PDF File Clint Eastwood Interview Film Directing. Clint Eastwood was already a box-office superstar in front of the camera when he turned to directing in 1971 with Play Misty for Me. And while he maintained his career as a movie star for several decades to come, he achieved his greatest success and acclaim directing over thirty films since then. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he made some iconic westerns such as High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), and action movies like The Gauntlet (1977) and Sudden Impact (1983), but it was with his Charlie Parker biopic Bird, which played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1988, that Eastwood gained a new global respect as a filmmaker.