‘I long for the good old days': Clint Eastwood lets rip on Hollywood

News.com.au

03-06-2025

Clint Eastwood is channelling his 'Get off my lawn!' character from Gran Torino.
In a new interview, the 95-year-old actor and director slammed Hollywood's growing reliance on sequels and remakes.
'My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home,' the Oscar winner told Kuria, an Austrian newspaper.
'I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea,' added Eastwood, whose career spans seven decades.
'We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while.'
Eastwood is likely referring to the 1970s and '80s Dirty Harry movie series, in which he starred in four sequels: Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool.
The man puts his money where his mouth is. Last year, Eastwood directed Juror No. 2, an acclaimed original courtroom thriller starring Nicholas Hoult.
While the film made the National Board of Review's top 10 list, it did not receive a wide release in the US. It grossed $24 million overseas.
Eastwood, who's won four Academy Awards for the films Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven, says he won't retire for 'a long time.'
'There's no reason why a man can't get better with age,' the Mystic River director said. 'And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I'm not one of them.'
A secret to his longevity, Eastwood says, are the work habits he learned early in his career as an actor.
'As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year,' he said.
'And that's why I'll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I'm truly senile.'