At 74, Clint Eastwood says he still gets excited when he finds a good story. “I may not jump as high,” he says, settling into a suite at the Hotel Pierre on Fifth Avenue, “but I still feel like jumping.”

The current cause for his joy is “Million Dollar Baby,” a movie he didn’t even know he was going to make when he attended the Oscars in February as a Best Director nominee for “Mystic River.”

If early reviews are an indication, he’ll be back in his tux next month — this time as a nominee for both Best Director and Best Actor. “Million Dollar Baby,” adapted from a book of short stories by former boxing “cut man” F.X. Toole, has received gushing reviews. Roger Ebert has declared it a “masterpiece.”

The movie focuses on the father/ daughter relationship that develops between Eastwood’s Frankie Dunn, a world-weary Los Angeles boxing trainer, and Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), the 33-year-old waitress he reluctantly agrees to train for a career as a pro boxer.

If you have the image of a female “Rocky,” you’re thinking like the studios that kept turning the project down. “I told them, ‘It’s not a boxing story, it’s all about hopes and dreams,’ ” Eastwood says on a recent stop in New York for the “Million Dollar Baby” premiere at the Museum of Modern Art. “It’s a love story and the boxing is just there.”

While boxing clichés are never far away, Eastwood refuses to embrace them while holding his focus on what is easily the most intimate human drama of his career and his most intimate performance.

In the late scenes where Frankie’s love for Maggie is tested, we see Eastwood at a level of vulnerability he had never previously approached.
“It’s a role that made me make tougher decisions than I’ve ever had to make before,” he says.

The third act of “Million Dollar Baby” is going to be the talk of this Oscar season and is likely to put both Eastwood and Swank on the lead-actor ballots.

Swank, who won that award five years ago for “Boys Don’t Cry,” is too smitten by Eastwood to even talk about her work in the film.

“It’s the best performance he has given to date,” Swank says flatly. “I am in awe of him.”

Eastwood’s filmmaking efficiency has long made him the subject of awe among other filmmakers and studio executives. He makes his pictures quickly (this one took 38 days) and with bargain budgets (this one cost about $30 million).

Yet, when he and producer Al Ruddy were shopping “Million Dollar Baby” to the studios, they got blank looks where they should have gotten blank checks.

Eastwood says the same thing happened with “Mystic River.”

“People were saying, ‘Please, bring us something,’ then I bring them something and they say, ‘Oh, no, not this.’”

When Warner Bros., Eastwood’s handshake backers for the last three decades, balked at the “Million Dollar Baby” script, he said, “Well, I’m going to make it, whether I do it here or somewhere else.”

That prompted the studio to pony up half the budget for the U.S. distribution rights. The rest came from indie production company Lakeshore Entertainment.

Eastwood is miffed at what passes for creative imagination in today’s Hollywood.

“At the studios, everybody’s into sequels or remakes or adaptations of old TV shows,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s because of the corporate environment or they’re just out of ideas. Pretty soon, they’re going to be wanting to do one on ‘Rawhide’ ” — the TV Western that made Eastwood a star.

In fact, he’s still being urged to revisit his “Dirty Harry” series.

“I said, ‘What are you going to do, start with him being in the middle of a stream fly-fishing, a retiree with an AARP patch on his tackle box, then you come in with some drama and he goes back to work?’ ”

Hmm, on second thought.

‘‘Who knows?’’ he adds, ‘‘maybe some writer could do something brilliant with that. Never say never.’’

It’s odd to say, but Eastwood’s career is not only still vital but on the upswing. Not many directors of any age can boast back-to-back movies the quality of “Mystic River” and “Million Dollar Baby.”

And we have to remember, he was in his 60s before he got to the Oscar show as a nominee for anything. After that peak experience, which brought him a Best Actor nomination and Oscars for Best Director and producer of the Best Picture, ‘‘Unforgiven,’’ he might have rested on his laurels.

Instead, he has averaged just about a movie a year, while finding time to start a new family with Dina Ruiz, a former Bay Area TV reporter whom he met when she came to his Carmel, Calif., ranch to interview him. Their daughter, Morgan, who turned 8 years old Sunday, makes her film debut as a girl waving to Swank in “Million Dollar Baby.”

For the last several years, Eastwood has been teasing reporters with talk of retirement, but there doesn’t seem to be any slowdown in him.

His next movie, “Flags of Our Fathers,” may be the most ambitious he has ever made. The film, which will be produced by Steven Spielberg, is being adapted from the best seller about the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima and the men who famously raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi.
Eastwood says it hasn’t been cast yet and that he probably won’t start shooting before late summer.

“It’s going to be difficult,” he says. “It’s very different from the last few pictures. But if we do our jobs, it could be special.”