Clint Eastwood has told Spike Lee to "shut his face" after the African-American filmmaker complained about the lack of black actors in Eastwood's films.

Eastwood has rejected the Malcolm X director's complaint that he had failed to include a single black soldier in his 2006 films Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, about the 1945 battle for the Japanese island.

Rationalising his choice, the actor-turned-director explains the African-American troops who were at battle didn't take part in raising the flag.

He tells Britain's The Guardian newspaper, "The story is Flags of our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people go: 'This guy's lost his mind'. I mean, it's not accurate."

Referring to Lee, Eastwood adds: "A guy like him should shut his face."

[imdb]