Clint Eastwood doesn’t plan on walking away from the cameras anytime soon.
“As an actor, I was still under contract with a studio, was in the old system, and thus forced to learn something new every year,” the director and actor, 95, told the Austrian paper Kurier in an interview published on Friday, May 30, per a translation from Reuters. “And that’s why I’ll work as long as I can still learn something, or until I’m truly senile.”
The Bridges of Madison County actor continued: “There’s no reason why a man can’t get better with age. And I have much more experience today. Sure, there are directors who lose their touch at a certain age, but I’m not one of them.”
The actor also weighed in on Hollywood’s apparent obsession with remakes and blockbuster films.
“We live in an era of remakes and franchises,” Eastwood explained. “I’ve shot sequels three times, but I haven’t been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home.”
Eastwood added, “I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea.”
Eastwood has continued to focus on his work while simultaneously mourning the loss of his longtime girlfriend, Christina Sandera, who died in July 2024.
“Christina was a lovely, caring woman, and I will miss her very much,” Eastwood, 94, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter at the time.
The pair were together for more than a decade. In 2014, Us confirmed that the couple met while she was a hostess working at Eastwood’s Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. (The Oscar winner was formerly the mayor of the cozy beach town.)
Though they mostly maintained their privacy, the pair made their red carpet debut in 2015 at the Academy Awards. Eastwood’s film American Sniper was up for six awards, including Best Picture. She continued to accompany him at various events, including the premieres of his projects Sully, The Mule, The 15:17 to Paris and Richard Jewell.
Eastwood was married twice before his romance with Sandera. The actor wed model Maggie Johnson in 1953. They share two children, son Kyle and daughter Allison. The exes divorced in 1984.
More than a decade later, Clint tied the knot for a second time with Dina Eastwood in 1996. The pair welcomed daughter Morgan later that year. Dina and Clint split in 2013 after 17 years of marriage and finalized their divorce the following year. (Dina moved on with current husband Scott Fisher in 2016.)
