Star, actor, film-maker, musician, composer, politician… how do you honor an icon, a multi-talented and hugely successful Hollywood personality? Monday night was occasion for another career milestone for Mr Clint Eastwood. The Director of the most recent Angelina Jolie film ‘Changeling’ received ‘Director of The Year Award’ at the annual Hollywood Film Festival Awards ceremony in Beverly Hills, CA. The award was presented to him with a bouquet of adulatory words by none other than Jolie herself who took time out to pay the tribute to Eastwood.

The actress was all praise and adulation while introducing Eastwood to a gathering of A-list invitees. She said Eastwood was one of those people in the industry whom everyone regarded with wonder and awe. People often wonder whether these iconic personalities will “live up to what we imagine them to be”.  But you find that “Clint Eastwood in person is even better” she said. She showered yesteryear Hollywood’s favorite cowboy and hit film maker with epithets like “great director” “great leader”, etc. and she “certainly would follow him anywhere”

Eastwood responded as graciously, saying it was a great privilege to work with Jolie, especially, “because I get to look at that gorgeous beauty every day.  But she’s also a great talent”.

The 78yr old Eastwood’s latest offering ‘Changeling’ has been winning critical acclaim ahead of its release later this week. The film plotline borrows from a true story – the Wineville chicken coop murders in 1928. Jolie plays Christine Collins who comes home one evening to find her son missing. The boy is ‘found’ 5 months later in Illinois and reunited with his mother. But the boy is someone else’s and so the mother protests against the authorities. The police chief, played by Colm Feore, has her committed to the psychiatric ward of the country hospital in a bid to avoid bad press. Her struggles which end only when the boy admits to being someone else is played out in the film slightly different from what had happened in the real incident.