Monday
24Nov2008
Eastwood May Retire...But Only From Acting
Monday, November 24, 2008 at 12:00AM
I know a guy who's seen
Gran Torino,
Clint
Eastwood's upcoming drama that Warner Bros. is positioning for an
Oscar run. This guy is not what I'd call a real Clint Eastwood fan. I don't
think he has anything against Clint, but he's not the type of guy who looked
forward to
Changeling, say. 
Eastwood acts for the first time in four years, coming off his best modern performance (and probably his best overall performance) in Million Dollar Baby. And he had said that acting was probably in the past before making Gran Torino and now, he's at it again. Clint told The Telegraph, "You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don't want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you're not performing at your best."
He added that Gran Torino "will probably do it for me as far as acting is concerned."
We had heard not too long ago that Eastwood was eying a script in which he'd play Mark Twain, which would've been a very unusual proposition. I'm actually a little surprised he even acted in Gran Torino, given his remarkable pace over the past half decade, which still shows no signs of slowing up.
He is right, though; you would like to be able to call your own shot. Peter Sellers, who died too young, was in the remarkable Being There, but he followed that Oscar-nominated performance with The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, the worst movie he had made in a decade or so, and it turned out to be his final performance.
Clint has better odds in that regard, though, since the only director he's worked for since In the Line of Fire is Clint Eastwood.
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