02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Clint Eastwood's ‘addictive' affairs exposed in new tell-all book
Clint Eastwood lived like a bachelor during his 31-year marriage to his first wife, Maggie Johnson — and she knew about it, according to a new tell-all book about the San Francisco-born filmmaker's life.
Biographer Shawn Levy's 'Clint: The Man and the Movies,' which hit bookshelves Tuesday, July 1, delves into the details of the 95-year-old's romantic relationships over the years, drawing from archival interviews.
'By many accounts, including his own, he more or less comported himself as if he were a bachelor,' Levy wrote of Eastwood's marriage to Johnson, which spanned from 1953 to 1984, according to a report by People on the book.
Levy then asserted that Johnson was aware of Eastwood's infidelity and claimed he would pick up women at his acting classes, on studio lots where he worked and even at the apartment complex where he lived with Johnson.
'One thing Mag had to learn about me was that I was going to do as I pleased,' the 'Dirty Harry' star told Photoplay in 1963, according to Levy's book. 'She had to accept that, because if she didn't, we wouldn't be married.'
While he was married to Johnson, Eastwood is believed to have had affairs with Sondra Locke, who starred in his 1975 film 'The Outlaw Josey Wales,' and stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis, among others.
Locke alleged that Eastwood told her 'there was no real relationship left' between him and Johnson in her 1997 memoir, 'The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly: A Hollywood Journey.'
Levy noted that Eastwood admitted his affairs became 'addictive … like you have to have another cigarette' in Richard Schickel's 1997 book 'Clint Eastwood: A Biography.'
Eastwood and Johnson eventually divorced years into his relations with Locke, who he was linked to until 1989.
He went on to marry Bay Area news anchor and actor Dina Ruiz in 1996. They were together until 2014.
Eastwood has a total of eight known children with six different women, including two with Johnson, one with Ruiz and one with Tunis.
In Locke's memoir, she said she had two abortions and a tubal ligation because Eastwood said that he didn't want any more kids. The filmmaker later denied the claims.
Eastwood most recently dated Christina Sandera, who was his partner for 10 years before she died of a heart attack last July.
