The silver cowboy buckle at his throat polished to a high shine, Clint Eastwood looked as pleased as his famously laconic persona would allow when he was recognised for his contribution to westerns at the weekend. At the Golden Boot awards, the movie industry's most famous gunslinger was presented with a special gong by Morgan Freeman, who appeared in Clint's Oscar-winning flick Million Dollar Baby.
Saturday's event also saw the veteran actor reunited with another old pal - Burt Reynolds, his co-star in police drama City Heat. Already the owner of one Golden Boot, Clint can now place the Founder's Award for lifetime achievement on his mantelpiece.
Westerns seem to have marked the high points of his career. In 1959 the screen icon got his big break on TV show Rawhide after he dropped into a film studio to visit a friend and an executive decided he looked "like a cowboy". Then came the unforgettable The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, while Unforgiven in 1992 was regarded as his directorial tour-de-force.
And at 76, he doesn't look like he's about to quit the movies just yet. "I watch (director) Sidney Lumet, who is 80, and I figure, I'm just a kid," he commented at last year's Oscars. "I've got a lot of stuff to do yet."
Photo: © Alphapress.com
