American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, # 100. Photo: Annie Leibovitz / Contact, 1981.

American entertainer Liberace (1919-1987) is most remembered for his extravagant costumes and trademark candelabra placed on the lids of his Baldwin piano decorated with small mirrors. Liberace was loved by his audiences for his virtuoso talent on the piano and unique showmanship. While wildly successful and good-natured outwardly, Liberace was a complicated man whose political, social and religious conservatism existed side-by-side with a lifetime of secretive homosexuality.

Liberace was born as Wladziu Valentino Liberace in 1919, into a musical family, in West Allis, Wisconsin. His mother, Frances Liberace (née Zuchowski), whose parents were Polish, played the piano. His father, Salvatore Liberace, an immigrant from Formia, Italy, played the French horn for the Milwaukee Symphony. His siblings, George Liberace, Angie Liberace and Rudy Liberace, also had musical abilities. Liberace's own extraordinary natural talent became evident when he learned to play the piano, by ear, at the age of four. Although Salvatore tried to discourage his son's interest in the piano, praises from Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a famous Polish pianist, helped the young musician follow his musical career. As a teenager, Liberace earned wages playing popular tunes at movie theatres and speakeasies. Despite being proud of his son's accomplishments, Salvatore strictly opposed Liberace's preference for popular music over the classics. Pianist Florence Bettray Kelly took control of Liberace's classical training when he was 14. He debuted as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony, under the direction of Dr. Frederick Stock. At age 17, Liberace joined the Works Progress Administration Symphony Orchestra. He received a scholarship to attend the Wisconsin College of Music. In 1939, after a classical recital, Liberace's audience requested the popular tune, 'Three Little Fishes'. Liberace seized the opportunity and performed the tune with a semi-classical style which the audience loved. Soon, this unique style of playing the piano got Liberace bookings in large nightclubs. By 1940, Liberace was travelling with his custom-made piano, on top of which he would place his candelabrum. He then took Paderewski's advice and dropped Wladziu and Valentino to become simply Liberace. He made his film debut in South Sea Sinner (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1950), with Macdonald Carey and Shelley Winters. Liberace played a honky tonk pianist On a South Sea island.

The Liberace Show (1952), a syndicated television program, turned Liberace into a musical symbol. It began as a summertime replacement for The Dinah Shore Show (1951), but after two years, the show was one of the most popular on TV. 217 American stations carried the show and it could be seen in 20 foreign countries. Sold-out live appearances at Madison Square Garden enhanced the pianist's popularity even more. When he opened Las Vegas' Riviera Casino-Hotel in 1954, he was the city's highest-paid entertainer. That concert was the first one where he wore extravagant costumes--in this case, a gold lame jacket. Liberace added flamboyant costumes and expensive ornaments to his already unique performances. His second film was Sincerely Yours (Gordon Douglas, 1955) with Joanne Dru and Dorothy Malone. The episodes of the television series Batman (1966) on which he guest-starred as Chandel/Harry, The Devil's Fingers (1966) and The Dead Ringers (1966), were the highest-rated in the series' history. In 1972, Liberace wrote his best-selling autobiography, "Liberace", in 1972. His first book, "Liberace Cooks", went into seven printings. In 1977, Liberace founded the non-profit Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts". The year 1978 brought the opening of "The Liberace Museum" in Las Vegas, Nevada, which serves as key funding for the Liberace Foundation. The profits from the museum provide scholarship money for financially needy college musicians. He continued performing until the fall of 1986, despite suffering from heart disease and emphysema during most of the 1980s. A closeted homosexual his entire life, Liberace was secretly diagnosed with AIDS sometime in August 1985, which he also kept secret from the public until the day he died. His last concert was at Radio City Music Hall in 1986. He died in his Palm Springs home in 1987, at age 67. Liberace was bestowed with many awards during his lifetime including Instrumentalist of the Year, Best Dressed Entertainer, Entertainer of the Year, two Emmy Awards, six gold albums, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In The Guinness Book of World Records, he has been listed as the world's highest-paid musician and pianist. Liberace was an extremely talented and versatile man. He not only played the piano but sang, danced and joked during his performances. In fact, one of Liberace's biggest accomplishments was his ability to turn a recital into a show full of music, glitter and personality. In the cinema, he was portrayed by Victor Garber in Liberace: Behind the Music (David Greene, 1988), Andrew Robinson in Liberace (William Hale, Tommy Groszman, 1988) and Michael Douglas in Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013). Many of his pianos, cars, jewellery and costumes are now on display in the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas.

Sources: Gilbert Lee (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

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American postcard by Fotofolio, no. Z325. Photo: Annie Leibovitz. Caption: Jodie Foster, Malibu, California, 1988. Proceeds from the sale of this card donated to AIDS organizations.

American actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster (1962) has received two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and the Cecil B DeMille Award. A child prodigy, Foster began her professional career at the age of 3. Foster's breakthrough came at 14 with Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976). She played a child prostitute, for which she received an Oscar nomination. As an adult she won new acclaim with The Accused (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Nell (1994). She later starred in four thrillers, Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006) and The Brave One (2007), which were commercially successful and well-received by critics. She has focused on directing in the 2010s.

Jodie Foster was born Alicia Christian Foster in 1962 in Los Angeles. She is the daughter of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (Almond), a producer, and Lucius Fisher Foster III, an Air Force lieutenant colonel and real estate broker. She is the younger sister of Buddy Foster, Cindy Foster Jones and Connie Foster, who all also acted. Brandy had filed for divorce in 1959 after having three children with Lucius, but the exes had a brief re-encounter in 1962 which resulted in Alicia's birth. Her older siblings nicknamed her Jodie, a name she has used in her profession. She started her career in a Coppertone Suntan Lotion commercial when she was 3 years old and made commercials for four years. She made her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry R.F.D. (1968), on which her brother, Buddy Foster, was a regular. She stayed very busy as a child actress, working on television programs such as The Doris Day Show (1968), Adam-12 (1968), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969), The Partridge Family (1970), Bonanza (1972), and Gunsmoke (1969-1972). In films, her roles included playing Raquel Welch's daughter in Kansas City Bomber (Jerold Freedman, 1972) and a tomboy in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974) starring Ellen Burstyn. She starred as Addie Pray on the short-lived television series Paper Moon (1974), which was originally a film by Peter Bogdanovich starring Tatum O'Neal. Jodie first drew attention from critics with her appearance in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) alongside Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, where she played a prostitute at the tender age of 12. Her sister, Connie Foster, was her stand-in during the more explicit scenes. She received her first Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role. She was 12 turning 13 during production of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (Nicolas Gessner, 1976), for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Actress. Foster went on to have a very successful career in her early teens with leading roles in Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976) as the mini-vamp Tallulah, and the Disney films Freaky Friday (Gary Nelson, 1976) with Barbara Harris and Candleshoe (Norman Tokar, 1977) opposite David Niven and Helen Hayes. Fluent in French by age 14, she spoke her own lines in the French film Moi, fleur bleue (Eric Le Hung, 1977) with Jean Yanne and Sydne Rome. She also co-starred in the Italian comedy Casotto (Sergio Citti, 1977) with Catherine Deneuve. The last film she made during this era was the coming-of-age drama Foxes (Adrian Lyne, 1980), before enrolling at Yale University. During her freshman year at Yale, she was attached to a worldwide scandal when a crazed and obsessed fan named John Hinckley stalked her and shot President Ronald Reagan to impress her.

In 1985, Jodie Foster graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a degree in literature. She resumed her acting career and appeared in the comedy drama The Hotel New Hampshire (Tony Richardson, 1984) opposite Rob Lowe and Nastassia Kinski, and based on the novel by John Irving. In France, she appeared in the historical drama Le sang des autres/The Blood of Others (Claude Chabrol, 1984) based on the novel by Simone de Beauvoir. Foster sought a breakthrough role that would return her to stardom. After appearing in a few obscure films with limited release, she landed an audition for The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988). She was cast in the part of Sarah Tobias, a waitress who is gang-raped in a bar during a night of partying and teams up with a lawyer played by Kelly McGillis to prosecute the attackers. This performance earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress, but despite the Oscar win, Jodie still hadn't re-established herself as a bankable star. Her next film, Catchfire (Dennis Hopper, 1990), went straight to video, and she had to campaign hard to get her next good role. In 1991, she starred as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee assisting in a hunt for a serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) with Anthony Hopkins. The film was a blockbuster hit, winning Jodie her second Academy Award for Best Actress and establishing her as an international film star. With the wealth and fame to do anything she wanted, Jodie started directing. She made her directorial debut with Little Man Tate (Jodie Foster, 1991), which was followed by Home for the Holidays (Jodie Foster, 1995) with Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey Jr. These films were critically acclaimed but did not do well at the box office, and she proved to be a far more successful actress than she was a director. On the set of Sommersby (Jon Amiel, 1993) with Richard Gere, she met Cydney Bernard and was in a serious relationship with her until they broke up in 2008. 1994 was a huge triumph for her acting career. She first played a sexy con artist in the successful Western comedy Maverick (Richard Donner, 1994) with Mel Gibson and James Garner. Then, she played title role in Nell (Michael Apted, 1994), co-starring Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson. For her compelling performance as a wild, backwoods hermit who speaks an invented language and must return to civilization, Jodie was nominated for another Academy Award and won a Screen Actors Guild Award as Best Actress. Although she was working far less frequently as an adult than she did as a child, the films she turned out were commercially successful and critically acclaimed. Her next big screen role was in the science fiction drama Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997) opposite Matthew McConaughey. She played a scientist who receives signals from space aliens. The film was a huge hit and brought her a Golden Globe nomination. She had to pull out of Double Jeopardy (Bruce Beresford, 1999) because she became pregnant, and was replaced by Ashley Judd. In 1999, her son Charles Foster, with partner Cydney Bernard, was born. She returned to work four months later in order to begin filming Anna and the King (Andy Tennant, 1999), a non-musical remake of The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956). The film was only modestly received in the U.S. but was very successful overseas.

Jodie Foster returned to work four months after giving birth to her second son Kit Foster, but she shut down her production company Egg Pictures in late 2001 to spend more time with her children. She headlined the thriller Panic Room (David Fincher, 2002), which co-starred Kristen Stewart. The film was a smash box-office hit and gave Jodie a $30 million opening weekend, the biggest of her career yet. She then appeared in two low-profile projects: the independent film The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (Peter Care, 2002) and the French film Un long dimanche de fiançailles (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004) with Audrey Tautou and Gaspard Ulliel. She returned to making Hollywood mainstream films, first with Flightplan (Robert Schwentke, 2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter disappears on an airplane that she designed. Once again Jodie proved herself to be a box-office draw, and the film was a worldwide hit. The following year, she starred in another hit, the bank heist thriller Inside Man (Spike Lee, 2006) with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. Jodie was on a roll. Her next film was the revenge thriller The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007), which once again opened at #1 at the box office and earned her another Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Following this succession of thrillers that all had her playing tough women, Jodie returned to the comedy genre in Nim's Island (Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin, 2008) with Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. She reunited with Mel Gibson in the comedy The Beaver (Jodie Foster, 2011). Strong roles followed in Carnage (Roman Polanski, 2011) with Kate Winslet, and the SCi-Fi film Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013) with Matt Damon. In 2013, she received the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globe Awards. In April 2016, Jodie Foster married Alexandra Hedison. In July that year, John Hinckley was released after almost 35 years of commission to St. Elizabeth's Mental Institution. Lately, she focused on directing and made the film Money Monster (2016), as well as episodes for the TV series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. Jodie Foster's most recent film is Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce, 2018) in which she runs a high-security, members-only hospital for high-rolling criminals in Los Angeles.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. Personality #61, 1981. Photo: Annie Leibovitz.

American actress Jane Fonda (1937) is a two-time Academy Award winner. In 2014, she was the recipient of the American Film Institute AFI Life Achievement Award.

Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in New York in 1937. She was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour. She has a brother, actor Peter Fonda, and a maternal half-sister, Frances. Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice. In 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and she went to the Actors Studio. In 1960, she made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations. Later the same year, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (Joshua Logan, 1960), in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. In Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962), she played a prostitute, and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. She rose to fame in such films as Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963), Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) opposite Lee Marvin, and Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967), co-starring Robert Redford. In 1968, she played the title role in the science fiction spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol. Barbarella director Roger Vadim became her first husband. In France, Fonda also starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972). A seven-time Academy Award nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They (Sydney Pollack, 1969) and went on to win two Best Actress Oscars for the crime thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971) and the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for for her portrayal of the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) oppossite Michael Douglas, On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) with Katherine Hepburn and her father Henry Fonda, and The Morning After (Sidney Lumet, 1986) with Jeff Bridges.

In 1982, Jane Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of 22 workout videos released by her over the next 13 years which would collectively sell over 17 million copies. Divorced from second husband Tom Hayden, she married billionaire media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the comedy Monster in Law (Robert Luketic, 2005) opposite Jennifer Lopez. Subsequent films have included Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall, 2007) with Lindsay Lohan, the French drama Et si on vivait tous ensemble?/All Together (Stéphane Robelin, 2011), The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) as First Lady Nancy Reagan, and This Is Where I Leave You (Shawn Levy, 2014). In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45 year absence, in the play 33 Variations, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), has earned her two Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012. Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture era opposition to the Vietnam War included her being photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, which was very controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization. She published an autobiography in 2005. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time.

Source: Wikipedia.

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American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY., no. 2319. Photo: Annie Leibovitz. Caption: Bette Midler, New York City, 1979. Proceeds from the sale of this card were donated to AIDS organizations.

American singer, actress, activist and comedienne Bette Midler (1945) became known as The Divine Miss M. In her career spanning nearly half a century, she has won multiple film awards and sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. Her most successful songs include 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' (1972), 'The Rose' (1980), 'From a Distance' (1990) and the number-one hit in the USA, 'The Wind Beneath My Wings' (1989).

Bette Midler was born in 1945 in Honolulu, Hawaii, where her family was one of the few Jewish families in a mostly Asian neighbourhood. Her parents, Fred Midler, a painter, and Ruth Midler (Schindel), a seamstress, named her after film star Bette Davis. The last syllable of her first name is unpronounced because her mother thought that was how Davis pronounced her name. Her sisters Susan and Judy are named after Susan Hayward and Judy Garland. Midler was already interested in singing as a teenager. She studied drama at the University of Hawaii and her first film role was as an extra in Hawaii (George Roy Hill, 1966) as a seasick passenger. Midler was also hired for a small speaking role in the film and went to Los Angeles to film these scenes in a studio. Her scenes were cut from the final film. In 1966, she moved to New York, using money from her film work. Midler studied theatre at HB Studio under Uta Hagen. She landed her first professional onstage role in Tom Eyen's off-off-Broadway plays in 1965, 'Miss Nefertiti Regrets' and 'Cinderella Revisited', a children's play by day and an adult show by night. In the late 1960s, Midler appeared in the musicals 'Fiddler on the Roof' (1966-1970) and 'Salvation' (1969) on Broadway. While Bette played Tzeitel in 'Fiddler on the Roof', her sister Judy visited New York City to see her perform and was tragically struck by a taxi and killed. Midler's career as a singer began in 1970 when she began performing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhouse in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel in New York. There she managed to build up a core following, nicknamed Bathhouse Betty, and befriended Barry Manilow, who accompanied her on the piano. Midler established herself as an interpreter of mainly songs from the 1940s, including 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, first performed by the Andrews Sisters. Sophie Tucker was also a major influence on her. Her performances quickly became insider tips on the New York scene. In 1971, Midler starred in the first professional production of the Who's rock opera 'Tommy', with director Richard Pearlman and the Seattle Opera. The 1970s were characterised by successful albums and unusual stage programmes that made her an enfant terrible of American show business. Barry Manilow produced her first album, 'The Divine Miss M', (1972) which was based on a stage show of the same name and for which she received her first golden record. In 1973, she was honoured with the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Her self-titled follow-up album was released at the end of 1973. Again, the album was co-produced by Manilow. After some minor film work, her starring film debut was as a drug-addicted rock musician in the drama The Rose (Mark Rydell, 1979), loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin. She received two Golden Globes and an Oscar nomination for her sensitive performance and the film's title song, which she sang, became a top ten hit in the United States. In 1980, the concert film Divine Madness (Michael Ritchie, 1980) was released which featured Midler's stand-up comedy routines, as well as 16 songs. In the same year, Midler successfully published the book 'A View from a Broad', which became a bestseller. After the flop of the comedy Jinxed (Don Siegel, 1982) in which she had a difficult collaboration with the director and her co-star Ken Wahl, her career as a film actress already seemed to come to an end. However, four years later, she got a role opposite Richard Dreyfuss and Nick Nolte in the hilarious comedy Down and Out in Beverly Hills (Paul Mazursky, 1986). The hit film was based on the French play 'Boudu sauvé des eaux' (1919) by René Fauchois. The play was already filmed successfully by Jean Renoir as Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932). Midler's next role as a kidnap victim in the black comedy Ruthless People (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams en Jerry Zucker, 1986) with Danny DeVito as her scoundrel husband was another big hit. It was the start of a successful career in film comedies.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Bette Midler starred in such comedies as Outrageous Fortune (Arthur Hiller, 1987), Big Business (Jim Abrahams, 1988) with Lily Tomlin as sets of identical twins mismatched at birth, and Scene from a Mall (Paul Mazursky, 1991) with Woody Allen. She also continued to record albums and expanded her repertoire to include pop, rock, musicals, jazz, chanson and disco. In 1989, the single 'Wind Beneath My Wings' from the soundtrack of the tear-jerker Beaches (Garry Marshall, 1988) with Barbara Hershey, reached number one in the US charts and was named Single of the Year at the 1990 Grammy Awards. The following year, Midler received another Grammy for her version of From a Distance. She received an Oscar nomination for her role in the WWII drama For the Boys (Mark Rydell, 1991) with James Caan. She also appeared in the comedies Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993) which achieved cult status over the years, and The First Wives Club (Hugh Wilson, 1996) in which she made a dynamic trio with Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn. The First Wives Club grossed over $100 million at the box office and was her biggest hit. On television, she had supporting roles in The Simpsons, Seinfeld and The Nanny, where she played herself. She also had her own sitcom called Bette (2000-2001), where she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Following a reported long-standing feud with Barry Manilow, the two joined forces after many years in 2003 to record 'Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook'. The album was an instant success. The album was nominated for a Grammy the following year. Throughout 2003 and 2004, Midler toured the United States in her show, 'Kiss My Brass', to sell-out audiences. A disappointment was the glossy remake The Stepford Wives (Frank Oz, 2004) with Nicole Kidman. Midler joined forces again with Manilow for another tribute album, 'Bette Midler Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook' (2005). It was again a hit and nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2008, Midler signed a contract with Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for a residency, 'Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On', which ended in 2010. In 2010, Midler voiced the character Kitty Galore in the animated film Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Brad Peyton, 2010) with Chris O'Donnell. The film was a success, grossing $112 million worldwide. Midler was one of the producers of the Broadway production of the musical 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert', which opened in February 2011. From March 2017 to January 2018, Midler was seen for the first time in a leading role on Broadway in a revival of the musical 'Hello, Dolly!'. She received several awards for her performance, including the Tony Award in 2017. In 2019, she popped up in the final episodes of the first season of The Politician, where she played the campaign manager Hadassah Gold. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for this guest role. In the second season, her role was upgraded to a lead role. In the cinema, she appeared again as Winnie Sanderson in Hocus Pocus 2 (Anne Fletcher, 2022) with Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy and the comedy-drama Sitting in Bars with Cake (Trish Sie, 2023). Since 1984, Bette Midler has been married to the actor Martin von Haselberg and they have a daughter, Sophie von Haselberg (1986). Apart from selling 15 million albums worldwide, Bette Midler won four Grammy awards, four Golden Globes, one Tony Award, and three Emmy Awards.

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.

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American postcard by Fotofolio, N.Y., N.Y., no. Z323. Photo: Annie Leibovitz. Caption: Clint Eastwood, Burbank, California, 1980.

American film actor and director Clint Eastwood (1930) rose to fame as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Westerns Per un pugno di dollari/A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Per qualche dollaro in più/For a Few Dollars More (1965), and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo/The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Later in the US, he played hard-edge police inspector Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films, which elevated him to superstar status. Eastwood also directed and produced such award-winning masterpieces as Unforgiven (1992), Mystic River (2003) and Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Clinton ‘Clint’ Eastwood, Jr. was born in San Francisco, California in 1930. His parents were Clinton Eastwood, Sr., a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth (Runner) Eastwood, a factory worker. Clint has a younger sister, Jeanne. Because of his father's difficulty in finding steady work during the depression, Eastwood moved with his family from one Northern California town to another, attending some eight elementary schools in the process. Later he had odd jobs as a firefighter and lumberjack in Oregon, as well as a steelworker in Seattle. In 1951, Eastwood was drafted into the US Army, where he was a swimming instructor during the Korean War. He briefly attended Los Angeles City College but dropped out to pursue acting. Eastwood married Maggie Johnson in 1953, six months after they met on a blind date. However, their matrimony would not prove altogether smooth, with Eastwood believing that he had married too early. In 1954, the good-looking Eastwood with his towering height and slender frame got a contract at Universal. At first, he was criticized for his stiff manner, his squint, and hissing his lines through his teeth. His first acting role was an uncredited bit part as a laboratory assistant in the Sci-Fi horror film Revenge of the Creature (Jack Arnold, 1955). Over the next three years, he more bit parts in such films as Lady Godiva of Coventry (Arthur Lubin, 1955), Tarantula (Jack Arnold, 1955), and the war drama Away All Boats (Joseph Pevney, 1956) with George Nader and Lex Barker. His first bigger roles were in the B-Western Ambush at Cimarron Pass (Jodie Copelan, 1958), and the war film Lafayette Escadrille (William A. Wellman, 1958), starring Tab Hunter and Etchika Choureau. In 1959, he became a TV star as Rowdy Yates in the Western series Rawhide (1959–1966). Although Rawhide never won an Emmy, it was a rating success for several years. During a trial separation from Maggie Johnson, an affair with dancer Roxanne Tunis produced Eastwood’s first child, Kimber Tunis (1964). An intensely private person, Clint Eastwood was rarely featured in the tabloid press. However, he had more affairs, e.g. with actresses Catherine Deneuve, Inger Stevens and Jean Seberg. After a reconciliation, he had two children with Johnson: Kyle Eastwood (1968) and Alison Eastwood (1972), though he was not present at either birth. Johnson filed for legal separation in 1978, but the pair divorced in 1984.

In late 1963, Clint Eastwood's Rawhide co-star Eric Fleming rejected an offer to star in an Italian-made Western. Eastwood, who in turn saw the film as an opportunity to escape from his Rawhide image, signed the contract. The Western was called Per un pugno di dollari/A Fistful of Dollars (1964), to be directed in a remote region of Spain by the then relatively unknown Sergio Leone. A Fistful of Dollars, with Gian Maria Volonté and Marianne Koch, was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). Eastwood played a cynical gunfighter who comes to a small border town, torn apart by two feuding families. Hiring himself as a mercenary, the lone drifter plays one side against the other until nothing remains of either side. Eastwood developed a minimalist acting style creating the character's distinctive visual style. Although a non-smoker, Leone insisted Eastwood smoke cigars as an essential ingredient of the ‘mask’ he attempted to create for the loner character. Per un pugno di dollari/A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964) was the first instalment of the Dollars trilogy. Later, United Artists, who distributed it in the US, coined another term: the Man With No Name trilogy. ‘The second part was Per qualche dollaro in più/For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965), a richer, more mythologized film that focused on two ruthless bounty hunters (Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef) who form a tenuous partnership to hunt down a wanted bandit (Gian Maria Volontè). Both films were a huge success in Italy. They both contain all of Leone's eventual trademarks: taciturn characters, precise framing, extreme close-ups, and the haunting music of Ennio Morricone. Eastwood also appeared in a segment of Dino De Laurentiis’ five-part anthology production Le Streghe/The Witches (Vittorio De Sica a.o., 1967). But his performance opposite De Laurentiis' wife Silvana Mangano did not please the critics. Eastwood then played in the third and best Dollars film, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo/The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966). Again he played the mysterious Man with No Name, wearing the same trademark poncho (reportedly without ever having washed it). Lee Van Cleef returned as a ruthless fortune seeker, with Eli Wallach portraying the cunning Mexican bandit Tuco Ramirez. Yuri German at AllMovie: “Immensely entertaining and beautifully shot in Techniscope by Tonino Delli Colli, the movie is a virtually definitive 'spaghetti western,' rivalled only by Leone's own Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).” The Dollars trilogy was not released in the United States until 1967, when A Fistful of Dollars opened in January, followed by For a Few Dollars More in May, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in December. Eastwood redubbed his dialogue for the American releases. All the films were commercially successful, particularly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which turned Eastwood into a major film star. All three films received bad reviews and began a battle for Eastwood to win American film critics' respect. According to IMDb, Sergio Leone asked Eastwood, Wallach, and Van Cleef to appear again in C'era una volta il West/Once Upon A Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968), but declined when they heard that their characters were going to be killed off in the first five minutes.

Stardom brought more roles for Clint Eastwood. He signed to star in the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High (Ted Post, 1968), playing a man who takes up a Marshal's badge and seeks revenge as a lawman after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead. Using money earned from the Dollars trilogy, accountant and Eastwood advisor Irving Leonard helped establish Eastwood's production company, Malpaso Productions, named after Malpaso Creek on Eastwood's property in Monterey County, California. Leonard arranged for Hang 'Em High to be a joint production with United Artists. Critics praised Hang 'Em High. In July 1968, it had an unprecedented opening weekend in United Artists' history. His following film was Coogan's Bluff (Don Siegel, 1968), about an Arizona deputy sheriff tracking a wanted psychopathic criminal (Don Stroud) through the streets of New York City. Don Siegel was a Universal contract director who later became Eastwood's close friend, forming a partnership that would last more than ten years and produce five films. Coogan’s Bluff was controversial for its portrayal of violence. Eastwood created the prototype for the macho cop of the Dirty Harry film series. Coogan's Bluff also became the first collaboration with Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin, who would later compose the jazzy score to several Eastwood films in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Dirty Harry films. Eastwood played the right-hand man of squad commander Richard Burton in the war epic Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton, 1968), about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the alpine mountains. Eastwood then branched out to star in the only musical of his career, Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan, 1969). Then, Eastwood starred in the Western Two Mules for Sister Sara (Don Sigel, 1970), with Shirley MacLaine, and as one of a group of Americans who steal a fortune in gold from the Nazis, in the World War II film Kelly's Heroes (Brian G. Hutton, 1970)). Kelly's Heroes was Eastwood's last film, not produced by his own Malpaso Productions.

Clint Eastwood’s next film, The Beguiled (Don Siegel, 1970), was a tale of a wounded Union soldier, held captive by the sexually repressed matron of a southern girl's school. Upon release, the film received major recognition in France. In the US it was a box office flop. Eastwood's career reached a turning point with Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971), The film centres around a hard-edged San Francisco police inspector named Harry Callahan who is determined to stop a psychotic killer by any means. Dirty Harry achieved huge success after its release in December 1971. It was Siegel's highest-grossing film and the start of a series featuring the character Harry Callahan. He next starred in the loner Western Joe Kidd (John Sturges, 1972). In 1973, Eastwood directed his first Western, High Plains Drifter, and starred alongside Verna Bloom. The revisionist film received a mixed reception but was a major box office success. Eastwood next turned his attention towards Breezy (Clint Eastwood, 1973), a film about love blossoming between a middle-aged man and a teenage girl. During casting, Eastwood met actress Sondra Locke, who would become an important figure in his life. He reprised his role as Detective Harry Callahan in Magnum Force (Ted Post, 1973). This sequel to Dirty Harry was about a group of rogue young officers (including David Soul and Robert Urich) in the San Francisco Police Force who systematically exterminate the city's worst criminals. Eastwood teamed up with Jeff Bridges in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Michael Cimino, 1974). Eastwood's acting was noted by critics but was overshadowed by Bridges who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His next film The Eiger Sanction (Clint Eastwood, 1975), based on Trevanian's spy novel, was a commercial and critical failure. His next film The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976) was widely acclaimed, with many critics and viewers seeing Eastwood's role as an iconic one that related to America's ancestral past and the destiny of the nation after the American Civil War. The third Dirty Harry film, The Enforcer (James Fargo, 1976) had Harry partnered with a new female officer (Tyne Daly) to face a San Francisco Bay terrorist organization. The film, culminating in a shootout on Alcatraz island, was a major commercial success grossing $100 million worldwide. In 1977, he directed and starred in The Gauntlet opposite Sondra Locke. Eastwood portrays a down-and-out cop who falls in love with a prostitute he is assigned to escort from Las Vegas to Phoenix, to testify against the mafia. In 1978 Eastwood starred with Locke and an orang-utan called Clyde in Every Which Way but Loose. Panned by critics, the film proved a surprise success and became the second-highest-grossing film in 1978. Eastwood then starred in the thriller Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the last of his films to be directed by Don Siegel. The film was a major success and began a critically acclaimed period for Eastwood. Eastwood's relationship with Sondra Locke had begun in 1975 during the production of The Outlaw Josey Wales. They lived together for almost fourteen years, during which Locke remained married (in name only) to her gay husband, Gordon Anderson. Eastwood befriended Locke's husband and purchased a house in Crescent Heights for Anderson and his male lover.

In 1980, Clint Eastwood’s nonstop success was broken by Bronco Billy, which he directed and in which he played the lead role. Critics liked the film, but it was a rare commercial disappointment in Eastwood's career. Later that year, he starred in Any Which Way You Can (Buddy Van Horn, 1980), which ranked among the top five highest-grossing films of the year. In 1982, Eastwood directed and starred in Honkytonk Man, as a struggling Western singer who, accompanied by his young nephew (played by real-life son Kyle) goes to Nashville, Tennessee. In the same year, Eastwood directed, produced, and starred in the Cold War-themed Firefox alongside Freddie Jones. Then, Eastwood directed and starred in the fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), the darkest and most violent of the series. ‘Go ahead, make my day’, uttered by Eastwood in the film, became one of cinema's immortal lines. Sudden Impact was the last film in which he starred with Locke. The film was the most commercially successful of the Dirty Harry films, earning $70 million and receiving very positive reviews. In the provocative thriller Tightrope (Richard Tuggle, 1984), Eastwood starred opposite Geneviève Bujold. His real-life daughter Alison, then eleven, also appeared in the film. It was another critical and commercial hit. Eastwood next starred in the period comedy City Heat (Richard Benjamin, 1984) alongside Burt Reynolds. Eastwood revisited the Western genre when he directed and starred in Pale Rider (Clint Eastwood, 1985), based on the classic Western Shane (George Stevens, 1953). It became one of Eastwood's most successful films to date and was hailed as one of the best films of 1985 and the best Western to appear for a considerable period. He co-starred with Marsha Mason in the military drama Heartbreak Ridge (Clint Eastwood, 1986), about the 1983 United States invasion of Grenada. Then followed the fifth and final film in the Dirty Harry series The Dead Pool (Buddy Van Horn, 1988), with Patricia Clarkson, Liam Neeson, and a young Jim Carrey. It is generally viewed as the weakest film of the series. Eastwood began working on smaller, more personal projects and experienced a lull in his career between 1988 and 1992. Always interested in jazz, he directed Bird (Clint Eastwood, 1988), a biopic starring Forest Whitaker as jazz musician Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. Eastman himself is a prolific jazz pianist who occasionally shows up to play the piano at his Carmel, CA restaurant, The Hog's Breath Inn. He received two Golden Globes for Bird, but the film was a commercial failure. Jim Carrey would again appear with Eastwood in the poorly received comedy Pink Cadillac (Buddy Van Horn, 1989) alongside Bernadette Peters. In 1989, while his partner Sondra Locke was away directing the film Impulse (1990), Eastwood had the locks changed on their Bel-Air home and ordered her possessions to be boxed and put in storage. During the last three years of his cohabitation with Locke, Eastwood fathered two children in secrecy with flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves, Scott Reeves (1986), and Kathryn Reeves (1988). Eastwood finally presented both children to the public in 2002.

In 1990, Clint Eastwood began living with actress Frances Fisher, whom he had met on the set of Pink Cadillac in 1988. They had a daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood (1993). Eastwood and Fisher ended their relationship in early 1995. Eastwood directed and starred in White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an adaptation of Peter Viertel's Roman à Clef, about John Huston and the making of the classic film The African Queen (1951). Later he directed and co-starred with Charlie Sheen in The Rookie (1990), a buddy cop action film. Eastwood revisited the Western genre in the self-directed film Unforgiven (1992), in which he played an ageing ex-gunfighter long past his prime. Unforgiven was a major commercial and critical success. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and won four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. Eastwood played Frank Horrigan in the Secret Service thriller In the Line of Fire (Wolfgang Petersen, 1993) co-starring John Malkovich. The film was among the top 10 box office performers that year, earning a reported $200 million. Later in 1993, Eastwood directed and co-starred with Kevin Costner in A Perfect World. At the 1994 Cannes Film Festival Eastwood received France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal, and in 1995, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 67th Academy Awards. Opposite Meryl Streep, he starred in the romantic picture The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995), another commercial and critical success. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture and won a César Award in France for Best Foreign Film. In early 1995, Eastwood began dating Dina Ruiz, a television news anchor 35 years his junior, whom he had first met when she interviewed him in 1993. They married in 1996. The couple has one daughter, Morgan Eastwood (1996). In 1997, Eastwood directed and starred in the political thriller Absolute Power, alongside Gene Hackman. Later in 1997, Eastwood directed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and Jude Law. He directed and starred in True Crime (1999), as a journalist and recovering alcoholic, who has to cover the execution of murderer Frank Beechum (Isaiah Washington). In 2000, he directed and starred in Space Cowboys alongside Tommy Lee Jones as veteran ex-test pilots sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite.

Clint Eastwood played an ex-FBI agent chasing a sadistic killer (Jeff Daniels) in the thriller Blood Work (2002). He directed and scored the crime drama Mystic River (2003), dealing with themes of murder, vigilantism, and sexual abuse. The film starred Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tim Robbins and won two Academy Awards – Best Actor for Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Robbins – with Eastwood garnering Best Director and Best Picture nominations. In the following year Eastwood found further critical and commercial success when he directed, produced, scored, and starred in the boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, (2004). He played a cantankerous trainer who forms a bond with a female boxer (Hilary Swank). The film won four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Swank), and Best Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman). At age 74 Eastwood became the oldest of eighteen directors to have directed two or more Best Picture winners. In 2006, he directed two films about World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima. The first, Flags of Our Fathers, focused on the men who raised the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi and featured the film debut of Eastwood's son Scott. This was followed by Letters from Iwo Jima, which dealt with the tactics of the Japanese soldiers on the island and the letters they wrote home to family members. Eastwood next directed Changeling (2008), based on a true story set in the late 1920s. Angelina Jolie stars as a woman reunited with her missing son only to realize he is an impostor. Eastwood ended a four-year self-imposed acting hiatus by appearing in Gran Torino (2008), which he also directed, produced, and partly scored with his son Kyle and Jamie Cullum. Gran Torino eventually grossed over $268 million in theatres worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of Eastwood's career so far. Eastwood's 30th directorial outing came with Invictus, a film based on the story of the South African team at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. In 2010, Eastwood directed the drama Hereafter, with Matt Damon as a psychic, and in 2011, J. Edgar, a biopic of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. Eastwood starred in the baseball drama Trouble with the Curve (Robert Lorenz, 2012), as a veteran baseball scout who travels with his daughter for a final scouting trip. Director Lorenz worked with Eastwood as an assistant director on several films. Clint Eastwood is also politically active and served as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California from 1986 to 1988. Shawn Dwyer at TCM: “Although a registered Republican since the early 1950s, Eastwood's politics, like the man himself, were that of a true iconoclast. Over the years he had voted for candidates from both parties and publicly denounced the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. And while he had initially wished President Barack Obama well during his first term in office, Eastwood, became a vocal booster for Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, dissatisfied with what he viewed as Obama's inability to govern.” But cinema is Eastwood’s major career. He has contributed to over 50 films as an actor, director, producer, and composer. According to the box office revenue tracking website, Box Office Mojo, films featuring Eastwood have grossed more than US $1.68 billion domestically, with an average of $37 million per film.

Sources: Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Yuri German (AllMovie), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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