If you’ve been on a dating app recently, Clint Eastwood’s behavior will unfortunately sound familiar.
On Wednesday, People got access to Shawn Levy’s new biography about the Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker titled, “Clint: The Man and The Movies,” and decided to razor-focus on the book’s claims about Eastwood’s very messy love life.
People’s article on Levy’s book zeros in on the affairs the now 95-year-old “Dirty Harry” star had while married to his first wife, Maggie Johnson, from 1953 to 1984 — including his affair and yearslong relationship with his co-star Sondra Locke.
Johnson and Eastwood had two children, a son, Kyle, 57, and daughter Alison, 53. Eastwood also has six other known children with five other women.
Levy’s book alleges that while the “Bridges of Madison County” star was married to Johnson, he picked up women in his acting classes, on studio lots and even in the apartment complex in which he lived with his wife.
“One thing Mag had to learn about me was that I was going to do as I pleased,” Eastwood told Photoplay about Johnson in 1963, per Levy. “She had to accept that, because if she didn’t, we wouldn’t be married.”
The “Unforgiven” star was also reportedly quoted by Levy as saying, “I’m independent, a vagabond, and [Johnson] accepts me as I am and doesn’t strangle me with female possessiveness.”
It should be noted that The New York Times says in its positive review of Levy’s book that the “Rahwide” star did not grant Levy an interview, and instead Levy relied on archival interviews Eastwood and those closest to him have given in the past.
Levy used several quotes from Richard Schickel’s authorized 1997 biography, “Clint Eastwood: A Biography,” which includes quotes from interviews Schickel conducted with the spaghetti western legend.
Levy includes a quote from Schickel’s book in which Eastwood admits to Schickel that promiscuity just feels “habitual” to him, and that fooling around “became … I don’t know… addictive… like you have to have another cigarette.”
Although it’s unclear if Johnson knew about Eastwood’s f-boy attitude during their marriage, Schickel’s book implies that she had her suspicions but was in “denial.”
Schickel wrote in his book that Johnson was “careful to avoid asking [Eastwood] difficult questions. Possibly she was naive. Perhaps she was, as we would now put it, in denial.”
Johnson did, however, express her concerns at least once. According to Schickel’s book, Johnson once asked the couple’s close friend, Fritz Manes, if Eastwood was “playing around,” and Manes reassured her by playing dumb.
Schickel wrote that Manes “believes that Maggie did not fully admit to herself that Clint was unfaithful to her until the late seventies, some time after his relationship with Sondra Locke was well established and widely rumored.”
Schickel also quoted Johnson later telling him:
“I was never very realistic about some things,” Johnson told Schickel of Eastwood. “I used to always hope for the best. I wanted to protect myself. I wondered about it, but I didn’t dwell on it, because it probably would have driven me insane. I’m sure there must have been times, but I just preferred to hang in there and not worry too much about it.”
To read about Locke’s sad fate with Eastwood, head over to People.
