Go ahead, make my day

“I was one of the people who took the hero further away from the white hat. In A Fistful of Dollars, you didn’t know who was the hero till a quarter of the way through the film, and then you weren’t sure; you figured he was the protagonist, but only because everybody else was crappier than he was. I like the way heroes are now. I like them with strengths, weaknesses, lack of virtue.”—Clint Eastwood

Having starred in 44 films and directed 27, Clint Eastwood is a living legend. This book traces the evolution of his star persona from the mysterious gunslingers he played in such Westerns as the Dollars trilogy, High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider, and Unforgiven, to the rogue cops and other troubled macho heroes he brought to life in the Dirty Harry films, The Gauntlet, Tightrope, Heartbreak Ridge, and In the Line of Fire. Along the way, Eastwood has also surprised his fans by taking uncharacteristic roles in comedies (Every Which Way But Loose), adventure films (White Hunter, Black Heart), and romantic movies (The Bridges of Madison County). In addition, no book on Eastwood would be complete without a look at some of the most acclaimed films he has directed, including Bird, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and Flags of Our Fathers.

The Movie Icon series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren"t actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, TASCHEN shows you. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.

All the icons in the first 20 books of the series were voted for by over 7500 TASCHEN readers in a special online poll!

About the Series:
More bang for your buck! "... a fast-food, high-energy fix on the topic at hand." The New York Times Book Review

About the author:
Douglas Keesey is a professor of film and literature at Cal Poly. He is the author of TASCHEN"s Erotic Cinema and Paul Verhoeven.