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At son Kyle's concert in 2003 
Picture Courtesy of Osamu Honda/AP Images
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Behind the Scenes
Off duty, Eastwood is unpretentious and private. He stays away from Hollywood, opting for the company of old friends in his adopted home town, Carmel, California, where he served as mayor from 1986 to 1988.
He still drops by the Hog’s Breath Inn, the restaurant he once owned. “He doesn’t make a big show of entering a restaurant,” says Schickel, a longtime friend. “He kind of slopes in, wearing his chinos and his little jacket.”
But, come on, he’s Clint Eastwood. Eventually people notice. “We were playing golf one day in Canada while we were making Unforgiven,” Hackman recalls, “and there was a crowd of about 50 people watching. Clint was the first to tee off and he missed the ball totally. Well, they laughed, but he didn’t get mad. He just turned and gave a slight bow. That exemplifies him.”
Eastwood, in fact, sees a well-played round of golf as an analogy for a well-lived life. “You have to trust your swing,” he told interviewer Charlie Rose. “Don’t worry about what anybody else is doing. You’ll do OK with your own game. And somebody else will do OK with theirs.”
His taste for independence is mirrored in his romantic history. Though his first marriage lasted 25 years and produced two children, he has acknowledged that he strayed widely; he has another four kids by various paramours. In his own way, though, he’s really a family man. He’s on friendly terms with most of his exes and offspring, and several of the youngsters have appeared in his movies. Son Kyle, 39, a composer, often scores his father’s films.
A late convert to monogamy, Eastwood’s been married since 1996 to Dina Ruiz, 41, a former newscaster whom he met when she interviewed him. They have a ten-year-old daughter, Morgan.
Caring for a tween helps keep him fit, as does daily jogging, following a spartan diet and pumping formidable quantities of iron. “I remember everyone was at the gym and Clint had just finished on the bench press,” says Ryan Phillippe, who was in Flags of Our Fathers. “[Actor] Barry Pepper sidled over to see if he could lift what Clint was lifting. He couldn’t move the bar.”
But Eastwood’s most potent youth elixir is his work. On the Flags set, he wore an officer’s uniform in case he was caught on camera and referred to himself as Colonel Kumquat. He took his turn behind the camera during difficult scenes, standing in a small landing boat battered by waves. “Just being in his presence,” Phillippe jokes, “makes you feel like less of a man.” Back to Magazine Articles
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