SONDRA LOCKE

(28 May 1944 - 3 November 2018)

The American actress and director Sondra Locke, who has died aged 74 from cardiac arrest (following cancer), started making home movies with her schoolboy friend Gordon Anderson. She then worked in promotions for television, in modelling and on voiceovers. Acting began with a Nashville community theatre group. In 1967 she married Gordon, although he was gay and the marriage never consummated. Auditioning for Warner Bros, Sondra landed the part of Mick in the film of Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Then came Willard, Cover Me Babe, A Reflection of Fear, The Second Coming of Fear and some TV series. Her career took an upward turn when she appeared with Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales and she eventually became his partner. Locke made more films with Eastwood – The Gauntlet, Every Which Way But Loose, Any Which Way You Can, Bronco Billy and Sudden Impact. Then more television came along and she also pursued a directing career from the late 1980s and through the ‘90s, making Ratboy, Impulse, Trading Favours and a TV movie, Death in Small Doses. After fourteen years together, Locke and Eastwood had a very public breaking up and she wrote a book about their troubled life together called The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly. Without Eastwood, her work suffered and she didn’t act after 1986 until her return to the screen in 2000 in Clean and Narrow and The Prophet’s Game. Her last film came seventeen years later with Ray Meets Helen, Alan Rudolph’s romantic drama which co-starred Keith Carradine. By the time of her death, Sondra Locke was still married to Gordon Anderson.

MICHAEL DARVELL