Actress fought bitter legal battle against co-star and ex-partner Clint Eastwood
Sondra Locke, who has died aged 74, was nominated for an Oscar for her first screen role, but became most associated both professionally and personally with Clint Eastwood; the break-up of their long relationship in 1989 led to her fighting a bitter legal battle against both the star and his favoured studio, Warner Bros.
Petite in stature and appearing younger than her years, Sondra Locke was 23 when she won a nationwide search by Warners for an unknown actress to play teenager Mick Kelly in its adaptation of Carson McCullers’ novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968). Opposite Alan Arkin as the deaf-mute John Singer, her performance led
to nominations for two Golden
Globes and the
Oscar for best
supporting
actress.
Thereafter her movie career stuttered, and later she reflected that she had learnt that winning roles depended on more than talent or being the best person for the part. After appearances in Willard (1971), a film about killer rats, and in television series such as Planet of the Apes, as well as reluctantly in a semi-clad spread for Playboy, she jumped at the chance of a role as Eastwood’s romantic interest in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).
Having fallen for each other, the two soon moved in together, albeit their personal circumstances were not straightforward. Eastwood was separated but not divorced from his first wife, Maggie. Locke had since 1967 been married to Gordon Anderson, a childhood friend and sculptor, though he was homosexual and she described their relationship as being essentially fraternal.
Over the next decade, she worked mostly on projects involving Eastwood, and appeared in six films with him. These included Every Which Way but Loose – the one with the orangutan – which was the second-highest-grossing release of 1978.
She also featured in its sequel, Any Which Way You Can, the circus-set Bronco Billy, and Sudden Impact, one of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry series, as well as The Gauntlet, in which Eastwood’s down-and-out cop escorts a prostitute played by Locke to testify against the Mob. Among a handful of roles of her own were playing Rosemary Clooney in a television biopic and, somewhat improbably, starring in 1984 in an episode of the British TV series Tales of the Unexpected.
Aware that in her mid-40s she was going to find parts harder to come by, she began to aspire to direct, having watched Eastwood take the same path. She was an admirer in particular of European auteurs such as Max Ophuls and Krzysztof Kiezlowski. Her fantasy Ratboy (1986) did little business in America but rather better in Europe, and in 1989 she began work on the psychological thriller Impulse, starring Theresa Russell.
By then, she and Eastwood had split up after 14 years together. Reportedly, she fainted on set when Anderson read out to her over the telephone a lawyers’ letter demanding she leave the house she believed was hers. She discovered Eastwood had fathered two children with another woman, although Locke had undergone a sterilisation procedure, having had two abortions early in her relationship with the star.
Having sued Eastwood for palimony, she settled with him in 1990, by which time she was suffering from breast cancer, necessitating a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Part of the deal included a house for Anderson, and Locke having a three-year directing contract with Warners (which then made all Eastwood’s films).
When, however, Warners turned down all 30 projects she brought to them, she became convinced that the deal was a sham and that the studio was blocking her career to curry favour with Eastwood.
Despite the risks, she became determined to expose this – and, she later said, a less attractive side of Eastwood than customarily seen on screen. She herself believed he had felt his authority as a man challenged when she began to seek directing work for herself.
In the mid and late-1990s both Eastwood and Warners settled multimillion-dollar suits she had brought against them shortly before juries were due to give their verdicts, and in 1997 a triumphant Locke published her version of events as The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly.
She was born Sandra Louise Smith in Madison, Alabama. Her father, who abandoned her mother Pauline, a pencil factory worker, before the birth, was in the army. in 1948, Pauline married Alfred Locke, who owned a building firm. She later changed the spelling of her first name as she disliked being called ‘‘Sandy’’.
A studious child – she and Anderson bonded over a love of Tolkien, and her favourite authors included J P Donleavy and Iris Murdoch – she briefly read drama at university before leaving home and finding work at a television station.
She had worked only intermittently in recent years, and earlier this year was seen in
Ray Meets Helen, with Keith Carradine.
She died of cardiac arrest stemming from breast and bone cancer. She and Anderson never divorced, and he survives her. –
Telegraph Group
Reportedly, she fainted on set when told of a lawyers’ letter demanding she leave the house she believed was hers. She discovered Eastwood had fathered two children with another woman.