Clint Eastwood gives metro Detroit a leading role in 'Gran Torino'

BY JOHN MONAGHAN • FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER • December 21, 2008

Long before Dirty Harry rode into town, Berkley dental receptionist Pam Richardson had him on her screensaver at work. It was Richardson's picture of a gun-toting Clint Eastwood that caught the eye of Janet Pound, the local casting director assigned to "Gran Torino," the movie that acclaimed actor-director Eastwood shot in the Detroit area over the summer.

"She told me that she would find a way to get me in the movie, and she did," says Richardson, who lives in Farmington Hills. Early one morning in late July, she and her husband, Gene, headed for St. Ambrose Catholic Church in Grosse Pointe Park, where they were assigned to play mourners in a scene that finds Eastwood's character, a Korean War vet and retired autoworker named Walt Kowalski, scowling his way through the funeral of his beloved wife.

http://www.freep.com/article/20081221/ENT01/812210341