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American model turned actress Sally Kirkland, known for her roles on stage, television and film, including Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Sting and an Oscar nomination in 1987. Anna — died at 84 years old.
Her spokesman, Michael Green, said Kirkland died Tuesday morning at a hospice in Palm Springs, California.
This fall, friends started a GoFundMe account to help her get medical help. They said she had four broken bones in her neck, right wrist and left hip. During her recovery, she also developed infections that required hospitalization and rehabilitation.
Kirkland has starred in films such as:
- What we were like with Barbra Streisand.
- Revenge with Kevin Costner.
- Cold feet with Keith Carradine and Tom Waits.
- EDTV Ron Howard.
- John Kennedy Oliver Stone.
- Heat wave with Cicely Tyson.
- High stakes with Kathy Bates.
- Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey.
- Ghosts1991 TV movie about a family dealing with paranormal activity.
Kirkland also made a cameo appearance in the Mel Brooks film. Blazing Saddles.
Her biggest role was in Anna, as a fading Czech film star who turns her life around in the United States and mentors younger actress Paulina Pozkova. Kirkland won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Actress category.
Kirkland's small screen roles include Criminal Minds, Roseanne And Leading case. She was also a regular on the TV show. Valley of the Dolls And Charlie's Angels.
Born in New York, Kirkland's mother worked as a fashion editor for Vogue and Life magazines and encouraged her daughter to start modeling at age five.
Kirkland graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied with Philip Burton, Richard Burton's mentor, and Lee Strasberg, a master of the Method school of acting.
An early breakthrough came in the work of Andy Warhol. 13 most beautiful women in 1964.
Kirkland's volunteer work included efforts with the Red Cross.
On stage, Kirkland appeared in an off-Broadway play by Terrence McNally. Dear Eros. Some of her early roles were in Shakespeare productions, including the lover Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream for New York Shakespeare Festival producer Joseph Papp and Miranda in the off-Broadway production Storm.
“I don't think any actor can truly call himself an actor unless he or she gets his 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 simply an inability to control your breathing, or an inability to appreciate language like poetry and music, or a lack of the power that Shakespeare automatically instills in you when you take on one of his characters.”
Kirkland was a member of several New Age groups, taught seminars on insight transformation, and was a longtime member of an affiliate church of the Spiritual Inner Awareness Movement, whose followers believe in the transcendence of the soul.
She reached a career low riding naked on a pig in the 1969 film. Futzwhich the 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 grim standards of the time, it was sad,” he wrote.
Kirkland was also known for stripping down for so many other roles and social causes that Time magazine dubbed her “the new Isadora Duncan of nudothespism.”
Kirkland volunteered for people with AIDS, cancer and heart disease, fed the homeless through the American Red Cross, participated in hospice telethons and advocated for prisoners, especially young people.
