By Michael Childers

Clint Eastwood (born Clinton Eastwood, Jr. on May 31, 1930) is an iconic American actor, composer, and Academy Award-winning film director and film producer.

While his recent work as a director, on films like Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, is consistently praised by critics, Eastwood is perhaps most famous for his tough guy, anti-hero acting roles, including Inspector 'Dirty' Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series and the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns.

Clint Eastwood has won or been nominated for a great clutch of Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and BAFTAS.

He has been nominated for the Academy Award for directing and producing eight times, winning for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby (his other nominations come for Mystic River and Letters from Iwo Jima).

He was nominated twice for acting - Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby.

He is one of only three living directors to have directed two Best Picture winners, Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, the second of which earned him his second Best Director Oscar.

At age 74, he was the oldest director to achieve this distinction.