NEW YORK:

Hollywood actor-director Clint Eastwood says he misses his tough youth and insists that America has gone soft since.

Eastwood, 78, claims life was simpler and easier in his upbringing during the depression when problems were solved using fists rather than a therapist’s couch, reports imdb.com. “Everyone’s become used to saying, ‘Well, how do we handle it psychologically?’ In those days, you punched the bully back and duked it out. People were tougher then. I was a shy kid. But a lot of my childhood was spent punching the bullies,” Eastwood told Esquire magazine. —HNS