World famous actor and director Clint Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California. Acting in and directing feature films for over five decades, Eastwood is still working in the industry today. He is considered to be one of the greatest American actors ever and certainly one of the biggest stars in the Western genre.

Eastwood’s family was hit hard by the Great Depression. With an older sibling, his sister Jean, Clint had a relatively small family, and this worked in the family’s favor as they moved from San Fran to Oakland, California in the late 1930s. Clint attended and graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1948.

Like many of the world’s most famous actors, Clint had no desire to act. In fact, it was the furthest thing from his mind as he worked a series of odd jobs. Eastwood tried his hands as a logger, a big-rig driver, a steel furnace worker, and even as a hay bailer. He continued to do odd jobs for nearly three years, until he was called to duty in 1950.

During his time with the Army Special Services, Eastwood met both aspiring and working actors, like Martin Milner and David Janssen. Clint befriended the men and they convinced him that acting was his true calling. Upon leaving the military in 1954, Eastwood signed with Universal Pictures after a successful screen test.

He wasn’t thrown into the Western role right away. Clint’s first movies were sci-fi films: Tarantula and Revenge of the Creature, both in 1955. His gun-slinging days didn’t emerge until four years later, when the rugged-looking actor landing a supporting role in the television series Rawhide.

After Rawhide’s run was over, Clint headed to Italy in 1964 to work with a little known director named Sergio Leone. The role proposed was challenging for Eastwood. The character didn’t even have a name, technically; he was the quintessential loner. However, Eastwood pulled off the character beautifully and the “spaghetti westerns” took off.

These three films—A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—transformed Eastwood into an international superstar. Eastwood returned to the US in 1971 to direct his first feature, Play Misty For Me, in which he also played the leading role.

Clint’s next big acting venture was as detective Harry Callahan in a raucous role built for the actor. The Dirty Harry films were incredibly popular, and Clint would star in five separate films over the course of nearly two decades.

After this huge success as an actor, Clint turned more to directing. Even though he would occasionally star in a picture, like Unforgiven and Space Cowboys, Eastwood was comfortable behind the camera where he got to call the shots.

He directed huge pictures, like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, True Crime, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, and A Perfect World. Eastwood recently directed and starred in 2008’s hit Gran Torino and Invictus (directed only), and he has another picture on the way entitled Hereafter.