Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood excoriated the current generation of Americans as weak and overly sensitive while backing Donald Trump, even though the Republican presidential hopeful has "said a lot of dumb things".

Eastwood, a prominent celebrity supporter of the Republican Party, who appeared at its 2012 presidential nominating convention, offered a harsh assessment of Americans in an interview with Esquire magazine published on Wednesday.

"He's onto something because secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up," Eastwood said of Trump.

"Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist."

Given the choice between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Trump in the Nov 8 election, he said: "That's a tough one, isn't it? I'd have to go for Trump... you know, 'cause she's declared that she's gonna follow in Obama's footsteps."

In one of the most unusual speeches at a major United States party convention, Eastwood four years ago addressed an empty chair used to symbolically represent President Barack Obama on stage at the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, in a rambling denunciation of Mr Obama.

In the Esquire story, Eastwood also referred to the uproar in May that followed Trump's comments accusing the judge overseeing a fraud lawsuit involving Trump University real estate seminars of being biased against him because of Trump's pledge to build a wall along the US-Mexican border to block illegal immigrants. US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is an American of Mexican descent.

Eastwood told Esquire that Trump was portrayed as "a racist now because he's talked about this judge".

The interview was a top trending story on Twitter.

REUTERS