Most individuals would be content just to live to the age of 91, let alone continuing to work. However, hardly everyone has had the same level of longevity as Clint Eastwood, who established his iconic stature in Hollywood half a century ago and has never shown signs of slowing down.

Eastwood said that he does not have any film ideas “percolating” at the time, but he is not concerned. Something always comes up. It’s why, seven decades after his initial foray into Hollywood, he’s still producing, directing, and appearing in films. And he’s far from finished. In fact, he has no intention of retiring.

“I was in New Mexico for nine weeks during the pandemic working on this project,” Clint Eastwood says of his upcoming drama, Cry Macho (in theaters and on HBO Max Sept. 17). “When I got back home, I thought, I’m lucky to be here.”

Eastwood, 91, does not take good fortune lightly. “My career has been so much based upon luck, things falling into place at the right time,” he explains. And the Hollywood great, who has over 70 acting roles and 45 directorial credits, refuses to call it quits. He works far too much, having directed nine films since 2010.

Eastwood has more than earned the right to relax after a streak of masterpieces and a trophy chest that includes four Academy Awards. While his productivity in front of the camera has decreased, with Cry Macho being only his third acting credit in the previous decade, he’s directed, produced, or featured in a dozen movies or documentaries in the last 10 years.

The Western legend told the Los Angeles Times that he had considered retirement. But he’ll let the audience decide if he should hang up the camera and ride off into the sunset.

“What the hell am I still working for in my 90s? Are people going to start throwing tomatoes at you? I’ve gotten to the point where I wondered if that was enough, but not to the point where I decided it was,” he told the Times. “If you roll out a few turkeys, they’ll tell you soon enough.”

Clint is now promoting Cry Macho. It is one of his most personal works to date. Eastwood not only directs but also stars as Miko, a washed-up, broken-down rodeo star in the late 1970s who agrees to take on a new assignment for his ex-boss, Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam): to reunite the man with his estranged son, Rafo (Eduardo Minett), a young streetwise teen who turned to cockfighting in Mexico—with a rooster named Macho—after his parents’ divorce.

His main performances in Gran Torino and The Mule earned him about $440 million. And it’s just been seven years since American Sniper became his biggest blockbuster, grossing half a billion dollars. Nobody’s going to tell him to stop anytime soon, and he doesn’t seem to care.

Producers contacted Eastwood more than 30 years ago for Cry Macho. When he read the initial proposal in 1988, he believed he was too young to play the part. He now feels age-appropriate for the job now that he’s 91.

“I always thought I’d go back and look at that. It was something I had to grow into,” Eastwood said. “One day, I just felt it was time to revisit it. It’s fun when something’s your age. When you don’t have to work at being older.”

Eastwood enters the film wearing a cowboy hat, as befits a man who made his name in Hollywood in the 1959–65 CBS series Rawhide (in which he famously played assistant trail boss “Rowdy” Yates), followed by a ferocious performance in the so-called “spaghetti Western” Dollars trilogy, as well as a string of other films, including High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider, and The Outlaw Josey Wales. Cry Macho, on the other hand, represents Eastwood’s first return to the genre since Unforgiven, his Oscar-winning classic from 1992.

The film delves into sensitive subjects such as the overrated value of machismo and discovering new ways to live with age. For more than 60 years, the onscreen man of action has taken the teachings to heart. “There is a little bit of truth to it,” he says. “You get ideas and thoughts that you’ve acquired through the years and go, ‘OK, you’re still learning.’”

Cry Macho will be available on HBO Max and in cinemas on September 17th.