Christina Sandera, the longtime partner of Clint Eastwood, has died. She was 61.
The Oscar winner, 94, announced her death in a statement shared in an email newsletter from the local Carmel Pine Cone newspaper on Thursday night, July 18.
Eastwood said of Sandera, whom he had been with romantically since 2014, “Christina was a lovely, caring woman, and I will miss her very much.”
No cause of death has been reported as of yet.
Eastwood and Sandera, who were very private about their relationship, reportedly met when she was working as a hostess at his property, the Mission Ranch Hotel in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, on the Monterey peninsula where Eastwood has lived for decades.
While Eastwood may be an A-list actor and filmmaker, Sandera maintained a more low-key profile. Aside from her relationship with Eastwood, not much is known about her, and she was not on social media.
Eastwood also skews from the spotlight, and the couple opted for a quiet life together in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a small coastal town in which Eastwood also formerly served as the mayor.
Sandera did accompany the Gran Torino star to many events, especially pertaining to his films. At the 2015 Oscars, his movie American Sniper was nominated for six awards, including Best Picture. He brought Sandera as his date, marking the couple’s first public appearance together.
Before that, the pair were photographed grocery shopping together in June 2014, in photos obtained by the Daily Mail.
In 2016, the couple appeared together at a screening of Eastwood’s film Sully at the Directors Guild of America. In 2017, they went to the Cannes Film Festival together.
Sandera also joined Eastwood and his entire family — including three of his kids, his granddaughter and Eastwood’s first wife, Maggie Johnson — at the premiere of his 2018 film The Mule.
In May 2020, Scott Eastwood shared with Access Hollywood how the blended family planned to celebrate his dad’s 90th birthday.
“We’re going to do just a family thing,” Scott, 38, said at the time. “Very calm, very mellow. He doesn’t like birthdays. He’s just sort of like, ‘I don’t want to do birthdays’ … We’ll sneak a cake in there, definitely. He probably won’t like it, but we’ll put one in.”
