Invincible Eastwood

RUMOURS of Clint Eastwood’s retirement have been exaggerated.

He’s at an age – 80 in May – when most people are content to take things a little easier, but the actordirector who achieved fame as The Man With No Name in a hat-trick of spaghetti westerns is working as hard, if not harder, than ever.

He was in London yesterday for the premiere of his latest film as a director, Invictus, the true story of how Nelson Mandela used his country’s rugby team, the Springboks, to unite a people divided by apartheid.

“I sort of planned at not working at his particular time of life, but nobody can plan on what they are going to do when they reach my age of 49... er, 39,” he says, willing to joke about his pensionable status.

“I’m enjoying work now more than I ever have, just as much certainly, and I’m at an age when I can take on more challenges than I have in the past because I know more. Also, at this age you forget more, but I’m trying to avoid that.

“I enjoy making films behind the camera equally to making them in front of the camera all those years. I’m lucky enough to work in a profession that I have really liked and I figure out I will continue until someone hits me over the head and says get out.”

That seems unlikely for a man who, in the past few years alone, has directed Oscar-winning boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima and Changeling, as well as starring in and directing Gran Torino, playing an elderly man taking the law into his own hands to deal with the unruly elements of his neighbourhood.

He was going to quit acting after Million Dollar Baby, but that picture’s success led to offers he couldn’t refuse, despite not wanting to go out like a prizefighter who fights one too many times.

Then Gran Torino came along. “It seemed an interesting part and was for a man my age. I figured it wasn’t stretching that much so I decided to go ahead and give it another shot,” explains Eastwood.

“I’m still saying that. If some great roles came up – but I don’t know how many great roles there are for a guy who’s 38, so you just don’t know. You just never say never.

“I had always planned when I started directing in 1970 that, after a few years, I’d get tired of looking at myself on the screen and say hey, let’s not do that any more. But every once in a while something pops up and I’m not saying it won’t happen again, but probably the odds get less as you set yourself for roles that fit your age group.”

What Eastwood has, of course, is a wealth of experience of Hollywood, having worked his way up from bit parts to Oscar-winning director.

But he’ll tell you that he’s still learning.

The first time he was at Universal Studios was in the Fifties when, as a contract player, he didn’t get to do much. “I played different parts that sometimes reappear on television and I hide under the table,” he says (perhaps thinking of a film in which his co-star was a talking mule).

“Some of them were respectable. But I learnt a lot there. I spent most of my time, because I wasn’t employed a lot in the pictures, going around to sets to watch how people worked.

“Later I came back, after doing the pictures with Sergio Leone, under different circumstances and it was owned by MCA and I was doing leading roles, so it was a little bit different situation. But I learnt a lot then, too.

“I learn a lot every day and even to this day.

Going back to the other question, ‘why do I keep doing it?’ because I always learn something.

Every picture you learn something, about people, about yourself, about what’s going on in the world, how the world’s changed, how you’ve changed.”

Of course, talking to Eastwood is more than just hearing about the old days. Invictus hands him the responsibility of making a film about Nelson Mandela (played in the film by Morgan Freeman, who’s worked with him on Million Dollar Baby and Unforgiven). He was suitably impressed when he met the African leader.

“I’d seen him on newsreels and various film presentations over the years. He’s an extremely charismatic man and he has that million dollar smile when he walks into a room and everybody else wants to smile with him,” he says.

INEVITABLY, though, the questions return to his long career, but he ducks naming his biggest challenge as a director and the acting performance of which he’s most proud.

“When you’ve done as many films as I’ve done you just kinda keep going. I never look back and think too much about them.” he says.

He trusts his instincts when chosing movies.

Invictus – and he turns the conversation back to the picture he’s here to talk about – isn’t a picture about rugby, he insists.

“It’s a story that I liked. Mr Freeman called me up and said he had a really good script. He didn’t even tell me it was about Nelson Mandela.

I read the script and liked it very much.

I’ve always admired Mr Mandela and was amazed about this incident because it seemed such a creative way to unify a country that was really in deep trouble, on the brink of civil war.

“I guess this is something politicians around the world today could learn a lot from, having a certain creativity and bringing people together instead of just talking about it and then not doing it.

“He seemed to be a rather unique person.

That was my reason for doing the picture. The rugby was exicting and fun to have in there, but if it had been Nelson Mandela and Texas Hold ’em Poker I suppose I would still have done it because I admire the man.”

■ Invictus (12A) opens in cinemas on Friday.