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Fifteen years ago, a 61-year-old Clint Eastwood was feted at the Oscars for what was widely seen as the valedictory achievement of his career.
Critics praised Unforgiven as a stirring meditation on the nature of violence, all the more profound coming from a man who shot to stardom waving a .44-calibre Magnum at bad guys. What a gripping final act to a varied career. Congratulations.
Then, nearly a decade later, the septuagenarian filmmaker with the leathery skin decided it was time to get down to business.
First came 2003's Mystic River, a lean tragedy that earned Oscars for Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. The next year brought Million Dollar Baby, a classical but nervy boxing drama that took everyone by surprise.
The academy rewarded Eastwood's direction and the performances of Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman.
The industry was agog over the late career surge. He can't have any more masterpieces up his sleeve, can he?
Jump ahead to 2006. The former action star churns out Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, two of the most provocative American war movies ever made, each telling a different side of the Iwo Jima story.
Four years. Four masterful movies. Not bad for a 76-year-old with a plan that doesn't include riding off into the sunset.
"I'll keep making movies," Eastwood says from his office in Los Angeles.
"The last four movies have been enjoyable for me. For some reason, I don't know if it's the age or what, but I've been enjoying the process as much now as I ever have in my life."
It's been a long trip for Eastwood, who, strange as it now seems, wasn't always an international movie icon.
He began his career as a contract player for Universal in the '50s (first gig: an uncredited role in Revenge of the Creature).
He was Rowdy Yates on Rawhide, the Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns, and, of course, "Dirty Harry" Callahan, the vigilante San Francisco cop who famously got movie critic doyenne Pauline Kael hurling the f-word (fascism, that is) at the star.
He's been directing since 1971, when Don Siegel, his director for five movies (including Dirty Harry), encouraged him to step behind the camera for the stalker story Play Misty for Me.
Eastwood always wanted to make movies, but he never had a master plan to become an auteur, much less a two-time Oscar winner.
"You kind of go along and all of a sudden you find yourself directing," he says.
"You get one opportunity and you say, 'Gee, if I can make this work, maybe I can do this occasionally. And if I ever decide I don't want to act, I'll have something else I can do.'
"You don't have to suit up and have your hair groomed or anything. You just fall to existence. It's very enjoyable."
For Swank, whom Eastwood directed to an Oscar in Million Dollar Baby, it all boils down to one word: trust. "He hires the person he feels is right for the job, then he just trusts you. And when he believes in you and trusts you, it makes you believe in and trust yourself.
"That belief is one of the most important things a director can give you. It gives you the freedom and that safety net to play."
Naturally, the strategy works best when the actors are up to snuff. Some Eastwood movies from the period immediately before his renaissance, including Blood Work, are marred by performances that cry out for a little more shape and direction.
But the actors who don't need hand-holding take to Eastwood's latitude like Dirty Harry to a big gun.
Swank, Penn, Freeman, Robbins, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden and Ken Watanabe are among the top-flight performers who found a new gear under Eastwood's guidance.
As a product of the Hollywood studio system, Eastwood knows a thing or two about efficiency. His movies have a classical sheen about them, a streamlined attention to story that precludes ostentatious gestures of style.
Both Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima are radical in concept: One takes on the expedient processing of prefab heroes, the other recalls an iconic American military engagement from the enemy perspective - no American war movie has attempted this task on such a grand scale. But if the concepts are bold, the crisp storytelling and sweeping humanism should feel familiar.
Eastwood knows his old masters, from John Ford and David Lean to Akira Kurosawa, and in some ways his movies belong to another era.
It's a sign of his hard-earned clout that he can get them made today.
* Letters from Iwo Jima opens at cinemas today
