Clint Eastwood Describes His Near-Death Experience, Says ‘American Sniper’ Is Anti-War [+video]

“Stark terror” was the emotion Clint Eastwood experienced more than six decades ago when he almost died during a plane crash, he said March 11.

“What was going through my mind was just a stark fear, a stark terror, because [in the] first place, I didn’t know anything about aviation at that particular time — I was just hopping a ride,” he noted, recalling the time he hitched a ride on a bomber plane while doing his military service in the early 1950s.

“In those days, you could wear your uniform and get a free flight,” he continued. “On the way back, they had one plane, a Douglas AD, sort of a torpedo bomber of the World War II vintage, and I thought I’d hitch on that. Everything went wrong. Radios went out. Oxygen ran out. And finally we ran out of fuel up around Point Reyes, California, and went in the ocean. So we went swimming. It was late October, November. Very cold water. [I] found out many years later that it was a white shark breeding ground, but I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time or I’d have just died”. . .

He also discussed his more recent military foray, the Oscar-nominated American Sniper, which became the highest-grossing release of 2014 the day he was interviewed.

Asked if the picture glorified war, he replied: “I think it’s nice for veterans, because it shows what they go through, and that life — and the wives and families of veterans. It has a great indication of the stresses they are under. And I think that all adds up to kind of an anti-war [message].” (Read more from “Clint Eastwood Describes His Near-Death Experience, Says ‘American Sniper’ Is Anti-War” HERE)

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