Audiences were feeling lucky as they watched Clint Eastwood star in film after film. With his distinctive squint and a gun often doing the talking, he became the quintessential tough guy. Eastwood had been a big- and small-screen staple since the 1950s, getting his first major role as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide. He continued to rise to fame with many spaghetti westerns in the 1960s, including A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).
Eastwood made some of his most memorable movies in the 1970s, including Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), Dirty Harry (1971), and Every Which Way but Loose (1978), showing his versatility as both actor and director, which he continued through the 1980s and 1990s, lasting until his last movie as director, 2024’s Juror #2.