"You get trapped by an image, but I've overcome it to some degree," commented Clint Eastwood in a Gentleman's Quarterly interview with Bernard Weinraub. "What the hell! You make an impact in a certain kind of role and everyone thinks you're that person. That's fine. It's nice in a way--you've set out to do what you want to do. But I don't carry a .44 Magnum around. . . . I've fought my way out of the genre."

Still, as Cosmopolitan writer Michael Segell noted, "Eastwood invites comparison to the rugged, laconic tough guys he's played during thirty-plus years of filmmaking. A loner with conservative working-class values . . . he admits to sharing a few traits of temperament with some of the maverick characters he's come to be identified with: Dirty Harry, The Man With No Name, William Munny (the hero of Unforgiven), and other moral avengers whose gritty independence pushes them to the...