Screen legend shows he is still a class act behind and in front of the camera, writes Helen Barlow
KEY POINTS:
There's such an old fashioned charm to Clint Eastwood's latest movies, Million Dollar Baby, Changeling and Gran Torino, it's as if he's harking back to the era when he was a contract player in the studio system.
"Nowadays Hollywood is hard to relate to," he says. "In the 40s and 50s, right up to 70s, movie actors seemed to have their place. Now it seems like people are famous for being the niece of a hotel magnate or whatever.
"In the early days Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney were special kinds of people. They had special talents and Cagney was a great favourite of mine. He was fearless and could do so many things, even when he was successful. I was always interested in that."
As a lad Eastwood had a hankering for Rita Hayworth and it's perhaps no coincidence that at times in Changeling a toned-down Angelina Jolie resembles his former idol. When the film's producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer had sent the screenplay to Eastwood, he was "infatuated" with the story.
Changeling tells of the harrowing but forgotten experiences of Christine Collins, a single mother whose son, Walter, went missing in Los Angeles in 1928. Months later, the police, keen to clean up the matter promptly, brought her a boy claiming to be Walter, yet the child was not her son.
Despite her protests, she was forced to take him. When she continued her quest further, she was deemed mad and under the archaic laws of the era, the police were able to lock her up in a psychiatric hospital.
A religious minister (John Malkovich), a vigilant critic of the corruption in city, helped her in her battle.
"This woman, through her tenacious attitude, brought down a whole police department and the whole political structure," Eastwood explains.
"The mayor was not re-elected so it was one person's voice. Even if she was considered a minority, as a single mother in that particular period of time, she just kept going. It's a great study of human characteristics, this mother fighting against the whole city."
Now an Oscar contender for her performance, Jolie says she based Collins on her own mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died at the age of 56 from ovarian cancer just a few months before filming began.
"Being able to revisit my mother after her passing was very healing for me," Jolie says. "Christine was very much like my mother, who was very passive in many ways, very sweet. But when it came to her children she was like a lion."
While Eastwood concedes that the original woman is nowhere near as beautiful, and he blushes like a schoolboy when seated alongside Hollywood's latter day goddess, he's not doing too badly himself.
Having had a mother who died at 97, he possesses good genes, and he keeps fit and very busy, producing, directing and even composing music for movies at an age when other film-makers have retired. Acting is the only area where he is now reluctant, and he only does so for special projects.
"Somebody asked what I'd do next, and I said I didn't know how many roles there are for 78-year-old guys," he told the New York Times.
"There's nothing wrong with coming in to play the butler. But unless there's a hurdle to get over, I'd rather just stay behind the camera."
Appearing in Gran Torino for the first time since Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood was prepared to play his real age, wrinkles and all.
The story follows his curmudgeonly Korean War veteran and widower, Walt Kowalski, whose only pleasure is to look lovingly at his mint condition 1972 Gran Torino car.
When, Dirty Harry style, he sticks up for the Asian teenager next door against local hoodlums, the boy's family repays him with the boy's services, only Walt isn't quite sure what to do with him. A friendship develops as Walt comes to appreciate the family and their Hmong culture - before things come to a head.
"If you just do something halfway, then it becomes a Hollywood bailout," says Eastwood. "And if you're gonna play this kind of guy, you can't go soft with it. You gotta go all the way."
During filming Eastwood became intrigued by the Hmong people, who come from various Southeast Asian countries and were originally brought to America as refugees after helping in the Vietnam war.
"I hope they are happy with the way the film tells some of their story through Walt's eyes," he says.
Eastwood fans, apparently including the Hmong, were so keen to see their hero on screen that the understated film, which Eastwood shot in 32 days, opened at the top of the US box office, delivering his best opening ever. There is some justice in this world, after all.
LOWDOWN
Who: Clint Eastwood
Born: May 31, 1930
Key films as actor: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Play Misty for Me (1971), Dirty Harry (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Unforgiven (1992), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Million Dollar Baby (2004).
Key films as director: Play Misty for Me (1971), Bird (1988), Unforgiven (1992), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).
Latest: Gran Torino screening now, Changeling opens Feb 12.
