Sally Kirkland, a former model who became a familiar figure on stage, in film, and on television, has died in New York. She is best known for scenes with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting and for the lead role in the 1987 film Anna, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She was 84 years old.
The actress’s representative, Michael Green, said that Kirkland died early Tuesday at a hospice in Palm Springs.
This year, friends raised funds on GoFundMe for her medical care. They noted that she had broken four bones in her neck, right wrist, and left hip. During her recovery she also contracted infections that required hospitalization and rehabilitation.
Kirkland appeared in such films as The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand, Revenge with Kevin Costner, Cold Feet with Keith Carradine and Tom Waits; in EDtv with Robert Redford, JFK by Oliver Stone, Heat Wave with Cicely Tyson, High Stakes with Kathy Bates, Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey, and also in the 1991 television movie The Haunted. She also had a cameo in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.
Her most notable role was in the 1987 film Anna, where she played a Czech film star trying to move to the United States and mentoring the younger actor Polina Poritzkova. Kirkland received a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination alongside Cher in Moonstruck, Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, and Meryl Streep in Ironweed.
Her small-screen roles included appearances on Criminal Minds, Roseanne, Head Case, and she starred in the TV series Valley of the Dolls and Charlie’s Angels.
Born in New York; her mother was a fashion editor at Vogue and Life, who encouraged her daughter to begin a modeling career at the age of five. Kirkland graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied under Philip Burton, mentor of Richard Burton, and Lee Strasberg, the master of method. Her early breakthroughs earned her a place in Andy Warhol’s “13 Most Beautiful Women” in 1964. She also appeared nude as the rape victim in Terrence McNally’s Off-Broadway Sweet Eros.
Among her early roles were parts in Shakespearean works, notably Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the New York Shakespeare Festival under the direction of producer Joseph Papp, and Miranda in the Off-Broadway production of The Tempest.
“I don’t think any actor truly can call themselves an actor if he or she doesn’t spend time with Shakespeare,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991.
Kirkland was a member of several New Age communities, taught Insight Transformational Seminar, and for a long time was a member of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness-affiliated church, whose followers believe in the transcendence of the soul.
Her career hit bottom after appearing nude in the 1969 film Futz, which critic Roger Ebert named the worst film he had ever seen. He wrote that it tells a story about a man who falls in love with a pig, and that the film remained sad.
Kirkland was also known for appearing nude for many roles and public causes, which Time named her the “modern Isadora Duncan of Nudism”.
She volunteered for people with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and heart disease, fed the homeless through the American Red Cross, participated in telethons for hospices, and supported prisoners’ rights, including youth.
“I don’t think any actor truly can call themselves an actor if he or she doesn’t spend time with Shakespeare,” – Los Angeles Times