Listen to this article
Estimated 4 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.
American model-turned-actress Sally Kirkland, who was noted for her stage, TV and film roles — including sharing the screen with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting and earning an Oscar nomination for 1987’s Anna — has died at 84.
Her representative, Michael Greene, said Kirkland died Tuesday morning at a Palm Springs, Calif., hospice.
Friends established a GoFundMe account this fall for her medical care. They said she had fractured four bones in her neck, right wrist and left hip. While recovering, she also developed infections, requiring hospitalization and rehab.
Kirkland acted in such films as:
- The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand.
- Revenge with Kevin Costner.
- Cold Feet with Keith Carradine and Tom Waits.
- EDtv by Ron Howard.
- JFK by Oliver Stone.
- Heatwave with Cicely Tyson.
- High Stakes with Kathy Bates.
- Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey.
- The Haunted, a 1991 TV movie about a family dealing with paranormal activity.
Kirkland also had a cameo in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles.
Her biggest role was in Anna, as a fading Czech movie star remaking her life in the United States and mentoring a younger actor, Paulina Porizkova. Kirkland won a Golden Globe and got the Oscar nomination in the best actress category.
Kirkland’s small-screen acting credits include stints on Criminal Minds, Roseanne and Head Case. She was also 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 and Life magazines who encouraged her daughter to start modelling at five years old.
Kirkland graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied with Philip Burton, Richard Burton’s mentor, and Lee Strasberg, the master of the Method school of acting.
An early breakout was appearing in Andy Warhol’s 13 Most Beautiful Women in 1964.
Kirkland’s volunteer work included Red Cross efforts
On the stage, Kirkland appeared in Terrence McNally’s off-Broadway Sweet Eros. Some of her early roles were in Shakespeare productions, including the lovesick Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for New York Shakespeare Festival producer Joseph Papp and Miranda in an off-Broadway production of The Tempest.
“I don’t think any actor can really call him or herself an actor unless he or she puts in time with Shakespeare,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. “It shows up, it always shows up in the work, at some point, whether it’s just not being able to have breath control, or not being able to appreciate language as poetry and music, or not having the power that Shakespeare automatically instils you with when you take on one of his characters.”
Kirkland was a member of several New Age groups, taught Insight Transformational Seminars and was a longtime member of the affiliated Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, whose followers believe in soul transcendence.
She reached a career nadir while riding nude on a pig in the 1969 film Futz, which a Guardian reviewer dubbed 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 disrobing for so many other roles and social causes that Time magazine dubbed her “the latter-day Isadora Duncan of nudothespianism.”
Kirkland volunteered for people with AIDS, cancer and heart disease, fed homeless people via the American Red Cross, participated in telethons for hospices and was an advocate for prisoners, especially young people.
