If you ask anybody who knows a damn about cinema who the manliest manin Hollywood is, there’s only one answer you’ll get. He reinvented the cowboy and practically trademarked the steely-eyed gaze. The Man With No Name has a name, and even that is manly: Clint Eastwood.

Clinton Eastwood was born in San Francisco on May 31, 1930. In highschool, despite encouragement from his teachers, he was uninterested in drama and instead played a number of sports. He was drafted into the army during the Korean War, although he never served overseas. While aboard a bomber the plane crashed into the ocean, and Clint had to swim three miles in to shore. Shortly thereafter, he leftmilitary service, moved to LA and got married.

Early in his film career, Clint struggled with management and what directors called his “amateurish” acting characteristics. Ironically,many of these traits, like his stiff manner and habit of hissing hislines, would later become oft-imitated trademarks of his acting style.

Clint's big career breakthrough came in 1958, when he was signed to star in CBS’s Western television show Rawhide. Working on the show was tough for Clint but it launched his career and his image – the ultimate man of the frontier. When a co-star of Rawhide turned down an opportunity to star in a film by then-unknown Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint took the part that would earn him immortality – The Man With No Name, anonymous star of Leone’s now-legendary Dollars Trilogy – A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. These three Spaghetti Westerns introduced Western audiences to the true antihero – a lawless, morally ambiguous character with a mysterious past whose actions, while not necessarily wrong, certainly tend to be self-serving. It was a new concept for Hollywood – and one that cemented Eastwood’s place in cinematic history.

Clint's career continued to grow onscreen, including his most famous role: the titular Dirty Harry (1971), which is largely credited with creating the “loose cannon” genre of cop stories. However, Clint also began to direct, starting with 1971’s Play Misty for Me, in whichhe also starred as a radio DJ fending off the psychotic advances of a rabid fan.

To this day, Clint continues to star, direct and be all that is man in Hollywood. As the originator of some of cinema’s most memorable characters, dialogue and even archetypes, few men have left as big a mark on film as Clint Eastwood. To celebrate the manliest man ever to grace the silver screen, just man up and throw back a few Dirty Harry Cocktails while watching Clint in Dirty Harry .