14 DAY TRIAL // Clint Eastwood has been doing his best to dodge unwanted media attention, especially after his divorce from ex-wife Dina, which was allegedly precipitated by her desire to be more in the spotlight than he would have liked.
He came out for the Oscars 2015 last night, because his most recent movie, “American Sniper,” was nominated, and he made sure to turn his red carpet appearance into a statement on his personal life, by going public with his much younger girlfriend, Christina Sandera.
A well-kept secret but not a new romance
Eastwood’s romantic life is of interest for the obvious reasons, the most important being that he’s 84 years old, a very famous man and a known womanizer.
While it was surprising to see him walk the red carpet at the industry’s biggest awards gala arm in arm with a much younger woman, it wasn’t exactly news that he was dating her. In fact, rumors of the romance first started making the rounds online in June 2014, when it was said that they’d already been seeing each other for some time.
Had it not been for some paparazzi photos of the two running errands, we would have never found out about the new lady in his life.
Also then, it was reported that Clint’s children had met Christina and found her a “normal person,” down to earth, polite and nice to everyone around, and that they loved her already. So by the time the news broke, the romance was serious already.
Clint started dating her when he was still legally married to Dina, but they had already separated one year earlier. Apparently, he met her at his Mission Ranch Hotel in Carmel, California, where she worked as hostess.
Clint, the low-key celebrity
Despite the reportedly troubled and highly mediated final years of Eastwood’s marriage to Dina, he was never the kind of person to parade his personal life for the media, in the hope of selling tickets to his movies or of promoting other side projects that he might be working on.
Rumor has it that it was Dina’s obsession with launching a family reality show that finally made him see that she was no good for him - and to suspect that she was using him to attain more fame.
After the split, the aging star dated Erica Tomlinson-Fisher, who was actually Dina’s former best friend. Dina, meanwhile, entered into a relationship with Erica’s estranged husband, and the irony of the situation prompted many snickers in the blogosphere and on social media.
At some point, Eastwood broke it off with Erica and started seeing Christina, but because he’s so secretive, there’s no way to pinpoint a timeframe for the relationship, unless, of course, he offers this detail in an interview. It won’t happen, most likely.
Either way, because Eastwood is so secretive, his coming out on the red carpet with Christina (at the Oscars, no less) is proof that this is getting very serious. Could those be wedding bells we’re hearing?