As Clint Eastwood turns 95, I recall the numerous times I interviewed this actor-director who first became famous starring in the so-called ‘spaghetti” westerns by Italian director Sergio Leone.
The first movie of this trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari, 1964), was restored by Cineteca di Bologna with funds from the Hollywood Foreign Press and the Film Foundation, the restoration premiering at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
The HFPA journalists awarded Eastwood three Golden Globes as best director, for Bird (1989) with Forest Whitaker as jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, Unforgiven (1993), a western starring Eastwood and Gene Hackman, Million Dollar Baby (2005) with Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. And in 1988 the Cecil B. deMille for “outstanding contribution to the world of entertainment.”
My interviews were published in the Italian film monthly Ciak about In the Line of Fire (1993)
In the fashion weekly Gioia about The Bridges of Madison County (1995) that Eastwood directed and starred in with Meryl Streep.
Again in Gioia about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) that Eastwood directed
In Donna Moderna in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby, and in 2011 for Hereafter starring Matt Damon.
As for Clint Eastwood’s political affiliation, at the 2012 Republican convention he spoke for Presidential candidate Mitt Romney against President Barak Obama. In 2016 he supported Trump for President, despite the fact that “he said a lot of dumb things, because Hillary declared that she’s gonna follow in Obama’s footsteps.”
The last time I interviewed Eastwood in 2019 about Richard Jewell, I made a point of asking him about Trump’s presidency. He joked: “My observations are the good, the bad and the ugly (title of the third movie in the Dollars trilogy). Any politician, whether it was George W Bush or Obama, does things that are good and things that are stupid, so every day feels politically different. I’m not in any pocket, I don’t have any particular philosophy, I just know dumbness when I see it, and you see a lot of it nowadays.” Eastwood did not support Trump in 2020, but preferred democratic party candidate Mike Bloomberg to Joe Biden. By 2024 he had declared himself a libertarian.
The biggest Trump supporter among Hollywood movie stars is Jon Voight, followed by Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, endorsed Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.
The most vocal opposition to Trump’s presidency has come from Robert De Niro, who said, accepting the honorary Palm d’Or on May 13 at the Cannes film festival: “In my country, we are fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted. And this is not just an American problem, it’s a global one. Unlike film, we can’t all just sit back and watch. We have to act now, without violence, but with great passion and determination. It’s time for everyone who cares about liberty to organize, to protest.”