Clint Eastwood turns 91 today, and we’ve yet to see any evidence that he plans to slow down as one of Hollywood’s hardest-working talents. As actor and director, his films have grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide, and his last film, the outstanding “Richard Jewell,” proves he remains at the top of his game.
At the risk of leaving off one of the typical Eastwood favorites, let’s pick an underrated gem that saw his stretch as an actor and filmmaker. Loosely based on the legendary John Huston’s production of “The African Queen,” the film finds Eastwood as a director whose desire to hunt down elephants and other big game creates turmoil behind the scenes. The Hollywood icon reaches into a new bag of tricks as an on-screen performer to dissect and honor the myth of one of his industry’s greatest artists.
To wish the film icon a happy day, we’ll share our 10 favorite films of his. We should note we’re only picking films in which he appears on screen, so that means no “Mystic River” or “Letters from Iwo Jima.” And sorry to all you “Changeling” fans. He returns this fall with “Cry Macho” on HBO Max.
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We’ll cover plenty of the hits you know and love, but also include some lesser celebrated titles that deserve the love. What are your favorite Clint Eastwood flicks? Read ours below:
RELATED: John Wayne’s 10 best movies rankedThe old man still had it at 88, showing all the young punks out there how it’s done. Despite a bit of the requisite Eastwood clunkiness, this thriller about a retired lily farmer-turned-drug mule hits enough of the right notes, at its best depicting a man fueled by his regrets and failures as a parent and husband. It also cleared $100 million at the U.S. box office, proving Clint is still a bonafide movie star. And it had the best trailer of 2018.
Eastwood would reunite with his “Dirty Harry” director Don Siegel for this dramatization of the 1962 prisoner escape from the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island. As his career went on, it became rarer for him to appear in movies he didn’t also direct. But when he did, it made for some A-plus big screen entertainment, and you knew Eastwood would deliver in the prison escape genre. Patrick McGoohan is top-notch as the warden, but you think he’s a match for Clint?Significant because it kicked off Eastwood’s directing career, which would earn him multiple Oscar nominations and wins and status as one of the hardest-working filmmakers in movie history, plus it’s just a killer suspense flick. He plays a disc jockey whose romantic encounter with an obsessed fan turns ugly and potentially deadly. Eastwood proved he had the chops to direct early in his career, and he’d go on to make a movie nearly ever single year for the rest of it.
SOURCE: al