Photo byTCM.com

At 92 years young, Clint Eastwood remains one of Hollywood's most tough and rugged actors and directors.

According to IMDB.com, Eastwood, who began his career on TV's Rawhide series, is "known on-set as a director for filming very few takes and having an easy shooting schedule."

Tim Robbins once noted that when working on Mystic River (2003), Eastwood would usually request for only one take, or two "if you were lucky," and that one day's filming would consist of starting "no earlier than 9 a.m. and you leave, usually, after lunch."

As IMDB.com documented, Empire (UK) magazine ranked Eastwood as Number 2 in their October 1997 list of "Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time."

As IMDB also chronicles, Eastwood "gained popularity with his first three major films, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) (which weren't released in America until 1967/68). Soon afterward Jolly Films (which produced A Fistful of Dollars (1964)) came out with a film called The Magnificent Stranger, which was actually two episodes of Rawhide (1959) edited together. Eastwood sued and the film was withdrawn.

As IMDB also reveals, Eastwood won his role in Rawhide while visiting a friend at the CBS lot when a studio exec spotted him because he "looked like a cowboy."

From March 20, 1951, to March 19, 1953, Eastwood was a lifeguard and projectionist of training films for the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Ord in Marina, California.

In 2000, the actor was a recipient of John F. Kennedy Center Honors. That same year, he also received the Career Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Eastwood is of English, Scottish, and Irish, and has smaller amounts of German, Dutch, and Welsh ancestry. His character's voice was provided by Enrico Maria Salerno in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). For the trilogy's American release, Eastwood redubbed his dialogue in English.

As IMDB also mentions, when directing, Eastwood "insists that his actors wear as little makeup as possible and he likes to print first takes. As a result, his films consistently finish on schedule and on budget."

Eastwood's production company is Malpaso Productions, which he formed in 1968. That same year, the company released its first feature film: Hang 'Em High.

To read more about Clint Eastwood, click here.