Clint Eastwood Shocks His Fans With Announcement

Clint Eastwood Shocks His Fans With Announcement

Go ahead… make my day! We all know the infamous line from Dirty Harry and love the gritty character of Inspector Harry Callahan. There are plenty of lines and images that have been woven into American culture by the amazing star Clint Eastwood. But how much do you REALLY know about the 86 yr-old actor? You may be surprised to learn where he’s come from…

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Clinton “Clint” Eastwood Jr. was born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California. Clint came from a very humble and impoverished background. His father, Clinton Eastwood Sr., was a steelworker and migrant worker, while his mother, Margaret Ruth (Runner) Eastwood, was a factory worker. Weighing a whopping 11.59 lbs. at birth, nurses in the hospital nicknamed baby Clint “Samson” because a newborn that large was considered quite rare in the 1930s.

Growing up, Clint’s family moved often, as his father worked at different jobs along the West Coast to make ends meet. Finally, the family settled in Piedmont, California, where Eastwood attended Piedmont Junior High School. Perhaps due to his chaotic upbringing, Clint was always getting into trouble and struggled through his studies — which meant the rambunctious youngster was sentenced to summer school almost every year.

Clint was naturally the athletic type, reaching his 6ft 4-inch frame by the time he was in high school. But despite Eastwood’s athletic talent and musical gift, he had no interest in joining the school’s athletic teams or band. Instead, the passionate youngster was focused on individual pursuits like tennis, piano, and golf.

As a teenager, Clint’s young love was for cars, jazz music, and girls; they were the focal points of his dreams at the time. His father managed to scrape together $25 to surprise Clint with his first car. And from that moment on, cars became even more of a priority than girls. By early 1949, Eastwood’s father moved to a plant in Seattle. In order to finish out high school in Oakland, Eastwood moved in with his friend, Harry Pendleton.

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Desperate to support himself, Eastwood worked at a number of jobs, including working as a lifeguard, hay baler, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, golf caddy, and he also played ragtime piano at a small local bar. Eventually, Eastwood rejoined his family in Seattle, where he worked at the Weyerhaeuser Company pulp mill in Springfield, Oregon with his father.
In hopes that a degree would grant him a better life, Eastwood enrolled at Seattle University in 1951. But in an unexpected twist of fate, Eastwood was drafted into the United States Army and was assigned to Fort Ord in California, where he was appointed as a lifeguard and swimming instructor.

To supplement his $67 a month salary, Eastwood held a very humble job working long hours in the hot sun on a loading dock for the Spreckles Sugar Refining Company. While returning from a weekend visit to his parents in Seattle, Eastwood was aboard a Douglas AD-1 bomber when it suddenly ran out of fuel and tragically crashed into the ocean near Point Reyes. Eastwood escaped serious injury from the sinking aircraft and swam over 3 miles to the safety of shore. Eastwood later reflected on his thoughts during the crash, “I thought I might die. But then I thought, other people have made it through these things before. I kept my eyes on the lights on shore and kept swimming.”

Over time, throughout his military service Eastwood came across several “signs” that would ultimately lead him to Hollywood. It was after his near-death experience in the U.S. Army – of all places – that Clint Eastwood would finally realize his destiny of becoming an actor. It was during his service that Eastwood met TV actors stationed in Fort Ord, Martin Milner, David Janssen, and a man by the name of Chuck Hill — who had several contacts in Hollywood.

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In the spring of 1952, Eastwood left Fort Ord and moved back to Seattle with his family to work as a lifeguard and save up some money. Instead of returning to university, Eastwood moved to Los Angeles to finally take a shot at stardom. But Eastwood’s career didn’t take off overnight, in fact, for several years Eastwood earned a very humble living working as an apartment manager by day, and at a gas station by night. Eventually, Eastwood reacquainted with his Army buddy, Chuck Hill, and with the help of an attractive telephone operator, managed to succeed in sneaking Eastwood into a Universal studio and showed him to cameraman Irving Glassberg.

For several years, Eastwood continued to work menial jobs and took more acting classes. But his hard work took years to pay off as dozens of casting directors brutally rejected young Eastwood for his tendency to speak almost in a sibilant whisper. These traits never fully went away, but actually worked in his favor in his later films — especially as the Man with No Name in which he often hissed his lines through clenched teeth. Eastwood struggled to make a living despite landing several parts in a few pilots and small films, but he refused to give up. During this period, Eastwood applied for assorted day jobs, continued taking acting classes, and began working out hard in the gym.

Six years after moving to Los Angeles in pursuit of his acting career, 28-year-old Clint Eastwood was informed about a casting call for “an hour-long Western series” that would prove to forever change his life. One week after his screen-test, Eastwood finally received the call he’d been praying for: he had beat the tough competition (including Bing Russell – the father of actor Kurt Russell) and won the part of “Rowdy Yates” in the CBS show, Rawhide. Rawhide portrayed the challenges faced by cattle drivers. True to his character’s name, Eastwood played “Rowdy Yates” the young cowboy who was often at times reckless and irresponsible. But despite his character’s immaturity, Eastwood’s strong and rugged countenance charmed countless hearts across America.

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Eastwood’s first interview for Rawhide came in August 1959, which they concentrated on his physical fitness, taking photographs of fit-as-a-fiddle Eastwood doing pushups at home as he advised readers to keep in shape, warned against carbohydrates and recommended skipping beverages loaded with sugar and eating plenty of fruit and vegetables and vitamins — standards that he encourages and is passionate about to this day. After reaching unparalleled success with a total of 217 black-and-white episodes of Rawhide, Eastwood landed several major movie roles and continued to climb the ladder of success. In A Fistful of Dollars, Eastwood played the mysterious role of “The Man With No Name”.

Eastwood continued to land major roles and has appeared in over 50 films — starring in 42 of them. Featured in a wide variety of genres from western, action, comedy, and drama films. Hang ‘Em High, Play Misty for Me, Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz, Tightrope, The Bridges of Madison County, Unforgiven and Gran Torino are just a few of Eastwood’s iconic featured movie roles. According to several reports, projects Eastwood has acted in have grossed more than $1.71 billion domestically, with an average of $37 million per film. Eastwood’s latest project American Sniper was released on January 16, 2015. The film had the biggest opening weekend ever for a film released in the month of January.

But this wasn’t the first time Eastwood has gone against the grain. In fact, Eastwood is commonly known as one of Hollywood’s most influential conservatives, and he never misses an opportunity to share his belief and speak truth. When Hannity asked Eastwood why he’s so outspoken politically, Eastwood replied, “I just felt one day, we [referring to actors in Hollywood] never stepped up to do anything. And I thought, you know… we are kinda chicken, we’re sitting here going, ‘we’ll let somebody else do it.’ If it makes the right people angry, then good. Maybe it will wake them up!”

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And Eastwood has done just that — on several occasions — as he fights to guard many of the same freedoms our nation’s Founding Fathers fought so hard to secure. When Eastwood received a ton of negative media for proudly supporting our Second Amendment, the classy iconic actor responded, “I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.” The liberal media was outraged at Eastwood’s empty-chair speech at the Republican National Convention in 2012, when the 85-year-old iconic legend used an empty chair to address an “invisible” President Obama who has failed to lead our country properly.

And just recently, the liberal media also disliked Clint Eastwood’s compliments of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. “I think people are looking for somebody who is outspoken and who isn’t afraid. And he [Trump] seems to have kind of a fearless attitude.

The 86-year-old has taken home five Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, and numerous other honors, but Clint Eastwood takes pride in his children — and it’s a beautiful sight to behold.
Clint Eastwood’s life boasts of what God can do when one man is willing work hard, honor his country, lead his family, and strive to make a difference. And there’s no doubt that Clint Eastwood’s life has inspired Americans of all ages.

It’s surprising to see that Eastwood came from such humble beginnings. He is the epitome of the American Dream proving that anyone can be anything they want to be in America. He built that! He continues to serve America and inspire patriotism. I’m proud to say that Clint Eastwood is an American hero. Despite the Hollywood platform of promoting the Liberal socialist agenda… Eastwood has bucked the Hollywood establishment and went off on his own platform keeping his integrity and conscience intact. He is a man of great honor, good sense and has a good sense of humor!

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