Sondra Locke

Sondra Locke
Sondra Locke in The Gondola (1973)
Born	(1944-05-28) May 28, 1944 Shelbyville, Tennessee, U.S.
Nationality	United States
Occupation	Actress, singer, director
Years active	1968–1999
Spouse(s)	Gordon Anderson (m. 1967)
Partner(s)	Clint Eastwood (1975–1989)
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Sondra Locke (born May 28, 1944^[1][2]) is an American actress and film director. She made her film debut in 1968 in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to star in such films as Willard (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Gauntlet (1977), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), Bronco Billy (1980), Any Which Way You Can (1980), and Sudden Impact (1983). She has worked with Clint Eastwood, who was her companion for over 13 years. In 1997, she published her autobiography, The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly – A Hollywood Journey.

Early life

Locke was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, the daughter of Raymond Smith, a military man, and Pauline Bayne Locke, a pencil factory worker. Her parents separated before she was born, and her mother married construction company owner Alfred Taylor Locke. From that marriage, Locke has a maternal half-brother, Don (born April 1946).

Locke was a cheerleader and class valedictorian in junior high.^[3] She attended Shelbyville Senior High School, where she was again valedictorian and voted "Duchess of Studiousness" by her class, graduating in May 1962.^[1] She then enrolled at (but did not graduate from) Middle Tennessee State University, majoring in Drama.^[4] Later, Locke worked in the promotional department for WSM-TV in Nashville when she lived there for approximately three years.^[1]

Career

In 1967, Locke won a nationwide talent search for the role of Mick Kelly in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, opposite Alan Arkin. The film was released in 1968, with Locke's performance garnering her the Academy Award nomination, as well as two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and Most Promising Newcomer – Female.

Locke's next film role was as Melisse in Cover Me Babe (aka Run Shadow Run^[5]) opposite Robert Forster. In 1971, she co-starred with Bruce Davison and Ernest Borgnine in the psychological thriller Willard, which became a box office hit.^[6] Throughout the early 1970s, she made television guest appearances in several drama series, including The F.B.I., Cannon, Barnaby Jones and Kung Fu. In the 1972 Night Gallery episode, "A Feast of Blood", she played the victim of a curse planted by Norman Lloyd; the recipient of a brooch that devoured her. She also appeared in William A. Fraker's A Reflection of Fear (1972) and played the title role in The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974), co-starring Richard Dreyfuss.

In 1976, Locke had a supporting role in The Outlaw Josey Wales as Laura Lee, the romantic interest of Clint Eastwood's character. This was followed by a lead role alongside Eastwood in the hit action film The Gauntlet (1977). In 1978, the couple co-starred with an orangutan named Clyde in that year's second highest-grossing film, Every Which Way But Loose, in which Locke played country singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor. The 1980 sequel, Any Which Way You Can, was equally successful. Locke recorded several songs for the films' soundtracks and has performed live in concert with Eddie Rabbitt and Tom Jones.

Locke starred as a bitter heiress who joins a traveling Wild West show in Bronco Billy (1980), her only film with Eastwood not to become a major box office success. Their final collaboration was Sudden Impact (1983), the highest-grossing film in the Dirty Harry franchise,^[7] in which she played a vengeful artist who systematically murders the men who had gang-raped her and her sister a decade earlier.

In 1986, Locke made her directorial debut with the feature film Ratboy, a fable about a boy who is half-rat. Her second directorial effort was the thriller Impulse (1990), starring Theresa Russell as a police officer who goes undercover as a prostitute. Later, she directed the made-for-television film Death in Small Doses (1995), based on a true story, and the independent film Do Me A Favor (film) (1997) starring Rosanna Arquette.

After 13 years away from acting, Locke returned to the screen in 1999 with supporting roles in the straight-to-cable films The Prophet's Game (opposite Dennis Hopper) and Clean and Narrow. In 2014, the media announced that Locke would serve as an executive producer on the Eli Roth film Knock Knock starring Keanu Reeves.^[8]

Personal life

Locke married sculptor Gordon Anderson on September 25, 1967.^[9] She has stated in court papers that the marriage was never consummated^[10] and described her relationship with Anderson (reportedly a homosexual^[11]) as "tantamount to sister and brother."^[10]

From 1975 until 1989, Locke cohabited with actor Clint Eastwood.^[12] They had first met in 1972, but became involved while filming The Outlaw Josey Wales. She underwent two abortions in the late 1970s^{[n 1]} and a tubal ligation shortly after the second abortion, stating in her autobiography that she decided to have the procedures because Eastwood insisted parenthood would not fit into their lifestyle.^[3] She later discovered that he secretly fathered two children with another woman during the last three years of their relationship.^[3]

In 1989, Locke filed a palimony suit against Eastwood after he changed the locks on their Bel-Air home and moved her possessions into a storage facility while she was on the set of Impulse. After a year-long legal battle, the two parties reached a settlement wherein Eastwood set up a film development/directing pact for Locke at Warner Bros. in exchange for dropping the suit.^[13]

In 1994, Locke sued Eastwood for fraud, alleging that the deal with Warner was a sham^[12]–the studio had rejected all of the 30 or more projects she proposed, and never assigned her to direct any of their in-house projects.^[3] According to Locke's attorney, Eastwood committed "the ultimate betrayal" by arranging the "bogus" film directing deal as a way to keep her out of work.^[14] The case went to trial in 1996, but just minutes before a jury was to render a verdict in Locke's favor, Eastwood agreed to settle for an undisclosed amount.^[15] The outcome of the case, Locke said, sent a "loud and clear" message to Hollywood, "that people cannot get away with whatever they want to just because they're powerful."^[16][17] The case is used in some modern law-school contract textbooks to illustrate the legal concept of good faith.^[18]

At the time of the victory, Locke had a separate pending action against Warner Bros. for allegedly harming her career by agreeing to the sham movie-directing deal that Eastwood had purportedly engineered. As had been the case with the previous lawsuit, this ended in an out-of-court settlement, in 1999.^[13][19] The agreement with Warner, Locke said, was "a happy ending" after "five years of torture."^[13]

Locke is a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a double mastectomy and chemotherapy in 1990.^[20] During treatment, she began dating one of her surgeons, Scott Cunneen. Cunneen is 17 years younger than Locke. He moved in with her in 1991.^[3] In 2001, Locke purchased a six-bedroom home in the Hollywood Hills,^[21] a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the southeastern Santa Monica Mountains.

Filmography

Directing

Footnotes

See also

References

Notes

External links

• Sondra Locke at the Internet Movie Database
• Sondra Locke at the TCM Movie Database
  
• Works by or about Sondra Locke in libraries (WorldCat catalog)