January 1, 2006
Academy Award winning director Clint Eastwood has been selected to receive the Guild’s highest tribute — the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award — in recognition of his distinguished career in motion picture directing. "Clint Eastwood is the consummate filmmaker," DGA President Michael Apted said in announcing the award. "As one of the most prolific, versatile directors in the history of the medium, there isn't a genre that Clint Eastwood hasn't mastered in the more than 25 films he has directed over the past 35 years. The DGA is proud to honor his deft craftsmanship and brilliant vision with its Lifetime Achievement Award. His ongoing body of work continues to touch generations of moviegoers and bring huge audiences into movie theaters. He does it all with great class, intelligence, and style."
The Lifetime Achievement Award winner is selected by the present and past presidents of the DGA. In the Guild’s 70-year history, only 31 directors have been recognized with the honor as the award is not presented on an annual basis. Eastwood now joins this illustrious list, which includes Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra and John Ford.
In addition to the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award, Eastwood received the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement this year for his 2004 film Million Dollar Baby, which also won him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. The film earned a total of seven Academy Award nominations, four Oscars, two Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Actress, and the New York Film Critics Award for Best Director. Eastwood’s 1992 film Unforgiven was also met with unparalleled critical acclaim, receiving in 1993 the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, nine Academy Award nominations, four Oscars including Best Director, and the Golden Globe for Best Director. In 2004, Eastwood was nominated for both the DGA Award the Academy Award for his direction of Mystic River. Among Eastwood’s other innumerable accolades are: the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (1995), the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute and the Film Society at Lincoln Center (1996), the Lifetime Career Achievement Award from New York’s National Board of Review (2000), the Kennedy Center Honors Award (2000), and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award (2003).
With a film directing career that has spanned over three decades, Eastwood’s other feature credits include the current Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Blood Work (2002), Space Cowboys (2000), True Crime (1998), Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1996), Absolute Power (1996), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), A Perfect World (1993), The Rookie (1990), White Hunter, Black Heart (1989), Bird (1988), Heartbreak Ridge (1987), Pale Rider (1985), Sudden Impact (1983), Honkytonk Man (1982), Firefox (1982), Bronco Billy (1980), The Gauntlet (1977), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Eiger Sanction (1975), High Plains Drifter (1973), Breezy (1973), and Play Misty For Me (1971).
Born Clinton Eastwood Jr. on May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California, Eastwood was raised in Oakland, California, after moving from town to town as his father sought work during the Great Depression. He began his career in 1957 as a contract player for Universal Pictures and got his first break on the TV series Rawhide (1958), in which he played cowpuncher Rowdy Yates for six years. Eastwood’s association with jazz is well documented, as is his assertion that had his directing, acting or producing careers not been successful, he would have chosen to be a musician. His documentary Piano Blues, in which Eastwood explores his life-long passion for piano blues, concluded Martin Scorsese’s 2003 series The Blues for PBS.