Clint Eastwood attended the 70th Cannes Film Festival this weekend and made a comment about being willing to act again. Clint Eastwood’s last on-screen appearance was in 2012’s Trouble With the Curve with Justin Timberlake, Amy Adams, and his son, Scott. Prior to that, he starred in Gran Torino in 2008. The last decade has been fairly quiet for Eastwood, who is now 86-years-old. This year, the Cannes Film Festival celebrated Clint Eastwood’s career by screening some of his movies. This included a screening of Unforgiven, which is having it’s 25th anniversary. While there, he had a chat about his career that included stories and a quote on political correctness, courtesy of Washington Post. Eastwood was previously criticized for supporting Trump because he isn’t someone who is politically correct.
“Eastwood didn’t talk about current political events, but while discussing his then-controversial 1971 film Dirty Harry , he waded into a topic he’s touched on before: so-called political correctness.”
“A lot of people thought it was politically incorrect,” Eastwood said of Dirty Harry . ”That was at the beginning of the era that we’re in now, where everybody thinks everyone’s politically correct. We’re killing ourselves by doing that. We’ve lost our sense of humor.”
Even though he’s had a quiet decade or so with acting, he’s been doing more directing in that time. He worked on movies such as Invictus, Jersey Boys, and American Sniper. His current project is The 15:17 to Paris. The jist of it is that there are American soldiers who find out about a terrorist attack on a train heading to Paris. The movie is based on the book The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes by Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, Spencer Stone, and Jeffrey E. Stern. Anthony, Alek, and Spencer were the American soldiers who stopped the attack. It will be no small task for Clint Eastwood to take on a true story of this caliber.
Clint Eastwood did discuss his directing style and said that he’s learned a lot from Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. Eastwood worked with Don Siegel on the 1971 flick Dirty Harry . There’s a lot to celebrate when it comes to Clint Eastwood since he’s been in so many great films. If you go to sites like iMDB and Rotten Tomatoes , you’ll find that a lot of his movies are favorably rated. Not to mention the fact that he also did over 200 episodes of Rawhide from 1959-1965 before really getting more into movies. After that show, he didn’t appear again in a TV show. While he largely appeared in Westerns to start his career, he was able to take on more diverse roles as he continued to add more films to his credits.
There’s no indication of what exactly Clint Eastwood will do after The 15:17 to Paris , which is in pre-production right now. There’s no set release date for the movie. It is worth noting, though, that Clint Eastwood is on a good run for telling these true, heroic stories. His work on American Sniper and Sully show his interest in stories of this type. While each story is a completely different situation in different places, there’s still a theme there. If you’ve seen either movie and enjoyed the experience, there’s a chance the new movie will be right up your alley.
Clint Eastwood has had a long career in film and it will be interesting to see if he does indeed return to acting in the future. Do you have a favorite Clint Eastwood movie? Will you be anticipating The 15:17 to Paris ? Let us know in the comments!
[Featured Image by Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images]