Читать книгу Clint Eastwood - The Biography of Cinema's Greatest Ever Star - Douglas Thompson - Страница 10

‘He believes a bug has as much right to be on this earth as anybody else.’

DINA EASTWOOD ON HER HUSBAND, 2003

THE secret may be in the numbers. Or the diet. Clint’s always had a way of surviving but he is very much of a generation that likes to look after itself. ‘I worked for every crust of bread I ever ate.’ It is an attitude which has driven his life and his work. He despises waste, especially of time. He’s a pioneer who has always wanted to put down roots. ‘I never bought any real estate I didn’t really like. I like land, the land out here.’

The Bay area of northern California, especially the exceptional town of Carmel on the Monterey Peninsula, of which he owns several thousand acres, is his home. Carmel was nicknamed ‘Clintville’ in 1986 when the man who, in worldwide votes, remains the world’s most respected and popular star, was elected mayor.

Yet he was born in the Bohemia of America itself, San Francisco, on 31 May 1930. On that date in 2005 many, including tourists on the Golden Gate Bridge and the others and residents sipping Starbucks in Washington Square and all the other city hangouts – in Tadich Grill with the good guys and maybe even the ghosts of Alcatraz out there on the water with the Hollywood accountants – raised a glass to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday.

He is part of our imagination of that photogenic city for Dirty Harry and Magnum Force, as much as the cable cars and Steve McQueen in Bullitt, as the rolling fog, as Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. He didn’t stray too much for a location for classic movies like his first job as a director, Play Misty for Me, set in Steinbeck’s Monterey, or try to Escape from Alcatraz.

Eastwood is so like the most European of American cities, laconic, laid-back, full of surprises but locked into loyalty, and, for all the tolerance and counterculture, determined to get things done – his way.

He is only one of a trio – Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen are the others – of independent film-makers who have totally controlled their own pictures. Even a faint acquaintance with the machinations of control-freak Hollywood reveals what an achievement that is.

Many grew up watching him as Rowdy Yates, the number-two trail boss on the TV series Rawhide. He went on to the ‘spaghetti Westerns’ as the Man with No Name, a role which provoked so much interest. But it wasn’t until Dirty Harry in 1971 that the phenomenal impact Eastwood would have on popular culture first became evident. Everyone from President Nixon to Muhammad Ali wanted Eastwood to say his trademark ‘Make my day’ for them. Lots of people he meets still do. He lives in Pebble Beach with his second wife, Dina, a former television journalist at KSBW, Salinas, California, whom he met – she was 27 then – when she interviewed him in 1992 following the success of Unforgiven and whom he married after filming 1995’s The Bridges of Madison County. That story of found and lost love had a major impact on him.

That was most apparent in Paris, for when he talked of Dina Ruiz he did not sound like the Clint of the past. The message from The Bridges of Madison County was, he said, ‘Don’t let anything pass.’

During his European promotional tour for that movie he was asked about love. Clint Eastwood? Love? He answered: ‘It’s much stronger when one meets in the second half of one’s life.’

Eastwood, who has had a long, eventful and complex love life – he was a true sexual cowboy – had finally settled down. He and Dina have a daughter, Morgan, who was nine in 2005; that year they shared their home with a well-fed black and white rat, Whiskers, who keeps having litters by an older rat they call Norbert, three chickens, a black and pink pig, Penelope, and Paco, a very politically correct green lady parrot with a yellow nape who only ever says, ‘I Love You’ or ‘Happy Birthday.’

Which, given Eastwood’s extended family, should possibly be patented as an energy-saving device. For everybody from his previous marriage and relationships is in touch and involved with one other. In January 2005 he and his sister Jeanne hosted a surprise party for their mother’s ninety-sixth birthday.

He’s in contact with ‘Mumsy’ every day: no matter where he is he talks to her on the phone every evening. He’s acutely aware of age, and respectful of it. When he was making Piano Blues, one section of a seven-part television documentary on the blues in 2003 – call it happenstance again, for it was produced for America’s Public Broadcasting System by Martin Scorsese – he worked with legendary musician Joe Willie ‘Pinetop’ Perkins.

He was told: ‘Pinetop looks good; he’s 89, you know.’

Clint: ‘Eighty-nine? Wonder what he eats.’

The numbers, the age issue, is there more in his personal than his professional life. When he collects Morgan from school he’s the oldest dad around and aware of it. That the mothers might swoon over him doesn’t make him less conscious of the situation.

It’s an issue that is apparent and no matter how strong or disciplined or in charge you are, there is nothing that can be done about it. The clock does not tick the other way.

Clint, a lean six foot four with the healthy cheeks of someone who looks after himself, just gets on with it. Life, remember, is an improvisation. You can help it along. His tall frame is still rangy from his daily runs and workouts on his black Universal exercise machine, with its parallel bars, weights, slantboards and two punching bags, which allows him to do sit-ups, back lifts, bench-presses and boxing routines to Bach or jazz from a Sony tape deck.

Asked about cosmetic surgery – self-improvisation if you like – in 2002, he said: ‘I have no choice but to look the way I am, because they don’t make enough shoe polish for my hair and they don’t have a sander for my face. What the hell, when you get to a certain age you’ve just got to make fun of it. I’ve never considered myself a matinee idol anyway. I always felt I was a character actor. At some point you have to say: “This is who I am.”’

Yet, a couple of years later, when he collected an award in February 2004 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, he looked considerably less lined, fresher face to face. Later one of his close, lifetime associates confided: ‘Clint’s had some work done.’

Possibly. Understandably. Possibly not. He looks good, energetic and youthful, maybe not such a crinkly, thanks to whatever, be it the surgeon or the gym and the fruit smoothies he blends fresh for himself and his family every morning.

This he does in the kitchen of his one-storey Spanish hacienda in Pebble Beach. He designed his home, built out of native redwoods and Douglas fir and circled by Monterey cypresses on the Peninsula, with spectacular views of the jagged, ragged coast and out to the Pacific as far as his olive-green squint can see. Across and down the Peninsula and along Ocean Trail you run into Carmel-by-the-Sea, one of California’s most popular tourist resorts. And one of America’s richest and quaintest communities. Clint’s house has a superb gym, eight rooms and two pianos which he is always content to be with. The courtyard entrance is given shade by a huge oak tree and a squadron of eucalyptus and palm trees. It’s a gathering place for his family.

Clint married his first wife, the former Maggie Johnson, a model, when he was 23. They were divorced 30 years later; they have two children, Kyle, a talented musician who was best man at his father’s second wedding, and Alison, who is an actress. In 2005 they were aged 37 and 33 respectively. His daughter Kimber, from his affair with actress Roxanne Tunis, was 41. He has two children, Scott, 19, and Kathryn Ann, 17, with former air stewardess Jacelyn Reeves. Then there’s his 12-year-old daughter Francesca with actress Frances Fisher.

And now Morgan with his Dina.

He is in regular contact with all his children and their mothers. ‘I enjoy it. And I give credit to my wife, who is great. She brought everybody together. She’s terrific, she brings all the mothers in, everybody, my mother, she’s brilliant.

‘With my youngest kids I spend a lot of time with them at school events and all that sort of thing so I’m kinda going through at this stage of my life a lot of what people do when they’re maybe much younger. Maybe that helps keep you young. I don’t know. I think that the sad trick of nature is that people propagate at a rather early age when they really enjoy it at a later age. I really enjoy kids. I love their honest, curiosity. It’s always fascinating to me and to watch them grow and see what they are going to become. I like them now as much as I ever have in my life, maybe more so. I don’t know if I feel vulnerable; I feel very happy.

‘I think as you mature you have seen a lot of relationships come and go; you have a lot of things to draw upon within your soul.

‘Dina is everything I ever wanted and never found anywhere before. I’m very lucky. I’ve got a great girl. She’s completely unselfish. It was a wonderful romance. We went together four or five months. Then I knew I could get married again. Instinctively, I knew she was the right person.

‘I was never a guy on a white horse. She’s a self-feeder. Dina is a tremendous person and she had to embrace a lot of different elements from my past and she has done it so gracefully.

‘We’re a great family. We come from a lot of different directions, but everybody loves each other and that is my greatest enjoyment. I try to spend as much time as I can with all my children and grandchildren. Because I have had children at an older age, I have had to learn patience that I didn’t have in my earlier life when I was more ambitious. I now try to do less, but try to do what I do properly.’

As well as younger children, he has a much younger – by 35 years – wife; one of their family games is for her to list famous people and see if Clint knew them. ‘Once in a while when she gets in the mood she’ll say: “Did you know Elvis?” and I’ll say: “Yep, sure.” “And James Dean?” “Yep.” And then it will be: “How about Bobby Darin?” and I’ll go: “Oh, yeah.”

‘We were all hanging around at the same time in the 1950s, we were all in town struggling in some way – well, not Elvis – but I was doing Rawhide and those guys would be on various stages around the studio. There was a kind of camaraderie around the younger group of people.’

He’s happy to indulge his wife in her quizzes. He screened Dirty Harry for her – she’d never seen it – after her friends told her she couldn’t be married to Clint without knowing the movie. He recalled: ‘She watched it on DVD and she said: “Oh, I get it now.”

‘It’s the only film I’ve revisited other than Play Misty for Me, which they had a screening for in Carmel to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary. I had to sit through it with the audience. Any time I look at myself I get somewhat embarrassed. It was interesting seeing myself with long sideburns, a lot more hair, and dark hair. I’ve got a little blonder since then. And wearing these horrible bell-bottom pants.’

He’s much more touchy-feely in 2005, more relaxed than in the Play Misty for Me era. Is it the wife?

‘Let me say this: she’s a very, very fine woman and she’s having me at a much better period of time than I was 30 years ago. I think the world of her. Is she jealous of me? No. If I flirt with other women it’s not because I’m going anywhere. I’m very happy where I am.

‘I think that I’m a better person now than before I met her and you like to think that every year you’re a better person. I certainly know more at my age; you like to think you’re improving as a person. I think she and I have met at the proper time in life.

‘I’m much older than my wife but I feel as young as she does – at least I think I do. Mentally I do and if she lets me think that then that’s great. My only advice [on the age issue] is that if you’re any mellower as an older person, you’re going to be a better person to get along with. I think that’s my case.

‘But then she may someday have to take care of me. When I was campaigning for mayor [of Carmel] in the mid-1980s I went to visit a lady who was 102 years old. She’d heard I was dating a woman who was maybe ten years younger than me. She said to me: “Clint, you must get yourself a much younger woman. You need somebody to be nice to you and take care of you.”

‘I said: “You mean, like a nurse?”

‘It was kinda humorous coming from a woman of that age. I think age is all in people’s minds. If you feel young and you think young and you look young it should be great.

‘Dina keeps me on my toes, let’s put it that way. We both enjoy family a lot, we both enjoy pets and we love to play golf. To me, as I said, life is like the back nine in golf.

‘Sometimes you play better on the back nine.

‘You may not be stronger, but hopefully you’re wiser.’