When you listen to Ray Charles, there's never any doubt whose voice that is.
— Clint Eastwood
In 'Changeling,' I tried to show something you'd never see nowadays - a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.
My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn't take very good care of himself.
There's no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don't try to adapt it, make it commercial.
I think Pebble Beach is kind of a unique place on the planet.
My uncle played rugby, and my dad played football, and they used to argue which game was the roughest - and everybody agreed rugby was. It's a great team sport, and to be successful, every person has to play in the same level.
Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.
I think everybody has something that they've been obsessed about in their lifetime.
I'm a mentor to anybody who's interested.
You should never give up your inner self.
Yes, I'm always - I'm always surprised when you make a film and you live with it a while and you put it out, you never dream that anybody is ever going to want to really see it.
I've always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It's the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one.
When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.
I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.
I do believe in the energy and the productivity of the American business world.
In my career as a director, there's always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: 'What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?' At that time you have to say: 'OK, forget that and just go ahead.'
I tend to believe that audiences are relatively well-balanced people.
Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you're the mayor. The bad news is, now you're the mayor.
I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.
Comedy isn't necessarily all dialogue. Think of Buster Keaton: the poker face and all this chaos going on all around him. Sometimes it's a question of timing, of the proper rhythm.
I played a little basketball. Some football in junior high.
I just don't like killing creatures.
Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.
I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don't have a toy, they'll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.
'Unforgiven' is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, 'This is great, but I'd like to do this when I'm older.' So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.
As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I'd eventually run out of steam on that, and that would've been the end of it.
In 'Gran Torino,' I play a guy who's racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you're never too old to learn and embrace people that you don't understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.
If you ever go to a music session, you'll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they're reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.
Governor Romney has a great business background. He is extremely well educated. He has several degrees from Harvard, including, you know, business and including a law degree.
In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don't try to play younger than I really am.
Everybody is idealistic when you're a kid.
I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.
Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn't done in life. They wish they hadn't kicked their dog when they were ten or something.
Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, 'Clint, you must remember, it's only a movie.'
You can't stop everything from happening. But we've gotten to a point where we're certainly trying. If a car doesn't have four hundred air bags in it, then it's no good.
What you put into life is what you get out of it.
If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.
I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.
Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.
You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.
My dad was a big admirer of Sergeant York stories from the First World War.
I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the '60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.
God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don't have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I'm sure he didn't call everybody jerks.
I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.
You hear about actors being late and all that sort of stuff, but you never find that with an actor who's directed, because an actor who's directed understands all the problems your production is going through.
As long as somebody finances you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language; then, hopefully, it's a success.
I love big business!
Liberals are not always so liberal with people who disapprove - disapprove of their point of view.
I knew Billy Wilder socially and would have loved to work with him.
A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn't mean they're going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.
