IV.

1990s to Today

In the 1990s Eastwood started to show his exceptional versatility. He began the decade acting in and directing White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), a film inspired by the life of motion-picture director John Huston. Eastwood’s critical breakthrough as a director and producer was with Unforgiven (1992), a Western about a reformed gunslinger (played by Eastwood) who comes out of retirement for one last job. The film won four Academy Awards, including best director and best picture. In 1993 Eastwood starred as a Secret Service agent in the drama In the Line of Fire and directed and acted in A Perfect World, a film about the pursuit of a kidnapper.

Eastwood added composing to his repertoire with the romantic film The Bridges of Madison County (1995), a movie that he not only directed, produced, and starred in but for which he also wrote the music. He filled the same roles for the action movies Absolute Power (1997), True Crime (1999), and Space Cowboys (2000).

Eastwood earned further acclaim as a director and producer with the chilling drama Mystic River (2003), which earned him Academy Award nominations for best director and best picture and brought Sean Penn his first Oscar for best actor. Eastwood won his second Oscar for best director with Million Dollar Baby (2004), a film about an aging boxing trainer (Eastwood) and his female pupil that also won Academy Awards for best picture, best actress (Hilary Swank), and best supporting actor (Morgan Freeman). Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, two World War II films by Eastwood depicting the Battle of Iwo Jima from both the American and the Japanese perspectives, were released in 2006.

Eastwood heads his own production company, Malpaso. He has been the recipient of a number of career awards, including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1994, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1996, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1998. From 1986 to 1988 Eastwood served as mayor of Carmel, California.