PHOTOGRAPH - The last of his kind: Clint Eastwood turns 95

Casting agency employees in the 1950s were certain: this boy would never amount to anything. "They told me my voice was too soft, my teeth too bad, and I needed to stop squinting," Clint Eastwood later recalled. Photo: Los Angeles, 1956.

At the beginning of his career, Clint Eastwood endured 217 episodes of the television series "Rawhide" until 1964, when he received a script from a then-unknown Italian director who had already been rejected by Henry Fonda, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson. Eastwood liked the story of the taciturn stranger and flew to Europe, packing his "Rawhide" pistols, a revolver belt, a flat felt hat, black jeans, and a few boxes of cigarillos. On set in Spain, he also added a poncho. Sergio Leone's western "Per un Pugno di Dollari" ("A Fistful of Dollars") made Clint Eastwood known as a swashbuckling cowboy in the 1960s. Photo: London, 1967, for a film promotion.

In his early years as an actor, Eastwood faced criticism: his acting was too stiff, his emotional range was too limited, and his facial expressions were wooden. Even Sergio Leone is said to have said that Eastwood had exactly two facial expressions: with and without a hat.

The cold-blooded cop Harry Callahan from "Dirty Harry" became a cult figure in 1971. Eastwood played the lead role as a laconic antihero—a middle-class hero for 1970s America, when the glamour of Kennedy had faded. The protagonist with the .44 Magnum espoused the simple philosophy that it's okay to shoot people as long as you hit the right people. In 1971, not only did the long wait for his breakthrough end, but also his chance as a director ("Sadistico"). Image: Film still from "Dirty Harry."

With his success on screen, Eastwood also gained a macho, playboy image. Pictured here with his first wife, Maggie Johnson (in yellow), whom he was married to from 1953 to 1984. Los Angeles, circa 1960.

Sondra Locke first starred alongside Clint Eastwood in the western "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976). The two became a couple and made numerous other films together until the mid-1980s, including "The Gauntlet," "Bronco Billy," and "Sudden Impact." Photo: 1977.

Eastwood is committed to maintaining liberal gun laws. He has been repeatedly criticized for this – especially when he subtly weaves guns into the narrative framework of his American passion stories, as in "Gran Torino" (2008).

Since the 1950s, Clint Eastwood has been a Republican, supporting the presidential candidacies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John McCain, and especially Mitt Romney. In 1986, he was elected mayor of his hometown of Carmel with 72 percent of the vote. He served until 1988.

While other stars came and went, Clint Eastwood tirelessly directed over 40 films, acted in more than 70, and won four Oscars. Over time, Eastwood's genre films became disguises for deeper questions about guilt, destruction, and revenge. Eastwood takes the side of the weak. And in the end, he doesn't run away, but faces his responsibility. Film still from "High Plains Drifter" (1973) with Billy Curtis.

What's special about Eastwood's late work is that he not only manages his own legend, but also systematically dismantles the carefully established character of the taciturn gunslinger. In "Million Dollar Baby" (2004), Maggie (Hilary Swank) says to her boxing trainer Frankie: "Most people think I'm pretty tough." She smiles. Eastwood doesn't smile. With narrowed eyes, he replies: "Kid, being tough isn't enough."