Clint Eastwood showed he’s not ready to slow down yet when he was spotted filming his upcoming film Juror No. 2 on Tuesday in Savannah, Georgia.
The 93-year-old actor-turned-director was shooting a scene for the courtroom thriller featuring his stars Nicholas Hoult, 33, and Toni Collette, 51.
The project has been called the moviemaker’s ‘final film,’ with The Hollywood Reporter describing it as an attempt to find ‘one last project in order to be able to ride off into the sunset with his head held high,’ though neither Eastwood nor Juror No. 2’s studio Warner Bros. have said he is planning to retire after completing it.
Eastwood was previously seen on set with Hoult in June, after the writer’s strike had started but just before his cast had to stop working due to the recently wrapped actor’s strike.
At the time, photos from Savannah station WSAV show the director with the clean-shaven look he has mostly displayed for the past few decades, but he was seen with a surprising bushy white beard while filming on Tuesday.
Eastwood was seen chatting with some of his film crew while wearing a casual black windbreaker with charcoal trousers.
He joined numerous other stars in donning a pair of comfortable Hoka trainers in black.
The Million Dollar Baby star had headphones on over his shaggy white hair, and he sported a full white beard.
Eastwood is no stranger to facial hair, having worn beards in Sergio Leone’s classic Man with No Name trilogy (A Fistful Of Dollar, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly) and later Westerns including High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider.
However, he has mostly been clean-shaven in his film roles and public appearances from the last few decades.
Clint appears to have grown his mane while waiting out the dual writers and actors strikes, the latter of which ended earlier this month.
Despite his advanced age, he appeared totally engaged as he set up a shot with his crew.
He looked particularly intrigued while watching footage from the shoot next to his longtime camera operator Stephen Campanelli, who first began working with him on 1995’s romance classic The Bridges Of Madison County.
Joining Eastwood on set was his lead actor Nicholas Hoult.
The X-Men star was costumed in a black sport coat with a pale gray T-shirt underneath and khaki pants with a brown leather belt.
His dark hair was styled short with a side part, and he had on brown suede shoes.
Hoult plays a juror sitting for a murder trial who realizes he may be the one who killed the victim during a reckless driving incident, rather than the person on trial.
As his guilt eats away at him, he tries to steer his fellow jury members away from convicting the man while attempting not to incriminate himself in front of the prosecutor, played by Toni Collette.
Video obtained by DailyMail.com shows Hoult’s character sitting on a park bench, presumably near the courthouse, when Collette’s prosecutor approaches and takes a seat next to him.
The Australian actress looked ready for business in a gray skirt and matching suit coat.
Toni stayed cozy on the chilly, overcast day with a pair of brown Ugg boots, though it’s not clear if her character was meant to wear them or if her feet were conveniently out of frame.
In addition to Hoult and Collette, Juror No. 2 also stars Zoey Deutch, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris Messina and Leslie Bibb.
Juror No. 2 marks Eastwood’s 40th film as director (41st if including 1984’s Tightrope, which he is said to have directed without credit after clashing with its original director).
His previous film was neo-Western drama Cry Lonesome, which he also starred in.
The film was judged to be a step down from his previous movie, the acclaimed biographical drama Richard Jewell, the security guard of the same name who saved countless lives when he discovered a bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and managed to evacuate much of the nearby crowd.
One person was still killed and 100 others were injured in the explosion, and Jewell was at first considered a suspect before his name was cleared.
Eastwood began his acting career in the mid-1950s with a string of small film and television roles, which were often uncredited, before he made a name for himself with a series regular role on Rawhide.
As his career seemed destined to stall out in television, Eastwood traveled to Italy and Spain to film three star-making Spaghetti Westerns with Italian director Sergio Leone.
The success of the Dollars trilogy led to higher-profile Westerns and thrillers back in the US, including one of his most popular, Dirty Harry (1971), which was directed by one of his mentors, Don Siegel.
The same year that he played the quick-shooting detective, Eastwood made his directorial debut with the psychological thriller Play Misty For Me, and ever since then he has directed approximately one film per year.
He’s none for usually shooting quickly and economically, with most of his scenes only requiring one or two takes to satisfy him, and Juror No. 2 is likely to follow that same breakneck pace.
Eastwood had a larger than usual break between his current film and his last, Cry Macho, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
That film may have also suffered at the box office due to its release in September 2021.
The movie was given a simultaneous 31-day release on HBO Max, as well as in theaters, which likely encouraged some viewers to stay home and watch the movie for free.