Sally Kirkland, the model who became a regular on stage, film and television, best known for sharing the screen with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting and for her Oscar-nominated lead role in the 1987 film Anna, has died. She was 84.
Kirkland died Tuesday morning at a nursing home in Palm Springs, her representative, Michael Green, said.
Friends set up a GoFundMe account this fall for her medical care. They said she fractured four bones in her neck, right wrist and left hip. During her recovery, she also developed an infection, requiring hospitalization and rehabilitation.
Kirkland has acted in films such as “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand, “Revenge” with Kevin Costner, “Cold Feet” with Keith Carradine and Tom Waits, “EDtv” directed by Ron Howard, “JFK” directed by Oliver Stone, “Heatwave” with Cicely Tyson, “High Stakes” with Kathy Bates, “Bruce the Great” with Jim Carrey and the 1991 TV movie “The Haunted,” about a family dealing with paranormal activity. She played a small role in Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.”
Her biggest role was in the 1987 film “Anna”, in which she played a fading Czech film star who remakes her life in the United States and mentors the young actress Paulina Porizkova. Kirkland won a Golden Globe and received an Academy Award nomination alongside Cher in “Moonstruck,” Glenn Close in “Fatal Engagement,” Holly Hunter in “Broadcast News,” and Meryl Streep in “Ironweed.”
“Kirkland is one of those artists whose talent was an open secret to her fellow actors but a mystery to the general public,” the Los Angeles critic wrote in her review. “There should be no confusion about her identity after such a glowing performance.”
Kirkland’s small screen acting credits include stints on “Criminal Minds,” “Roseanne” and “Head Case” and she was a series regular on the TV shows “Valley of the Dolls” and “Charlie’s Angels.”
Born in New York City, Kirkland’s mother was a fashion editor at Vogue & Life magazine, and she encouraged her daughter to start modeling at the age of five. Kirkland graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied with Philip Burton, Richard Burton’s mentor, and Lee Strasberg, a method acting school teacher. An early breakthrough came in Andy Warhol’s 1964 film “The 13 Most Beautiful Women.” She appeared nude as a kidnapped rape victim in Terrence McNally’s Off-Broadway film “Sweet Eros.”
Some of her early roles were Shakespearean, including the beloved Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by New York Shakespeare Festival producer Joseph Papp and Miranda in the Off-Broadway production of The Tempest.
“I don’t think any actor can call him or herself an actor unless he’s spent time with Shakespeare,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. “It shows up, and it always shows up in the work, at some point, whether it’s just not being able to control the breath, or not being able to appreciate language as poetry and music, or not having the power that Shakespeare automatically instills in you when you play one of his characters.”
Kirkland was a member of several New Age groups, taught transformational Insight seminars and was a long-time member of the Church of the Inner Spiritual Awareness movement, whose followers believe in the transcendence of the spirit.
She reached a career low when she rode naked on a pig in the 1969 film “Futz,” which one Guardian reviewer called the worst film he had ever seen. “It was about a man who fell in love with a pig, and even by the dismal standards of the era, it was dismal,” he wrote.
Kirkland was also known for stripping off her clothes for a variety of other social roles and causes, so much so that Time magazine called her “the Isadora Duncan of the modern era of nudism.”
Kirkland volunteered to help people with AIDS, cancer and heart disease, fed the homeless through the American Red Cross, participated in television campaigns for nursing homes and was an advocate for prisoners, especially youth.
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