Clint Eastwood is a renowned actor and filmmaker who has been celebrated for his performances and his involvement in politics. He’s often seen as an icon of masculinity.

The 89-year-old celebrity, while not overly public about his personal life, has been married twice and has seven children. But recently, Eastwood shared a story he had kept silent about for many years.

In 1930, during the Great Depression, Hollywood’s longest-running movie star was born in San Francisco, the result of his father’s work in the steel industry. He was originally named Samson and weighed an impressive 11 pounds, 6 ounces at birth, eventually growing to a height of 6 feet 4 inches.

After completing high school, he moved to Seattle, where he worked as a lifeguard before being drafted into the American Army in 1950.

What many people don’t know is that Eastwood, at the age of 21, was a passenger on a naval plane from World War II that crashed in the Pacific.

Eastwood recounted this experience in an interview: “I was catching a free ride from Seattle down to Almeda. It was stormy, and we went down off of Point Reyes, California, in the Pacific. I found myself in the water swimming a few miles towards the shore. I remember thinking, ‘well, 21 is not as long as a person wants to live.’”

After swimming through kelp beds for hours, Eastwood reached the shore and climbed a bluff to send out a distress call. This experience became quite useful when he directed the film “Sully: Miracle on the Hudson” in 2016. The film depicted the 2009 emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River, where all 155 passengers and crew members were saved.

Eastwood, in an interview with The Telegraph, shared his perspective: “I suppose having been in a similar situation as the pilot, I would have chanced a water landing rather than go someplace where there’s no runway. And of course, Sully was familiar with that area…he picked the right spot…He knew that somebody would see them.”

For Eastwood, what interested him more than the miraculous landing was the aftermath. He admired the strength of character that Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger displayed in a crisis. Eastwood said, “Anybody who keeps their wits about them when things are going wrong, who can negotiate problems without panicking, is someone of superior character and interesting to watch on film. But for me, the real conflict came after, with the investigative board questioning his decisions, even though he had saved so many lives.”

Clint Eastwood’s career has indeed been extraordinary, and even at 89, he remains active and continues to contribute to the world of cinema.