Perhaps the icon of macho movie stars, and a living legend, Clint Eastwood has become a standard in international cinema. Born on this day in 1930 in San Francisco, the son of a steel worker, Eastwood was a college dropout from Los Angeles College, prior to getting his start in acting.

Like most superstars, Clint Eastwood's success can be attributed to equal parts good fortune, tenacity, and talent. Eastwood may have been too young to fight in World War II, but he managed to miss out on action in Korea too. On leave as a G.I., his plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean and steely-eyed Clint swam three miles to shore. He later was made boot camp swimming instructor and missed out on action in Korea (confined to base). Encouraged to try acting by two of his Army buddies, David Janssen and Martin Milner, he landed a contract at Universal Studios in 1954, earning 75 USD a week playing bit parts in B-grade movies like Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955). He was dropped when some studio execs decided his Adam's apple was too big. The determined Eastwood swallowed his pride and, over the next few years, he dug swimming pools between playing bit parts in movies and on TV. While visiting a friend at CBS, Eastwood was spotted by a network exec who cast him as cattle driver Rowdy Yates in the long-running western series "Rawhide" (1959). That, in turn, led to spaghetti stardom in a string of Sergio Leone westerns, beginning with Per un pugno di dollari (1964) ("A Fistful of Dollars").

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