does appear to have been a semi open marriage.

Whether everyone knew everything that was going on, I don't know.

He's even said to have added The Beguiled co-star Jo Ann Harris

to a growing list of secret entanglements.

You played by Clint's rules. You lived his life.

You lived his lifestyle.

With Clint, I think pursuit probably was more exciting

than the constant turnover of new.

Clint's personal life was chaotic when tragedy struck.

His father, Clinton senior,

and his Malpaso business partner, Irving Leonard,

died within two months of each other.

This affected him very deeply.

Mainly, this thing of moving on and not taking anything for granted.

You mustn't repeat an effect because if you do,

you'll probably get stale.

The fallout from these two shocking deaths so close to him was profound.

Forcing him to think about his own mortality.

This is someone who doesn't eat red meat,

who eats lots of green vegetables.

It does come as a surprise, you know,

that Clint Eastwood is a herbivore

who spent his life playing a carnivore.

But now, his health came into sharp focus.

And from that point on Clint, you know,

was always kind of health conscious

and worked out a lot and stayed in shape.

And it was a wake up call in his work too,

kick starting a brand new side of his career as a director.

His first subject? Female rage.

He's a philanderer and he gets exactly what he deserves.

And he would introduce the world to a legendary question.

Do I feel lucky?

Well, do you, punk?

As the 70s rolled into town, tough guy Clint Eastwood was a favourite

with audiences, who knew nothing about his tangled private life.

Life magazine had a famous article in 1971

which had the very revealing headline,

'The World's Favourite Movie Star is - No Kidding - Clint Eastwood.'

But the no kidding is so interesting

because the critics are still not convinced.

What? Clint Eastwood?

He was offered and rejected the highly coveted role of James Bond

when Sean Connery stepped down because he had other ambitions.

And here he recalls the moment he pitched Play Misty For Me

to the studio, himself attached as first time director.

I went in to Lew Wasserman, who was the head of Universal at the time,

and said, "How about me making this picture?

"It's a little picture and I want to direct it."

And he sat there and looked at me and he said, "OK."

I said, "God, that's easy."

I was with my agent, Leonard Hirshan.

And so I said, "Jeez, this is great."

So I get up and I'm all, "Nice to see you, Mr Wasserman."

I head down the hallway and he goes,

"Lenny, come back here. I want to talk to you."

So they go in the other room and then Lenny comes out and says,

"Yeah, he wants to... He's going to let you do it."

I said, "That's terrific."

And he says, "He doesn't want to pay you."

LAUGHTER

And I said, "Well, you know something, he's right."

Clint knew he needed help to direct.

He took advice from Don Siegel,

who he had worked with on Malpaso's second film, Coogan's Bluff.

Clint Eastwood is...

- Coogan. - Are you from Texas?

Arizona.

She gave me a play by play description

of how you slept with her.

Don Siegel makes economical, sharp movies.

Very strong sense of story editing.

Clint was smart enough to know

that he could direct films if allowed,

and Siegel encouraged them.

With Siegel on set taking a cameo role,

production got under way...

When Clint was on screen,

Don Siegel was behind the camera.

And when Clint was off screen,

Siegel was right next to him, mentoring him.

..on a budget of less than $1 million, so money was tight.

It's one thing to make a small budget film with other actors,

but to cast yourself in the lead in your first film as a director

is a very brave thing to do.

He really kind of plays second fiddle

to this extraordinarily dramatic performance by Jessica Walters.

A role in stark contrast to his usual granite jawed macho man.

He's not the hard man in that, he's the victim in that.

He's a philanderer and he gets exactly what he deserves.

Being stalked by the crazy woman

that he cheated on his girlfriend with.

Given his many secret affairs,

perhaps the film carried echoes of his own experience.

I went there because you talk about it on your programme sometimes.

And I wanted to meet you.

So once you become a director,

your characters begin to pick up your personality.

I listen to you all the time.

So Jessica Walters in that film

has an element of Clint to her character.

What is that element?

Seduction.

- And you don't want to complicate your life. - That's exactly right.

Neither do I.

But that's no reason we shouldn't sleep together tonight if we feel like it.

Sweet seduction.

And Clint is nothing if not a seducing guy.

Some have argued that it's all about what an attractive man he'd become

and people are throwing themselves at him all the time.

And maybe there was an autobiographical element in this stalker wandering around.

I don't know about that.

Today, the message of the film is more contentious than ever.

The whole film is basically saying,

look at this poor man and aren't women mad?

I don't think there's any argument you could make that he's somehow some kind of feminist. He's not.

He's obviously not.

As a director, he quickly developed his own uber efficient style.

He knows how to pace a movie.

And there's a scene where his housekeeper comes into his place

and you suspect that there's something wrong.

To wait for that scene to happen and to spin that tension out...

..it gives you a real jolt.

It is a scene where you just go... And the whole audience just jumps.

Clint rejected studio production

in favour of filming near his home at Carmel.

He likes to shoot on location.

If you read a script and it says 'interior closet in Hollywood',

we build a closet, we put it on a sound stage,

and it's got movable walls and we can shoot all the angles.

Clint will shoot a closet.

Which would become a staple for his career,

as he recalled on location in 1974.

I hate sets.

Studio shots always look just like what they are.

They have kind of a sterile look and feel.

And a natural set like this, you can't build a set as good as this.

He's also a fan of naturalistic acting.

He never does more than three takes.

If he can, he'll get it in the first take.

To watch him work on set is unbelievable.

The set itself is so chilled and relaxed.

Nobody's angry, nobody's uptight, nobody's anxious.

It was almost like a sacred space.

His calm, quiet economy, in such contrast

to the complications of his private life, worked.

Production wrapped four days early and came in under budget.

It wasn't marvellous flourishes of artistic genius.

It was straightforward, but it was very effective, dramatic fim making.

The film earned $10 million at the box office

and a Golden Globe nomination for Jessica Walter,

but nothing for rookie director Clint,

now on the hunt for his next project.

It's very difficult to find a vehicle

that fits what you want to do.

So while you're searching for that,

you go out and get a big pay cheque,

keep your name out there and entertain the people.

This is about a movie about a couple of killers.

And the role he took would entertain the people for years to come...

The one with the badge is Harry.

Halt!

..with the return of Clint's hyper macho persona.

Dirty Harry is a contemporary version of the man with no name.

It is a spaghetti western set in San Francisco.

Send Inspector Callahan in.

Harry is dirty because he has to be violent

because he's going to take vengeance if he has to.

But this time, Harry was taking on more than just the bad guys.

Let's have it.

An American version of the man with no name plays to the politics of resentment.

We don't like pen pushers. We don't like bureaucracy.

We don't like being pushed around.

Let's have it.

- Let's have what? - Your report. What have you been doing?

Oh, well, for the past three quarters of an hour,

I've been sitting on my ass in your outer office waiting on you.

An idea that resonated across America.

There's a lot of social unrest in America. We're getting frustrated.

And they just thought if only just one person could just go,

I don't care what the law says, I'm going to clean this place up.

Dirty Harry was the white people's answer to the black power movement.

I mean, we were on the streets.

We were anti-war students, anti Vietnam War, black power.

And so Dirty Harry was the white guy who sorted us out

and everybody knew it.

My boyfriends were black. They loved it.

So this was the thing that was so funny. They know it, but they love it.

So very, very cleverly it balances, you know,

right wing people can get high on this cop blasting everyone to kingdom come

and more left wing people can say, "Well, actually it's a misuse of due process."

Very clever film.

Clint discussed the politics of Dirty Harry in a 1982 interview.

We've bogged down in bureaucratic nonsense

that it seems like we've made life much more complicated

than it should be.

And...

..I guess I'm...

I'm for the system, but I'm against the inequities of the system also.

He doesn't like being pigeonholed.

Let's say they're Republican with a little 'r', a libertarian.

Don't like big government, don't like people interfering in my life.

He dumped the studios, he created his own studio

and he made movies that he wanted to make.

So you could say the bad guy in the film

is every studio in Hollywood that stepped on him.

And so now his vengeance is sweet.

And it was a sweet success.

Dirty Harry was one of the highest grossing films of 1971...

You're thinking, did he fire six shots or only five?

To tell you the truth, I've forgotten myself in all this excitement.

..and includes one of the most quoted lines in cinema history

from the final showdown between Harry and his nemesis, Scorpio.

You've got to ask yourself question.

Do I feel lucky?

Even at the moment of crisis, Dirty Harry is,

like Clint himself, ice cool.

Well, do you, punk?

We can see him as a hero,

we can see him as a baddie, antihero and everything in between.

He's a charismatic blank page.

And that's a skill. That's...

That's what makes him so special.

Clint's career was soaring.

Soon he would direct another western - High Plains Drifter.

What did you say your name was again?

I didn't.

Fear was in their greeting.

Murder was in their minds.

Provoking outrage from the cleanest cut cowboy in the West.

John Wayne famously wrote him a letter,

accusing him of violating the spirit of the West.

Strangely enough, that's precisely what he was doing

because he wanted to create a new generation of westerns.

In the film's famous graveyard scene, Clint makes a jokey,

but pointed reference to both his directorial mentors.

Clint Eastwood, leaning over two gravestones,

and on one of them, it says 'Leone' and on the other one it says 'Siegel'.

And he's basically saying, "I'm now my own person

"and I can absorb the lessons of both of them and become my own director."

He was a control freak, like all directors.

That's why they're directors, they want to control everything.

So when he took his next acting role in The Outlaw Josey Wales...

It was developed and directed for the first few days by Phil Kaufman.

And something went wrong.

..Clint found it hard to relinquish control.

Philip Kaufman is a real perfectionist

and would always take the extra moment, the extra hour to do an extra take,

which really did not dovetail with Clint Eastwood's way of making movies.

A rivalry which extended beyond their directing styles,

Clint's decade long affair with Roxanne Tunis was over,

now he had eyes for the film's lead, Sondra Locke.

But so did Kaufman.

She's blonde, she's outdoorsy, and she's gutsy.

She's gutsy. And, you know, Clint loves that gutsy thing.

Clint, who is married to Maggie and by then has two children,

Kyle and Alison, with Maggie,

nevertheless develops an instant relationship with Sondra Locke.

They become a couple within days of starting filming together.

Clint won her affections,

but carried on his feud with Kaufman,

who he fired, taking over as the film's director.

Which went down very badly with the Directors Guild,

which actually did a ruling...

To protect the tenure of directors.

And not leave them open to the control of a producer

as powerful as Clint.

It's still known as the Eastwood ruling.

Actors cannot fire directors and then take over the direction themselves. That just isn't on.

When I get to liking someone they ain't around long.

I notice when you get to disliking someone

they ain't around for long neither.

The Outlaw Josey Wales was a triumph,

so highly respected that the US Library of Congress

selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

It also marked a huge change in Clint's personal life.

Clint and Sondra very much became a couple in Hollywood

and it was kind of common knowledge, but Clint's marriage carried on

as far as anybody in the public eye knew.

His affair with Sondra stayed under the radar for two years.

This was the point of their relationship

when they were very much in love.

By then, Maggie had endured his prolific womanising for 24 years.

But when People magazine in America

ran a story linking them as a romantic couple,

that was enough for Maggie who eventually filed for divorce,

which to millions of Clint's fans was, of course, a great surprise

because the image had been for all these many years

of him as a very happily married man.

Clint had moved on and in Sondra,

he had found a partner whose ambitions would match his own.

Clint Eastwood might have been attracted to Sondra Locke,

but that's not the same as being a good partner to an intelligent woman.

And she would influence his movie choices

in a surprising new direction.

Before 1980, Clint Eastwood's most successful movie

was not Dirty Harry.

It was people having a rollicking good time with an orangutan.

In 1977, Clint Eastwood's star was on the rise,

both as an actor and a director.

He had fathered four children by three mothers

after numerous secret affairs.

The latest, with Sondra Locke,

resulted in the end of his marriage to Maggie.

Now deeply involved with Locke,

he cast her in his next film - The Gauntlet.

Me, I'm going in.

Why?

At least someone will know I tried.

- Who? Blakelock? - No, me.

The chemistry was certainly there on screen.

All set?

It was a very deep relationship for Clint Eastwood

and a very longstanding one.

I was just thrilled because she was up fifty-fifty

with the big guy on the screen, giving him everything.

As much as he gave her, she gave it back.

They were really close soulmates for a time.

And you sense that there's a kind of tenderness in the relationship between them.

Sondra began to influence Clint's choices,

convincing him to take on a surprising and risky new role.

No joke, it's Eastwood like you've never seen him before

in a new film called...

# Every Which Way but Loose. #

Nobody in the business, his agent or anybody,

thought these films would be a good idea for him.

As Clint himself explained here.

Everybody hated it. They said this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

And I said, "Yeah, it is, but I'm going to do it."

And it's a challenge and I like animals.

Before 1980, Clint Eastwood's most successful movie

was not a Dirty Harry.

It was Every Which Way but Loose.

It was people having a rollicking good time with an orangutan.

Clyde the orangutan was everything Clint admired in an actor.

Because he'd only do it once.

And he'd put his hands up or he'd eat something.

He'd do it once. You had to get it in one take.

That's the sort of actor that Clint Eastwood likes.

Every Which Way but Loose earned nearly $90 million

in the US and Canada alone

and was his highest grossing film to date.

I don't know how many actors in Hollywood would have

accepted a script where you're co-starring with an orangutan.

And Clint really understood his audience.

The secret behind his audience awareness was simple.

He said, "I'll go to a cinema in Monterrey or Carmel-by-the-Sea,

"perhaps in dark glasses, perhaps in disguise,

"and I'll watch for the reaction of audiences

"to what they're seeing on the screen."

It's my privilege and honour to present to you this evening

the greatest trick shooter...

A year later, Clint, again influenced by Sondra Locke,

picked a script about a man playing Cowboy...

Bronco Billy is one of the most personal films ever made.

You really sense the difference between Clint Eastwood, the person,

and Clint Eastwood, the actor.

He takes his western character and he turns him into a shoe salesman

who is a fantasist and wants to become a western hero.

..which Clint has named as one of his favourite films.

Bronco Billy is about a dreamer who made dreams come true.

- Is that you? - Could be.

It was Clint and Sondra's fourth film together.

The publicity around their affair had brought an end to his marriage,

but still he ducked questions about her.

She's a very extraordinary girl, a very intelligent girl, very smart.

I enjoy her very much as an actress and personally.

And, erm...

..she's one of my number one friends.

To their inner circle,

Sondra was a lot more than just Clint's number one friend.

# I've been thinking about

# What I'm doing without

# With a boy like you. #

Let's get out of here.

I'd see them walking arm in arm down by the river at the end of the day.

They were together 24 hours

and the relationship was just beautiful at that point.

As well as guiding his script choices,

Sondra had introduced him to cinematographer David Worth.

I did a feature film called Death Game that starred Sondra Locke

and she kept nudging Clint on my behalf and that that was my entree.

Both were fans of naturalistic lighting.

He had a big fight with his cinematographer

because he wouldn't shoot by campfire light.

I said, "What?"

I had a meeting with Clint and I said what I want to do

is I want to build all the lighting into the sets.

I want to have it all pre-lit so I can shoot 360 degrees

and not change the light.

This practical approach enabled many scenes to be shot in one day.

The job was his.

We welcome you this evening

to the greatest, the most authentic

Wild West show in America.

But the Cameramans' Guild had other ideas.

I hadn't come up through the ranks and they hated that.

I was a self-taught cinematographer and they hated that.

And Clint Eastwood wanted to work with me and they hated that.

Clint Eastwood was prepared to fight for this decision to bring in

David Worth, to battle the unions, because he believed in this person.

Clint would not be dictated to.

So he found a workaround solution and got his way.

He dug his heels in.

He stuck by me.

And as a result, he calls me tomorrow,

and I crawl to Hollywood on my knees

because of what he went through.

A type of loyalty that he has demonstrated to crews

working with his company, Malpaso, throughout his career.

Clint Eastwood sort of assembles

a group of friends and colleagues as he goes along.

So the crew new Clint and Clint knew the crew

and there was a familiarity with the way that he worked

and what was expected.

The company values are Clint's values.

They're cowboy values, they're old-fashioned values.

My word is my bond.

When he's got an idea in his head, he goes for it.

And there is a very distinctive look in Bronco Billy.

Miss Lily, would you like a blindfold?

Oh, no, Broncol Billy.

For you most certainly are the finest marksman in all the West.

Though Clint and Sondra both loved Bronco Billy,

box office takings were disappointing.

But in Europe, the film was enthusiastically received.

The critical acclaim, though, started with Bronco Billy.

I watched it happen.

I saw him and I saw Sondra, the effect on them. They loved it.

What you doing? Come and get it, sucker.

- You boys put those guns down? - Say what?

We're not just going to let you walk out of here.

But when he went on to cast Sondra in Sudden Impact,

the fourth Dirty Harry film,

he came under fire for the role he had her play.

The Sondra Locke character in the films

tend to be either abused or in some way damaged

and he comes to her rescue.

He again got the ire of the feminists,

who thought his girlfriend was being portrayed as an evil person.

Audiences disagreed, and Sudden Impact was the most successful

of all the Dirty Harry films.

Go ahead, make my day.

It took a very long time for critical Hollywood

to finally look at Clint Eastwood and say,

"Oh, hang on, he's a really good director,

"he's a pretty iconic actor, and he can actually do it."

In all, Clint and Sondra made six films together.

But now, cracks were starting to show in their relationship.

And at that point their romantic relationship,

their private life was very strained and tense.

As ever with Clint, the tensions were implicit.

His break-up's took on a familiar pattern.

He cooled, then he strayed.

Clint Eastwood might have been attracted to Sondra Locke,

but that's not the same as being a good partner to an intelligent woman.

Clint's reported affair

with Tightrope actress Jamie Rose followed

and then a series of others kept secret from Sondra.

On top of that, after five years of separation,

Clint and Maggie's divorce was finalised in 1984.

Under California law, community property is split 50-50.

So it was a bit of a kick in the bank balance for Clint.

- Are you finished with your little speech? - Yeah, I'm finished.

And the battle took its toll on him and Sondra.

Sondra Locke is married,

in a platonic relationship with her husband, who's gay.

And the story goes, allegedly,

that Clint Eastwood agrees to divorce Maggie,

but Sondra Locke does not agree to divorce her husband.

Behind her back, Clint had begun yet another affair

with flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves,

which would last ten years.

Clint was seeing other women, having affairs.

And really, there was no hope for the relationship.

Not even a woman you're close to?

And in this interview,

Clint admitted just how guarded he was in relationships.

Let me put it this way.

If you break it down from 100%, you might... You might...

..talk 60%.

You must drive people crazy.

A woman would go absolutely nuts if she knew 100% about a person.

How do you know? It might be terrific.

It might be boring. There'd beJ nothing else to know.

He even managed to leave Barbara Walters flustered.

You would drive me nuts

and I would drive you crazy because I would be saying,

you know, "Didn't you or haven't you?"

We could try it and see if it worked out!

We'll stop with this interview.

This is OK. All right, we'll do another interview.

I think we'll stop and reload!

LAUGHTER

Unaware of his other affairs, Sondra's attention was elsewhere.

She wanted to direct and she had a passion project called Ratboy.

This little plan here is going to take me all the way to the top.

- Is he really a rat? - Ratboy is no phoney.

All you got to do is like get a nose job,

get your ears fixed, get your teeth fixed, shave some of that hair off your hands

and just be yourself.

It wasn't my cup of tea, to say the least.

I'm trying to be diplomatic.

But we were all loyal to Clint.

Clint himself had every intention of supporting her ambitions...

He was really, really behind her.

But when it came to the product,

he didn't like the way she was directing the film.

Sondra was much more precise than Clint.

She wanted to see wardrobe on an actor before we ever filmed it.

She was very concerned with set decoration.

Clint is so instinctive about everything in life.

I'm not sure I ever really saw that side of Sondra.

..but found it hard to surrender control.

So both personally and professionally,

they were at loggerheads.

It was one of the most important relationships in his life.

So I think it was a shock when it all went wrong.

She was her own woman.

Ironically, the things that attracted him to her in the first place

were the things that turned him off later on.

I just think he's the kind of guy that can't stand a woman

that might be as talented and as intelligent

and ambitious as himself.

And for Clint, the master of keeping his private life private,

things are about to get very public indeed.

Clint became front page headline news, especially the tabloids.

And for Clint, that was like taking down his trousers

in Hollywood Boulevard.

By the mid 80s, Clint Eastwood's prolific film career was booming

as director, producer and star.

As ever, he courted PR only to promote his films,

while in his personal life he was still publicity shy.

Clint is intensely private.

That's why he lives in Carmel and not Hollywood or Beverly Hills.

And it was to Carmel that he now turned his attention.

There were some things locally that got on his nerves,

in the same way that police bureaucracy

got on Dirty Harry's nerves.

Women couldn't wear heels on the streets of Carmel.

You couldn't chew gum because it could catch on your shoes

and then you could fall.

It was all about whether somebody would sue the city.

Exactly the type of red tape that Clint hated.

It prompted him to take action, as he recalls here.

Nobody was stepping up.

So finally, one night we were all sitting around

and we had a glass of wine.

And this guy says,

"Come on Clint, you run. We'll bust this town wide open."

LAUGHTER

Clint approached Eileen Padberg to be his campaign manager.

One of the things he said to me was,

"If you don't tell me how to do a movie, I won't tell you how to run a campaign."

And I said, "Deal."

Eileen was surprised by how little celebrity meant to Clint.

I won't say he's cheap, but...

..he wore the same pants for years.

I made him go and buy new corduroys when we first met.

He's very frugal.

His famous tightness and leanness

probably goes back to his time growing up in the Depression.

Armed with new pants, next she persuaded him to meet the voters.

He wasn't wild about that strategy.

Having him go to a voter's home

with 20 or 30 people that he doesn't know

was a stretch for him.

A very big stretch.

But he did it, making two drop-ins a day throughout the campaign.

By mid-April 1986, he was declared mayor.

And he said to me,

"These are the 20 things.

"If I accomplish them I'm not running for re-election."

And he accomplished every one of his goals.

His term in office over,

Clint left politics behind and began to date a series of women,

including Barbra Streisand, Marisa Berenson,

all while apparently still with Sandra Locke.

Clint became front page headline news, especially the tabloids.

And for Clint, that was like taking down his trousers

on Hollywood Boulevard.

Until, after 14 years together, they parted.

While Sondra was away filming, Clint took drastic action.

He put all of her things into cardboard boxes

and put them out in the driveway and changed the locks on the door.

Sondra fought back, seeking 50% of Clint's property, plus damages.

There's a palimony suit.

There's Sondra Locke saying that she wanted to have children,

but she was forced to have an abortion

because Clint Eastwood didn't want children.

Strenuously denied by Clint.

People started digging around much more

about Clint's sort of life as a sexual cowboy.

They turned up the identity of his lovechild by Roxanne Tunis.

And there was another bombshell.

A tabloid call to Sondra

revealed that Clint had fathered two more children,

this time by Jacelyn Reeves.

Of which no-one outside a very inner circle knew anything about.

To his horror, the skeletons were tumbling from the closet.

He settled out of court with Sondra and to reduce the palimony,

brokered a directing deal for her.

With Warner Brothers, where they say,

we'll bank you to the tune of $1.5 million to make small budget films.

But she submitted more than 30 ideas to Warner Brothers

and all were rejected.

At which point she says they never intended to honour

that agreement in the first place and they're back in court.

She insisted, and she was probably right,

that he he told Warner Brothers, "She's out."

What Clint hadn't told her

was that he had funded her deal with the studio.

Three years on, she brought a second case, this time for fraud.

When this all hit the fan, I went, "Why did you do that?!"

Post Me Too, Sondra Locke, posthumously,

has been redefined as a very courageous woman indeed

for speaking out, for directing four films of her own

at a time when it was almost impossible for women directors to work in Hollywood.

Clint settled with her again.

And she ended up getting a seven figure settlement somewhere down the road.

Sondra Locke writes a book called The Good, The Bad and the Very Ugly,

listing all the things that Clint Eastwood had done that were wrong.

Battles with women, abortions, hostilities, lawsuits.

Today in our cancel culture,

this would be enough to get somebody's career in jeopardy.

While Sondra's career suffered, Clint's did not.

Unhappiness may have even fuelled his creativity.

Turmoil was one of the super fuels

that projected film that came out of Clint.

Once turmoil came back to his life,

he made one of the greatest films of his career.

He revisited a script first given to him by another lover,

script editor Megan Rose, seven years before.

The key to Clint Eastwood's success,

it's this extraordinary intuitive sense

of when will a particular script work.

The film's central theme is remorse.

It would become known as Unforgiven.

The thing that is great about this film

is it's the man with no name 30 years later.

You have a middle aged actor and he's saying to himself,

"What happens if the cowboy gets old?

"Do they have more nuance in their life?"

When America and the world first saw Clint Eastwood,

he shot first and answered questions later.

For the next 50 years, he's explored the ramifications of that violence.

There's a famous speech in the film where Clint Eastwood says...

It's a hell of a thing, killing a man.

You take away all he's got.

And all he's ever going to have.

He's standing out against violent solutions.

Shot in just 39 days.

Clint directed and starred in the film

and composed the central melody.

A few people started talking in hushed whispers

about the possibility of an Oscar.

It was kind of dismissed.

The whispers turned into a shout.

And after 39 years in the business, Clint was nominated for Unforgiven.

It's up for all these awards.

Nine Academy Awards.

Nine! That's huge.

The film was already doing stunningly well

when the last Oscar was announced.

For Best Picture, the nominees are...

It was a validation from the Hollywood community

because he'd always been a little bit outside it.

At 62, Hollywood finally took Clint Eastwood seriously.

And the Oscar for the Best Picture of 1992...

..goes to...

..Clint Eastwood.

That's really your peers and your community saying,

"All right, you're the cream of the crop, you're the best out there."

And Clint appeared at least a little lost for words.

So this is just a wonderful one because this includes...

This goes to just about everybody I can think of.

He called a lot of people who helped him

when he was a young actor and he just said thank you.

It's because of you that I got here.

Unforgiven picked up a total of four Oscars,

two Golden Globes and a Bafta.

I'm not sure the be-all and end-all of his movie-making is Oscars.

The be-all and end-all of his movie-making is the audience.

Once Clint finishes a film, he's kind of dusted his hands from it,

he's often running on to the next project.

Much as he is with the women in his life.

Just five months later, Clint's seventh child, Francesca, was born.

This time, with Unforgiven co-star, Frances Fisher.

An actress who he met on Pink Cadillac,

and he cast her in Unforgiven.

They seem to have enjoyed a very warm, very tight relationship.

Until, six years on,

they fell out over money.

Their break-up overlapped with his next love,

Dina Ruiz, who he married in 1996.

She would soon bear his eighth child, Morgan.

With his love life in constant turmoil,

romance was a subject he'd barely explored on screen.

But that was about to change.

We never see him in love stories

and all of a sudden, he does it and it's beautiful.

Over seven decades in the movie industry,

Clint Eastwood has starred in around 60 films,

directed nearly 40 and made $4 billion for the industry.

Coining some of the most memorable lines in movie history.

Go ahead, make my day.

He provokes extreme, even polarised reactions in those who know him.

Clint Eastwood is a person of great humour, grace and generosity.

He is altogether a very likeable man.

I don't think we're ever going to know whether he's Einstein

or Dennis the Menace, or whatever.

One version of Clint is a musician.

In his later years, one of his first loves, music,

is more important to him than ever.

When jazz musician Joe Gransden sent Clint a CD of his music on spec,

he was in for a surprise - a call from Dina.

She said, "We got your CD and we love it".

I heard Clint in the background say, in that famous Clint Eastwood voice,

"Hello, Joe".

Clint invited Joe to Carmel for the weekend to perform at his golf club.

First time I met him, we were going to play golf together.

I was a little bit starstruck and it was probably within five minutes

that I was, like, "This guy is a real sweet person".

This softer side came to the fore in Clint's next role,

with music to match.

The Bridges of Madison County.

He never plays romantic leading men.

We never see him in love stories.

And all of a sudden, he does it, and it's beautiful.

Hi.

You know, I get the distinct feeling that I'm lost.

Are you supposed to be in Iowa?

Yeah.

Well, then, you're not that lost.

Much more tender, much more passionate,

much more giving of himself.

Even so, there is something familiar about Clint's role.

He's a typical Eastwood character - a loner,

a photographer making his own way in the world.

And you can never have him.

You can enjoy him for a while,

but eventually, he's a wild animal and you have to let him go.

And towards the end of that film, he looks like an old,

broken, crying man

in a scene that's incredibly moving.

And so, he has tested himself as an actor.

Clint composed the main theme.

POIGNANT INSTRUMENTAL

It's a fabulous piece of music!

Clint Eastwood is a really accomplished composer.

A really accomplished pianist.

He composes a lot of these melodies just with one hand on the piano.

Starts out with just that simple, beautiful melody.

Clint's compositions have become an intrinsic feature

in his recent films, including Gran Torino in 2008.

He sings in character.

A growling, begrudging utterance.

# Gentle now

# The tender breeze blows

# Whispers through my Gran Torino. #

It's perfect! Beautifully written.

He also directed and starred in the film,

which was to push other boundaries for him.

He's playing a man who's older.

The crabby old guy. A bigot, really.

He has Neanderthal views about immigrants.

And slowly, he comes to love them

and defend the boy who's about to go off the straight and narrow.

- You'd better watch your back. - Let's go! - Thank you!

For 15-year-old Bee Vang,

this film was more than just his first acting gig.

What was it like to kill a man?

You don't want to know.

I was excited at the prospect of a film

that was going to, you know, focus on and feature

the Hmong American community.

Bee's first moment on a film set

was also his first meeting with Clint.

We jumped right into it and filmed the first scene.

When I approached him about guidance about my performance,

he said, "Well, I would like for you to do that by yourself".

There was definitely a hands-off approach.

In this film, Clint was tackling another subject

he'd never addressed before.

He's holding up a mirror to American society and saying,

"Is this really how you want to live?

"Is this really the best way that we can be living?"

It was a hit.

But despite the acclaim, the film's use of racial insults

struck a negative note.

A lot of Asian-Americans

were conflicted about the use of the slurs.

And I didn't realise it because I didn't feel it on set.

Although Clint's character is softened

when he befriends his neighbours.

He's the white devil.

Yeah, I am. I'm the white devil.

He's embodying all of the privileges

of whiteness and maleness and American values.

Having talked with a lot of mostly white audience members,

many of them said, "I have a relative just like that

"and I want to believe that they can also change".

What the hell is it with kids nowadays?

Change and endless evolution have propelled Clint's longevity.

And his musical achievements were rewarded with a Grammy nomination

aged 75, for Best Score Album for Million Dollar Baby.

- I don't train girls! - People who've seen me fight say I'm pretty tough.

Girlie, tough ain't enough.

On which he collaborated with his musician son, Kyle.

His relationship with his children has been complex.

For years, he publicly denied paternity to at least three of them.

But in private, he supported them and kept them close,

as he says here.

I've got a few children that are around,

and they do keep you young and keep you, er...interested in things.

And I want to spend more time with them.

From childhood onwards, he cast many of them in his films.

This is Kyle aged 14.

Throw your arms around this honkytonk man.

Morgan aged seven.

And Kimber at 32.

And finally, Clint appeared in public on the red carpet

with all eight of his children for the first time.

Including his 64-year-old daughter Laurie,

who has given up for adoption.

While many are still actors,

Kimber is now a producer and Alison has followed her dad into directing.

But in case anyone gets the idea they have an easy ride,

this is his son, Scott.

It just doesn't happen like that in our family.

There's no hand-outs. You want something, you got to go get it.

Echoed by his daughter, Alison.

He's not big on advice and all of that sort of stuff,

but when I did my first film a while back,

he let me come and sort of shadow him on set.

For a world-famous man, Clint has always been publicity shy.

There were all sorts of things about Clint Eastwood

that we didn't find out for many, many years.

Amid all the turbulence of his private life,

his work has helped shape and define our culture.

Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby.

At 74, he picked up his second Oscar as Best Director,

adding to an incredible list of wins and nominations,

Golden Globes, Baftas,

and a fistful of lifetime achievement awards, at least 13.

I would put him with Chaplin, with Welles, Hitchcock,

with Ford, the best directors in the history of Hollywood,

because he was able to sustain a vision.

He's bringing out a new film this very year.

I mean, it's astonishing.

It's amazing.

There will never be another career like this.

But perhaps the key to Clint Eastwood is this...

He likes to be in charge of either making a big success

or making a mistake, and having no-one else to blame but himself.

That takes a lot of guts.

He knows who he is, his limitations and attributes.

And I don't think there's anything in life that terrifies him.

If there is, I never saw it.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media