Oscar nominee saw career falter after breakup
Actress and director Sondra Locke, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her first film role in 1968’s “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” and went on to co-star in six films with Clint Eastwood, has died.
Locke died Nov. 3 at her Los Angeles home of cardiac arrest stemming from breast and bone cancer, according to a death certificate obtained by the Associated Press. She was 74. Authorities were notified at the time, but her death was not publicized until RadarOnline first reported it Thursday.
Locke was best known for the six films she made with Eastwood — whom she dated for 13 years — starting with the Western “The Outlaw Josey Wales” in 1976 and ending with the Dirty Harry movie “Sudden Impact” in 1983.
Locke was born Sandra Louise Smith and grew up in Tennessee, where she appeared in a handful of plays before winning a talent search in 1967 to be cast opposite Alan Arkin in the movie adaptation of Carson McCullers’ 1940 novel “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.”
She won raves for the role, along with nominations for a Golden Globe and an Oscar.
Locke had a run of unmemorable film and TV roles until meeting Eastwood on the set of “Josey Wales,” which he directed and starred in.
Her career would mirror his for the next several years. The pair’s hit films also included the 1978 street-fighting and orangutan comedy “Every Which Way but Loose.”
Locke also played singer Rosemary Clooney in a 1982 TV biopic and directed the 1986 film “Ratboy,” which flopped in the U.S. but was popular in Europe.
In 1989, Eastwood and Locke broke up. The locks were changed and her things were placed outside a home she thought had been a gift, she later wrote.
She sued Eastwood for palimony, then later for fraud, saying a movie development deal he arranged for her was a sham to get her to drop the palimony suit. They settled for an undisclosed amount in 1996.
The following year she released her memoir, “The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly: A Hollywood Journey.” — the title a play on an Eastwood film.