Clint Eastwood is without a doubt the fittest and most active octogenarian on New York’s Park Avenue as he climbs spryly out of his black SUV and strides into the Regency Hotel, acknowledging the greetings of the staff with a friendly wave.
“He can’t be 80,” someone whispers in amazement. “No way.”
It’s hard to believe, but, as he enters his ninth decade, Eastwood is as focused, ambitious and driven as he was when he directed his first film at the age of 41. He has been racking up lifetime achievement awards since the Nineties, before he had even embarked on this late stage of his career – one that many consider to be his most creative and productive.
He is in New York to attend the premiere and party for his latest film, Hereafter, a drama written by the British screenwriter Peter Morgan and starring Matt Damon, who was also in his last movie, Invictus.
In his most recent films – Mystic River, Flags of Our Fathers, Gran Torino, Invictus – Eastwood has been pushing audiences to think about difficult and sometimes uncomfortable themes. This time he is posing the question of what happens after death: Hereafter is a drama that explores three characters’ search for answers about their own lives in the face of what lies beyond.
In San Francisco, a reluctant psychic (Damon) tries to break free from the bereaved people seeking help in contacting loved ones; in Indonesia, a journalist (Cecile de France) has a near-death experience in a tsunami; while, in London, a twin loses the brother who has always guided him.
Eastwood, who filmed in Paris, London, Hawaii and San Francisco, says: “We don’t know what’s on the other side. People have their beliefs about what’s there or what’s not there, but nobody knows until you get there.”
It is not something he thinks or worries about. “Whatever’s out there is out there,” he says with a shrug as we talk in a hotel suite a couple of hours before the premiere. “I don’t think much about the hereafter because I feel you’re given one opportunity to live in this world, and you have to do the best you can with the life you’ve got.”
Morgan, who has been Oscar-nominated twice – for writing The Queen and Frost/Nixon – wrote Hereafter four years ago after a 40-year-old friend died suddenly in a ski-ing accident. “He died so suddenly and violently and his spirit was still around us,” said Morgan. “All his friends were thinking, 'Where has he gone?’ ”.
The script eventually found its way to Steven Spielberg, who passed it on to Eastwood.
“I liked the way it was laid out,” said Eastwood. “It has such great dilemmas and dimensions, and I liked the fact there are three stories that stand alone but at the same time are connected.”
As usual, Eastwood filmed at remarkable speed. Having directed more than 30 movies, he is a master of the art of economical shooting. He limits rehearsals to a minimum to achieve a more authentic feel in the performances, and he rarely does more than one take.
“Everything I do as a director is based upon what I prefer as an actor,” he says.
Wearing a dark jacket and slacks and a grey golf shirt with his bushy grey hair brushed back, Eastwood is clearly in a good mood. Although known as a man of few words in his younger days, he now talks freely and at length about himself, his work and his family, demonstrating a keen sense of humour and a sharp wit.
He has become something of a national treasure in America, where he appeared in his first films almost 60 years ago and has won four Oscars and generations of fans by producing high-quality, meaningful work for mass audiences at an age when most directors have long retired.
His career is defined not just by longevity but by extraordinary productivity and diversity. Since directing his first movie, Play Misty For Me, he has made movies about cops, cowboys, lovers, loners and even orangutans. The shadow of American history has loomed large in his oeuvre, with films about the Civil War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
He savours life and has many interests outside show business. He pilots helicopters, speaks fluent Italian, is an accomplished jazz pianist and composer and a single-handicap golfer.
He is also very much a family man, although it was not always the case, having fathered seven children, ranging in age from 46 to 13, by five women.
He has a 17-year-old, Frannie, by actress Frances Fisher; daughter Kimber, 46, by Roxanne Tunis, an actress who appeared with him in the television series Rawhide; a son, Kyle, and daughter, Alison, by Maggie Eastwood, to whom he was married for nearly 30 years and whom he divorced in 1982, giving her a reportedly £15 million settlement; a son, Scott, 24, and daughter Kathryn, 22, by former girlfriend Jacelyn Reeves; and Morgan, 13, whose mother is Dina Ruiz, the television news anchor whom he married in March 1996.
He is already at work on his next movie, an as-yet-untitled film about the life of J Edgar Hoover, the founder of the FBI, who will be played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
For Eastwood, retirement is clearly not a consideration. “I was always curious why somebody like Billy Wilder would stop making movies in his sixties when someone like John Huston was directing when he was in a wheelchair,” he says. “It just depends on your abilities at that particular time of life. People peak at different times of life. There is a Portuguese director who is 104 and still making movies.”
Eastwood plainly intends to emulate him.
'Hereafter’ is released on Jan 28.
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