Читать книгу Clint Eastwood - The Biography of Cinema's Greatest Ever Star - Douglas Thompson - Страница 7

Baby Love

I’m just a kid.’

CLINT EASTWOOD, AGED 75 ON 31 MAY 2005, AS HE ACCEPTED ONE OF THE FOUR OSCARS FOR MILLION DOLLAR BABY

BEING Clint Eastwood is a delicate act but he’s a master at it. Experience, you could argue.

When he won the evening of 27 February at the 2005 Oscars at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with Million Dollar Baby, the movie presented with the Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, his co-producers were up on stage with him.

The film-makers were accepting the award for Best Film for Million Dollar Baby, which had been over many high hurdles to get made. With such movies we only see the result and, in this case, the glory.

The Oscar broadcast producers are extremely aware of television time and when winners go on for too long the orchestra is instructed to blast out ‘wrap up’ music.

Eastwood’s co-producer, Tom Rosenberg, who had taken a big financial risk in support of the film, was speaking as the music swelled to drown him out.

If you get out your video of the seventy-seventh annual Academy Awards you’ll hear that whisper through the gravel which is Eastwood’s voice, telling Rosenberg: ‘Don’t let ’em run you off.’

Rosenberg didn’t. He’d joined the ‘good guys’.

Clint Eastwood has never been ‘run off’. He’s always been his own man.

It’s summed up in a singular, grown-up attitude, which he explained a few years ago: ‘I’ve always had the theory that actors who beg their audiences to like them are much worse off than actors who just say: “If you don’t like this don’t let the door hit you in the ass…”’