Changeling is a 2008 American mystery crime drama film directed, produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by J. Michael Straczynski. The story was based on real-life events, specifically the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop murders in Mira Loma, California. It stars Angelina Jolie as a woman united with a boy who she realizes is not her missing son. When she tries to demonstrate that to the police and city authorities, she is vilified as delusional, labeled as an unfit mother and confined to a psychiatric ward. The film explores themes of child endangerment, female disempowerment, political corruption, and mistreatment of mental health patients.
Theatrical release poster
Jolie was cast partly because Eastwood believed her face evoked the period in which the film is set.
The production used two functioning replica Pacific Electric Railway streetcars for some scenes. The visual effects team added further streetcars to background shots.
Scenes set outside Los Angeles City Hall were retouched by the effects team to make the building appear new.
Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Eastwood in 2010
Eastwood alongside Nina Foch in an episode of Rawhide, 1959
Eastwood in 1961
As the Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
