Tony Earnshaw: Softly spoken Clint Eastwood just keeps on making my day

Happy Birthday, I say, to one of the true enduring stars of the last 50-odd years. Eastwood is one of the few celebs who has turned my knees to jelly on meeting them.

Yet he’s a softly-spoken chap who finds it easy to smile and appears genuinely self-deprecating about himself, his image and his long career.

On the release of Mystic River in 2003 Eastwood was in the UK to promote the film along with Tim Robbins and Laurence Fishburne.

In truth Robbins and Fishburne, with writer Brian Helgeland, needn’t have bothered turning up. All eyes were on Clint who, at 73, was the only one anybody wanted to talk to.

The night before he had been interviewed on stage at the National Film Theatre by Michael Parkinson, who is, like Eastwood, a jazz aficionado. It was hardly the most gruelling question and answer session but then Eastwood wasn’t there for a Paxman-esque grilling.

My impression of Eastwood is of a man who has single-mindedly pursued his goal over more than 40 years. From his days on Rawhide, which ran from 1959 to 1965, this was a man who wanted to occupy the hot seat. He wanted to direct.

He helmed several episodes of his TV series, then enjoyed key collaborations with Sergio Leone (on the Dollars trilogy) and Don Siegel (on five films between 1968 and 1979, including 1971’s Dirty Harry) who he always considered his mentors.

Being a movie star was one thing; directing was something else entirely. And Eastwood always had his eye on the main prize. Becoming a box office draw was merely a means to an end. And if it meant directing himself to get a project off the starting grid, so be it.

I firmly believe that Eastwood’s directorial duties have made him the superb character actor he never was in his youth. In many of his movies an Eastwood performance lent itself to monotony. Yet via Leone and Siegel – and his own gifts, steadily expressed over time – he delivered some classic acting work.

No-one can deny the power of his acting in The Outlaw Josey Wales or in Unforgiven. In many ways Josey Wales and Will Munny are extensions of the same character. Or maybe of Eastwood himself.

Now, at 81, it looks as if all that acquired knowledge and experience are being channelled into directing. Eastwood’s last film as an actor was Gran Torino, three years ago. His newest project, a biopic of the cross-dressing homosexual J Edgar Hoover, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is out later this year. Already some are predicting Oscar glory.

And Clint? He just keeps turning them out.

Age is clearly no barrier.

Amen to that.