He might hate the reading of his movies, but you can feel the hand of destiny on Unforgiven - it was the perfect swansong to a genre. Grafted into David People's rich, multi-faceted study of an ageing gunfighter dragged out of retirement, only to unleash the demons of the past, was a commentary on Eastwood's own career as if it had been written solely for him. Within his wire-frame William Munney carries the soul of Leone's Blondie, of Josey Wales, and all the other pale riders of Eastwood's history.

Conversely, he picked up the script in 1980, even then he couldn't miss its resonance, and promptly sat on it for decade until he was old enough to make it live. "It had been in preparation with another director, but he couldn't get it off the ground, so I dropped in on the auction and put in a drawer. I remember calling the writer all those years later, he thought it'd long been dead, and I asked for a few rewrites, made a few suggestions."

It's a trait of Eastwood to obsessively circumvent potential bullshit. He talks everything into the humdrum - how he'd been skiing with his son in British Columbia and thought it would make a good location for the movie; how everything slipped into gear so easily. "We put the town there and went ahead and shot the film." Just like that, one of the greatest westerns ever made.

A year later, under the lantern gaze of the Academy Awards, he was rewarded with Best Director and Best Picture victories. Trust Hollywood to be so late in awakening to the gifts of one of their masters. "It was very nice," understates that master, "westerns are not known for being Oscar winners historically, a lot of great ones have not got recognition, so that made it doubly gratifying." Not coincidentally the film was dedicated to Don and Sergio.

Clint Eastwood On... In The Line Of Fire
(1968, WOLFGANG PETERSEN) "I'd just finished Unforgiven and didn't want to direct a picture so soon, but I really liked the material," recalls Eastwood. "So I said, 'Well let me pick a director and I'll do it. I had just seen a picture by Wolfgang Peterson called Shattered. I thought I've always had good luck with American subject matter using European directors and, of course, Das Boat was a wonderful movie."

Coming so shortly after Unforgiven this excellent thriller, given genuine punch by Peterson, was by chance a perfect companion piece to the elegiac western. Again it focuses on the issue of age, of a presidential bodyguard who has got wind of a possible assassination attempt being cooked up by John Malkovich having a ball as the psycho with a personal vendett. And it is Eastwood's last great turn as an action star that sticks with you: huffing and puffing alongside the motorcade, a superstar revealing an unusually vulnerable side.