As Clint Eastwood turned 96 on May 31, several American media outlets delved into statements from his inner circle and found an interview with his son Kyle, a jazz musician and composer, conducted by France 3 at the end of last November. In it, he spoke about his father and claimed to have “many fond memories of working with him.” He added: “He is retired now, he is 95 years old. But I was very fortunate to be able to collaborate with him on several films.” Suddenly, the world discovered that, after Jurado Nº2, there would be no more Eastwood films. Clint had hung up his guns.
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If the last sequence of Eastwood’s career is to be the one that closes Jurado Nº2, it must be acknowledged that it caps off his filmography in style. And with a master class in cinema, in which he honors Sergio Leone, the director who made him a star and who left his mark on how to compose shots and create tension. In that last sequence, without revealing the film’s plot, Nicholas Hoult’s final look of surprise and terror as he opens his house door and is met with the determined face of the prosecutor played by Toni Colette is a marvel of a final blow. Eastwood films them in shot and reverse shot with a zoom on each of them and positioned on different sides —not centered— of the screen. Leone would be proud.
Although in 2024 Eastwood (San Francisco, 1930) did not promote the premiere of his thriller, in The Hollywood Reporter they assured that it would not be his last film, but that he was looking for a script that would be his grand farewell. But his path has been crossed by David Zaslav, the current CEO of Warner, the executive who will go down in history as the guy who dismembered and undersold a Hollywood studio.
Zaslav took office just with the premiere of Cry Macho (2021), the last work in which Eastwood acted and directed. It cost 33 million dollars, grossed just over 16 million, received bad reviews: Zaslav put a cross on it.
For half a century and 40 films, Warner has been Eastwood’s home. To the point that in Clint Eastwood. The Biography (Lumen), Patrick McGilligan describes him as such a stingy man that every year he demanded a frozen turkey from Warner to give to his mother —until she passed away at 97— for Thanksgiving… and it was sent to him by private jet.
Disagreements with Warner
Eastwood and Warner have benefited from decades of box office hits and critical successes. David Zaslav, however, felt he owed him nothing, and decided that Jurado Nº2 would premiere directly on his HBO Max platform. He couldn’t stop its filming because there was a contract signed by previous executives that also guaranteed a theatrical release. So the new CEO ordered it to be released in only 50 theaters, to corner it; it was not included in the Oscar race, and neither its success in those cinemas, nor its launch in Europe, nor among world critics made Zaslav change his mind. Perhaps that’s why Eastwood decided not to promote it. And perhaps the filmmaker, at 96, has decided that in this Hollywood, it’s not worth fighting and wasting his energy.
According to those around him, Eastwood is in good health. When he turned 90, during lockdown, a family video on social media showed him older, but with his perennial wry gaze. Even so, he has since directed two films and starred in one. His last public photograph is from March 2024, at a Wildlife Conservation Network event in Carmel-by-the-Sea, the town where he was mayor for two years (1986-1988), with the late ethologist Jane Goodall.
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Perhaps the secret to his longevity lies, as with Harrison Ford, in that fame came late to him, when at 30 he starred in the television series Rawhide, in which he began his ride through the Western genre. Nevertheless, he had to travel to Europe, to Almería, to make a name for himself in cinema with a character who had no name, the man in the poncho from Leone’s trilogy A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
If Leone was his European father, Don Siegel was his American mother. With him, he achieved his first box office hit in the US with the Western Two Mules for Sister Sara (1969), and with Siegel, he created the mythical Dirty Harry saga, whose first installment in 1971 coincided with Eastwood’s directorial debut: Play Misty for Me. Four years later, he founded Malpaso, his own production company.
Outside Hollywood, Eastwood is an icon. McGilligan told EL PAÍS: “Eastwood has fought hard to control his image. It’s false that he doesn’t give interviews: there are hundreds, but very rarely with a skeptical journalist. He is a super-salesman of himself, his image, and his cinema. He has become a personification of the USA, and not always of its best qualities.”
In contrast, within the industry, only his actors speak well of him. For several reasons: because he shoots very quickly, in one or two takes, without shouting or saying “action!”. He absorbed this from his seven seasons on Rawhide surrounded by horses, which would rear up at the slightest shout and couldn’t stand waiting times.
McGilligan pointed out: “He has never written anything and shoots with whatever comes his way, never revises a script. He doesn’t guide actors; the first take is usually enough for him, and everything shot usually ends up on screen. I don’t think those are the makings of a film genius. I’m more interested in him as an actor-auteur than as a director, but in that facet, he grows day by day.” In contrast, Shawn Levy (author of another great biography, that of Paul Newman) published last year Clint: The Man And The Movies, in which he defended the uniqueness of this creator: “No one since the advent of sound cinema has been as successful or endured as long as a global star and internationally renowned director.”
In contrast, Eastwood’s life is full of betrayed artistic collaborators, hurt ex-wives —his curious habit of having his actress partners play prostitutes in his films— and a completely invented biography preceding his stardom.
All that has been left behind due to his longevity and skill as a filmmaker. A. O. Scott, a film critic for decades at The New York Times, defined him thus: “It’s as if John Ford were also John Wayne, or as if Tom Cruise had a supporting role as Steven Spielberg.”
His last girlfriend, Christina Sandera, passed away in 2024 at the age of 61. It is assumed, because no one in his circle has said anything, that Eastwood spent his 96th birthday at his ranch in Carmel with some of his eight children (from six different partners). Of his offspring, Scott and Francesca are fighting to make their mark as performers in Hollywood. Complicated: due to his height —1.92 meters—, talent, very long career, and fame, Clint Eastwood’s figure has become a legend.
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