Clint Eastwood

Absolutely one of the toughest guys in cinema history, and not only — his age is perhaps the proof that to be credible as a tough guy on the screen, you have to be tough in life too. Clint Eastwood occupies the same position in pop culture that Keith Richards does: he has been around for ever, he has done tons of amazing work, he embodies the rebellious, iconoclastic spirit of the mid-60s, and he has never sold out and become a joke like just about everyone else in his generation.

Born on May 31, 1930 at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, California to Ruth, Clint was nicknamed “Samson” by the hospital nurses because he weighed 11 pounds 6 ounces — 5.2 kg — at birth. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, he rose to international fame with his role as the Man with No Name in Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the 1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity, and many artists and creative around the world did not miss the opportunity to pay their tributes to it.

In 2001, British virtual band Gorillaz named their song Clint Eastwood due to its similarity to the theme music of Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly movie — A thematic taken up by the band on the occasion of their 2005 Dirty Harry song.

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