In almost every interview I have seen with Eastwood he has the same self-effacing approach. It’s almost like he’s trying to show how much acting it takes to play somebody so opposite to his own personality.
Damn, I was hoping this was going to be about the Howard brother with talent.
Go for it! 
To answer the OP’s question, yes, I really do love Clint. He has turned into my favorite actor and one of my favorite directors over the years. I hope we have him for many more years – I’ll be very sad to see him go someday.
He was right to pass on both of those roles, by the way. His intuition about knowing what kind of roles to choose are part of success. He’s never put himself in anything where he would have seemed miscast, and he would have been badly miscast as either Superman or James Bond. James Bond, especially. Were they expecting Clint to do a fake British accent? I’m pretty sure Clint Eastwood was never exactly Meryl Streep when it came to accents, and that would have been a recipe for disaster. Knowing when a part isn’t right for you, even if it’s a big, juicy, lucrative part, is something a lot of actors could stand to learn.
How do you explain Gran Torino? As for the man, meh. I do love a lot of his older movies and Rowdy! Yehaw.
Not to answer for Diogenes the Cynic, but what about it? It was critically acclaimed and did reasonably well at the box office, as I recall. It certainly did nothing to impair his status a highly successful actor/director.
What about it? He was perfect in it. What other man in his 80’s can say “get off my lawn” and still sound badass?
I like the real Clint. He’s a jazz player and fan, like me, and he has a classy ease about him.
The screen Clint would probably break my jaw soon as look at me.
Are you kidding me? That movie was fucking amazing.
Clint is a da man - a very talented actor and director. In the Line of Fire is one of my alltime favorite movies: action, adventure, history, psychology, romance, politics. It’s all in there.
That said, I’ve read that he’s treated some of his girlfriends poorly over the years - not physical abuse, but love-'em-and-leave-'em callousness.
I think Clint Howard is actually Charles Martin Smith’s brother, not Ronnie’s. BTW, their mother was in *“Apollo 13”, playing Jim Lovell’s mother. She proudly says that “My Jimmy could fly a washing machine!”
My favorite line: she asks Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, “Are you boys in the space program too?”
Let us not forget Cheyenne, Clint Walker, if we’re going to start listing the non-Eastwood Clints.
Is it that Clint sounds like Flint that makes it sound so tough?
What if Bob Steele had been Flint Steele? Better than Bob Cox, right?
Different strokes I guess. It was painful for me to watch. His overt growling was more humorous than badass to me. His racism was way over the top. But I concede the point hopesperson made.
I’ve always been a fan - and one of his movies was one of the first real dates I ever went on, so I have fond memories of his movies too.
I’m exposed to ten times as much racism every time I turn on my computer. In fact, you’re the first person I’ve talked to who didn’t like the movie (though I haven’t really gone around talking to people about it).
Just to clarify, while Eastwood did a fine job of acting (and mildly subverting his unsentimental Dirty Harry/Uomo senza nome persona) in In The Line Of Fire, this film was directed by Wolfgang Peterson (of Das Boot, A Perfect Storm, and a bunch of other forgettable crap). Eastwood has directed many other memorable films, both with him in front of the camera and not, including High Plains Drifter, Bird, White Hunter, Black Heart, Unforgiven, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Mystic River, Invictus, et cetera. Even if he’d never stepped in front of the camera, he’d be known as a steady producing, top shelf director whose oeuvre covers several distinct genres (westerns, action/police procedural, biopics, romance, science fiction, drama, sport), and even though he’s stumbled on a few films, he’s never been unwilling to take a risk, and he’s succeeded more often than he’s failed.
His range as an actor is more limited, but within that range he’s phenomenal. Nobody says, “Get off my lawn!” with more veiled menace than a 78 year old Eastwood.
Stranger
If you think his portrayal of an old, embittered Detroit assembly line worker whose formerly whitebread, middle-class neighborhood transformed into an immigrant neighborhood was “way over the top” then you’ve never actually been exposed to this kind of person. If anything, he was more restrained than otherwise.
Stranger
Apparently you missed the thread on it here, then. It was far short of universally beloved. Mr. singular and I never got through the whole thing.