Pebble Beach – It’s almost mid-December and a box of Christmas ornaments sits on the floor just inside the entryway of Dina (Eastwood) Fisher’s Pebble Beach home. Other holiday decorations are also strewn about and ready to be displayed. Fisher is anxious to get them up for her daughter Morgan who is on her way home to celebrate her 21st birthday.
“My daughter is obsessed with Christmas,” said Fisher, 52. Morgan, now 21, still counts down the days to the holiday says Fisher.
“It’s not about the presents – she loves the house being full of people.”
The same could be said of Fisher. She was born Dina Ruiz and was a KSBW news anchor. She then became Dina Eastwood after marrying actor/director Clint Eastwood in 1996. And she was a bit of a reality show star as well.
Although her legal name is still Eastwood, she is changing it to Fisher.
Despite her newer roles, including that of yoga instructor and graduate student that keep her on the go, at heart Fisher said she’s a homebody too.
Her house is often the setting for family gatherings that include her husband Scott, whom she married in 2016, immediate and extended family members, friends and her six dogs – three pugs, a Chiweenie (half Chihuahua/half dachshund) and Winnie, a terrier mix.
“Instinctually, I became a nester – that was the right thing for me,” she said.
Fisher has certainly had her share of identities throughout the years, both publicly and personally. The very topic is the basis of her master’s thesis in creative writing – a memoir exploring the changing roles she’s taken on during her life.
“It’s easier to write a tell-all about my life but my advisor and I are trying to go a deeper route,” explained Fisher, about her effort investigating the phases and personas of her life.
It began in Fremont as the daughter of an African American-Japanese father and a German-Irish mother.
It was a racist moment she experienced as “the only brown child in a white school” that she said set her on a trajectory of overcompensation, as she described it.
“I got called the N-word in the first grade – it put me on this path of trying too hard,” said Fisher, who until then said she never had a clue she was somehow different than her peers.
As a result, she said she became an over-achiever. The woman who said she “worked harder and did more stuff” went on to be class president and then KSBW news anchor, despite being told she didn’t look the part.
“I didn’t understand it until I was an adult – it was all about the way I looked,” said Fisher, who recalled always feeling unattractive. “I wouldn’t go to school because I thought I was too ugly.”
Then in the mid-90s, Fisher took on yet another identity when she became Mrs. Eastwood and then mom to daughter Morgan and three stepchildren.
“I never had an identity crisis with Clint – but people have often wondered about that,” said Fisher. “There’s no two ways around it – I was known as Clint’s wife. But I think that means I had a decent esteem that it didn’t bother me. I looked at myself as many different things besides that.”
Reality star was another part she tackled in 2012 with the show “Mrs. Eastwood and Company.” The series chronicled her travails as mom and manager to the South African Capella band Overtone.
Now “on the other side of fame,” she said she still marvels at those in the entertainment business.
“I look at my stepchildren who are professional actors and how they have to hustle – it takes a special kind of person. The hustle never ends,” she said.
It was after she and Eastwood divorced in 2013 that Fisher took a self-imposed break from the public eye — time she said was used to re-calibrate and reflect on herself and where she was heading.
Since then, she’s taken on new roles — one as wife to Scott Fisher, a 6-foot, 8-inch tall college basketball coach who Dina has known since childhood. She is also a student at San Jose State, pursuing a master’s degree. At one point during her studies, the former newscaster spent a semester sitting in class with undergraduates, some half her age.
Still, Fisher, who expects to graduate in May, insists getting her graduate degree has been one of her dreams.
“Television news was challenging and exhilarating but the pursuit of it – the college classes – wasn’t,” she explained. “I always dreamed of branching out … English and literature isn’t far off from broadcasting but it has caused me to grow some extra brain cells.”
Despite being a regular contributor to Carmel Magazine for close to eight years and the current non-fiction editor to Reed Magazine, the state’s oldest literary journal, Fisher believes a degree in creative writing will upgrade her credentials.
“I would love to get articles and short stores published in magazines and to write a non-fiction book,” the Phi Kappa Phi honor society member said.
Fisher also has two yoga teaching trainings under her belt and started a new program sharing the practice with kids at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Monterey County where she guides them through visual exercises and poses on a weekly basis.
For Fisher, who buys those students who attend five classes their own yoga mat, teaching them is the highlight of her week.
“I’m in the position to get to do that – it makes me feel like Santa Claus – to be able to do that – that’s the upside of financial stability. That’s the kind of stuff that I pinch myself about,” she said. For the last two years, she’s also lent her emceeing abilities to the Kinship Center’s annual fundraising party. The Salinas non-profit supports adoptions and caregiving causes.
But there’s rarely a day when people don’t associate her with her ex-husband. It’s a part of life she’s come to accept and one that doesn’t seem to bother her current husband too much.
And when Fisher at one point contemplated leaving the Peninsula — “I always (complained) about the weather and wanted to move to Hawaii and Arizona and be hot.” — it was her dogs and Scott that made her see it through new eyes.
“Once I got a dog and started walking – and then going to the beach with the dogs, I started observing,” noted Fisher. “I re-fell in love with some place I always loved but fell away from.”
Now, with what she feels is a clearer sense of who she is, Fisher said she has an appreciation for the challenges as well as the gifts and said she’s led a charmed life.
“I have learned that my instincts were right – that focusing on my child and stepchildren was the most important thing – it might have cost me jobs and perhaps other things, but now on the other side I have what you need to be a happy person,” said Fisher. “I don’t look back very much … if life is good – pinch yourself. If it’s bad, pinch yourself because it will get better. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with the simplest life I’ve ever had.”
Carly Mayberry can be reached at 831-726-4363.
