Who Is Actor/Director Clint Eastwood?

In 1971 he played a tough cop in Dirty Harry, which was the year`s second biggest box office success and led to several sequels.

Clint Eastwood was at the Cannes film festival on Tuesday with his new movie, originally titled "The Changeling" but now provisionally re-named "The Exchange".

Here are some facts on the 77-year-old actor.

* EARLY LIFE:

-- Eastwood was born in San Francisco on May 31, 1930, son of an accountant, and was educated at Oakland Technical High School and Los Angeles City College.

-- He was delivering trucks to Universal film studios, when a friend who worked there got him an audition. Universal gave him a few minor parts but dropped him 18 months later.

* BIG BREAKS:

-- His big break came when a CBS director casting a new 30-minute western series, "Rawhide", picked him out and signed him up for the lead. CBS put out the series in 1959 and it ran for eight years.

-- Italian director Sergio Leone later spotted the characteristics that were to make Eastwood into a cult figure and cast him in "A Fistful of Dollars", which took first Italy, then the world, by storm.

-- In 1971, Eastwood replaced Frank Sinatra in "Dirty Harry." He played a tough San Francisco cop in the film, which was the year's second biggest box office success and led to several sequels.

* MORE SUCCESS:

-- His first film as director was "Play Misty for Me", a thriller about a disc-jockey pursued by an amorous fan, and during the making of "Dirty Harry" Eastwood took over as director when Don Siegel fell ill.

-- In 1972 Eastwood settled in Carmel, about 80 miles (120 km) south of San Francisco, and set up his own restaurant there. His acting success continued in films like "Every Which Way But Loose" (1978) and "Escape from Alcatraz" (1979).

-- A lifelong devotee of jazz, Eastwood directed "Bird" (1988), a film biography of saxophonist Charlie Parker.

* A POLITICAL DIVERSION:

-- In 1986, Eastwood turned his talents to politics and became mayor of Carmel. However in February 1988 he announced that, after almost two years in the job, he would not seek a second term.

* REWARDS:

-- Eastwood won the Academy Award for best picture and the best director award for the western "Unforgiven" (1992).

-- His noted films of later years have included "In the Line of Fire" (1993), "Absolute Power" (1997), "Space Cowboys" (2000), and "Mystic River" (2003), a dark tale of murder and revenge that many critics believed to be one of Eastwood's finest films as a director.

-- In 2005 he earned an Academy Award for best director for the boxing drama "Million Dollar Baby" (2004), which also received an Oscar for best picture.

-- He then directed two parallel World War Two films "Flags of Our Fathers" (2006) and "Letters from Iwo Jima" (2006), which both focused on the battle of Iwo Jima. In February 2007, then French President Jacques Chirac awarded him the Legion d'Honneur order, calling the two films lessons in humanity.