Clint Eastwood has repeatedly said he’d never say goodbye to moviemaking, but his son revealed that the 96-year-old has already done so.
Kyle Eastwood, 53, an award-winning musician and film composer and one of Eastwood’s eight adult children, said that his Oscar-winning father has “retired.” He made the comments to France Info while reflecting on what it was like to work on movies with his dad.
“I’ve been very lucky to be able to work with him on a lot of films. It was a great experience for me,” he said. “I have a lot of good memories of working with him. Now he’s retired.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Eastwood’s representatives for comment.
Kyle Eastwood’s reveal about his father gained traction following the actor’s 96th birthday on May 31.
Eastwood shut down rumors about his retirement last year in a statement to Deadline after an outlet reported that the actor had announced that he was slowing down.
The “phony comments,” which were also circulated by major outlets, quoted the actor as saying, “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 told Deadline, “A couple of items about me have recently shown up in the news. I thought I would set the record straight. I can confirm I’ve turned 95. I can also confirm that I never gave an interview to an Austrian publication called Kurier, or any other writer in recent weeks, and that the interview is entirely phony.”
In 2021, he admitted he wondered whether or not he should keep going when he told the L.A. Times, “What the hell am I still working for in my 90s? Are people going to start throwing tomatoes at you? I’ve gotten to the point where I wondered if that was enough, but not to the point where I decided it was. If you roll out a few turkeys, they’ll tell you soon enough.”
Eastwood won four Oscars for his directing and starring in Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), taking home Best Director and Best Actor for each. If his son’s words turn out to be true, his final will have been 2024’s Juror #2.
“If this is his swan song,” the Daily Beast’s film critic Nick Schager wrote in his glowing review at the time, “he goes out with the modest grace, intelligence, and complexity that’s marked his unparalleled oeuvre—right up to a closing note that doesn’t proffer an answer but instead, fittingly, poses a question.”
