Clint's million-dollar weepie

Even at 75, Clint Eastwood is an enviably good-looking man. Sitting before me on the Warner Bros lot in a caramel- coloured golf jacket and chinos, he displays a physical elegance and mental agility that are quite extraordinary for a man his age.

But this is Clint Eastwood. The main man of movie stars. The actor and director whose latest film, Million Dollar Baby, is up for a clutch of Oscar nominations - and, yes, it is less than a year since Mystic River walked off with two acting awards. Oh, and he also wrote the score.

"There's no reason why a person shouldn't get better as he gets older," he says. "You get more experience, you have more life behind you with which to reflect on in the film, or experiences to draw from. I guess a lot of the time directors lose touch at a certain age, but what's worked for me is always trying to do something different and not falling back on doing the same thing I was doing 40 years ago.

"That's why I keep working instead of retiring, because there's always something to learn from every movie. Until I slip into senility, I hope to continue doing it."

If all his films are as good as Million Dollar Baby - in which he plays a hard-bitten boxing trainer who takes on an ambitious working-class woman (played by Hilary Swank) - critics will keep polishing their superlatives. This is no Rocky-type also-fought. The story turns to tragedy and preview audiences have been crying their hearts out.

"I think you become more expressive as you get older," he says. "I've always been somewhat on the reserved side, so maybe I say less rather than more, but I think it's important to say it while people are alive rather than regret it. I remember when my father died, I went through a terrible guilt period where I wished I'd asked him to play golf more often. I was a young guy trying to make it as an actor and doing pretty well, and busy with my life, so I never took enough time. I wished I could have said 'let's hang out' or 'I love you' or whatever."

Eastwood's mother is 96 and still agile, so there is room to make amends. He took her to the Oscars last year and recently went on a brief vacation with her. "I think she's had a lot of fun with my career and it's been a great joy to me to share with her and pay her back for all the discomfort and misery I might have caused her along the line," he says with a smile. "You give a lot in life to bring up kids."

Clint himself has seven: Kimber, 40, whose mother was Roxanne Tunis, one of Eastwood's co-stars on Rawhide; Kyle, 36, and Alison, 32, from his wife of 26 years, Maggie; Scott, 19, and Kathryn Ann, 17, from former flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves; daughter Francesca, 11, from actress Frances Fisher; and daughter Morgan, eight, from 40-year-old TV newswoman Dina Ruiz, his third and current wife with whom he lives in Carmel, northern California.

HIS son Kyle, who is playing jazz in London this week, wrote much of the soundtrack for Mystic River and is working on the album for Million Dollar Baby. "We're a great family," says Clint. "We come from a lot of different directions, but everybody loves each other and that is the greatest enjoyment I could possibly have." Missing from the family embrace is Sondra Locke, the actress he was with for 13 years in the Seventies and Eighties and who sued him after they split up, claiming he had made her have two abortions and undergo sterilisation. He remains friends with the rest.

Eastwood displays a resolutely sunny demeanour, but he doesn't take success for granted. He first got a job as a studio contract player in 1953 and it took him 15 years to become a star. He has been an A-list actor for 35 years and a top director for 25. "I try to look back and think what drove me when I was 25 years old, wanting to be an actor when so many people shook cigars in my face and told me I was a bum. There's a little voice in your head telling you not to worry about that, you have to have a dogmatic point of view, and move forward."