Sondra Locke

Sondra Locke Actress - Born 28 May 1944 · Shelbyville, Tennessee, USA

Died 3 November 2018 · Los Angeles, California, USA (cardiac arrest)

Birth name Sandra Louise Smith

Nickname Hobbit, Snow White, The Woman With No Name, Mrs. Anderson

Height 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)

Mini Bio Sondra Locke was born May 28, 1944 as Sandra Louise Smith, in Shelbyville, Tennessee, a quiet little town about 60 miles southeast of Nashville. She was the daughter of Raymond Smith, a military man stationed at nearby Tullahoma, and Pauline Bayne. Smith departed the scene before Sondra's birth. In 1945, her mother wed William B. Elkins, and together they had a son, Donald, on April 26, 1946. The short union ended in divorce. In 1948, Bayne remarried. Alfred Locke bestowed his surname on Pauline's children and raised them as his own. Sondra's stepfather was a carpenter; her mother worked in a pencil factory. For the smart, fanciful Locke, "My childhood felt as if I had been dropped off at an extended summer camp from which I was waiting to be picked up." The bright girl loved to read, which puzzled her simple mother, who was always pushing her to spend more time outside. Sondra's happiest moments occurred on weekend visits to the local movie theater.

Locke was a cheerleader in junior high and graduated valedictorian of Shelbyville Mills' 1957-1958 eighth grade class. At Shelbyville Central High School, the "classroom was the one place where I felt like I had a chance to prove myself and I continued to excel. I felt safe there and I liked it." Her best friend was classmate Gordon Anderson, the son of a teacher, whose family had relocated to the area from Arkansas around 1953. He was a fey young man, who shared many of Sondra's fanciful hopes about the future and was her collaborator in devising harmless ways to make their lives in Shelbyville more magical. One of the duo's frequent activities was making home movies with Gordon's Super 8 camera.

When Gordon attended Middle Tennessee State University (in Murfreesboro, about 30 miles from Nashville) in 1962, Sondra enrolled there too. Upon completing freshman year, Sondra had a blowup with her mother, left home, and did not return to college. Instead, she worked in Nashville as a promotion's assistant for WSM-TV, with occasional modeling and voiceover work. While in Nashville, Locke began acting in community theater as a member of Circle Players Inc. Along the way she dated Larry Munson, a sportscaster for WSM, and Brad Crandall, head of the station's advertising department. She also enjoyed a romance with law student Gary Gober, whom she had been in plays with. Meanwhile, Gordon revealed to her that he was homosexual. He went off to Manhattan to study acting and, for a while, had a lover there. Anderson was talented but unfocused about his theater craft and eventually returned to Tennessee. Because of Locke's spiritual kinship with Anderson, she and Gordon decided to wed. The mixed-orientation couple were married at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville on September 25, 1967. (Reputedly, the marriage was never consummated.)

If Gordon was unable to launch his own acting career, he had no such problems igniting Sondra's. Months before their wedding, he learned that Warner Bros. was holding a nationwide search for a young actress to play a key role in the screen adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968). Anderson helped Locke research the part of Mick, a teenage waif in a southern town who befriends a suicidal deaf-mute (Alan Arkin) boarding at the house where she lives. For the audition, in Birmingham, Alabama, Gordon bleached her eyebrows, bound her bosom and carefully fixed her hair, makeup and outfit so that she would instantly impress casting agents. The ploy succeeded, and, after several callbacks, Locke -- who lied about her age to seem younger -- was hired. The movie was released in the summer of 1968 and earned respectful reviews from critics, although many filmgoers found the picture too arty. Sondra was Oscar-nominated for her sensitive portrayal.

Next, Sondra moved to Los Angeles, with Gordon in tow. She hoped to parlay her Academy Award nomination into further movie assignments. The big-eyed, wiry bottle blonde found it difficult to win choice roles, making her accept lesser projects, the most famous of which was Willard (1971), a film about marauding rats. Cover Me Babe (1970), A Reflection of Fear (1972) and The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) faded into cinematic obscurity. In the lattermost, Locke played a Christ figure and had torrid love scenes with Paul Sand. Episodic television provided steadier acting opportunities: the anthology program Night Gallery (1969) and dramatic series including The F.B.I. (1965), Cannon (1971), Kung Fu (1972) and Barnaby Jones (1973). Thanks in part to the limited media of the time, she was able to maintain the ruse of younger age, which no doubt extended her shelf-life amid professional lulls. It was in 1972 that she first met rising kingpin Clint Eastwood when he was preparing to direct his second feature film, Breezy (1973). For the title role, Locke was passed over in favor of nine-years-younger Kay Lenz.

For half of the 1970s, the Andersons resided at West Hollywood's Andalusia condominium complex whilst seeing other people. For a time, Sondra was involved with Bruce Davison, her co-star from Willard (1971). While working on the teleplay Gondola (1974), she gained a new boyfriend, sandy-haired actor Bo Hopkins. He was once divorced and shared her penchant for falsifying birthdates. In the spring of 1974, she visited the set of Hopkins' current project, The Killer Elite (1975), and networked with composer Jerry Fielding, who was about to score a new Western showcase for Clint Eastwood. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) had a role that Locke thought could revitalize her career. This time, Eastwood was responsive and hired the 31-year-old to play his romantic interest. In early October 1975, the complementary pair fell hard for each other on location in Page, Arizona. "We were almost living together from the very first days of the film," Locke remembered. Besotted Clint confided he'd never been in love before and wrote a poem for his new mate: "She made me monogamous." This serially philandering megastar was 14 years her senior and a foot taller than she.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) was indeed a hit, with Sondra sparking a flurry of interest among male viewers as virtually nonspeaking eye candy. Yet she stopped pursuing film roles on her own initiative to assume wifely duties, appearing on the big screen exclusively in Eastwood-controlled projects thereon. The sole exception to this was The Shadow of Chikara (1977), an Arkansas-lensed Western with burly Joe Don Baker. (The home invasion thriller Death Game (1977), though released after Locke and Eastwood became an item, was actually shot in 1974.) "Clint wanted me to work only with him," she said. "He didn't like the idea of me being away from him."

Over the next few years, Locke had two abortions from her relationship with Eastwood. In 1979, she underwent a tubal ligation at UCLA to prevent further pregnancies. She and Clint settled into a $1.12 million, seven-bedroom Spanish-style Bel-Air mansion originally built in 1931, which she spent months renovating and decorating, and which she believed would be hers for life. She continued to spend platonic time with Gordon, whom she never divorced, nurtured by their spiritual relationship. Gordon moved in and out of gay relationships, and sometimes he and a boyfriend would socialize with Clint and Sondra. As for the professional side of things, Locke and Eastwood reteamed for his action opus The Gauntlet (1977), slapstick adventure-comedy Every Which Way But Loose (1978), its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), the quirky satire Bronco Billy (1980) and the fourth, darkest, most ambitious "Dirty Harry" vehicle, Sudden Impact (1983). All were stellar box office performers and cemented the twosome as filmdom's most visible couple.

During this period, Sondra took a few TV roles when Clint was starring in a movie that had no part for her to play (such as Escape from Alcatraz (1979) or Firefox (1982)). The first time she worked apart from him for any length of time since The Shadow of Chikara (1977) in 1976 was Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982). (Rosemary Clooney personally asked Locke to star in the CBS biopic on the strength of her performance in Bronco Billy (1980).) She later made an appearance on Britain's Tales of the Unexpected (1979) series. For the most part, however, she found herself sitting on the sidelines waiting for Eastwood to cast her in something.

By the mid-1980s, Sondra, over 40 but still refusing to admit it, was acutely aware that in Hollywood terms her leading lady days were just about finished. She had long been interested in film directing and had observed carefully how Eastwood and others directed the pictures she was in. With his blessing, she found a property that intrigued her and that his Malpaso production company would package, and developed it into a project for Warner Bros. She made Ratboy (1986), but despite good reviews, the film received scant distribution. In retrospect, Locke concluded that her exertion of authority over the project caused her longtime paramour to turn away from her, to find someone who was more compliant. (In an unpublicized affair with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves, Eastwood sired two legally fatherless children born in 1986 and 1988, in Monterey -- an "evil betrayal" Locke was unaware of.)

The showdown between Sondra and Clint occurred on December 29, 1988 at their mountain hideaway in Sun Valley, Idaho. After an unpleasant screaming match, Eastwood suggested Locke go back to Los Angeles. She sensed their relationship had passed a point of reconciliation, a fact confirmed when she scarcely saw Eastwood in subsequent months and when industry friends they knew in common shunned her. As she admitted later, "In my head I guess I knew it was over, but in my heart Clint and I were still not severed." On April 10, 1989, while she was directing a demanding sequence in a new police procedural, Impulse (1990), Eastwood had the locks changed on their house in Bel-Air. He also ordered her possessions to be boxed and put in storage. A letter addressed to "Mrs. Gordon Anderson," imperatively telling her not to come home, was delivered to her lawful husband's doorstep. When Gordon telephoned Sondra on the set and read her the letter, she fainted dead away in front of the cast and crew.

On April 26, 1989, Sondra filed a palimony lawsuit against her domestic partner of 14 years. Her "brazenness" in taking on the powerful Eastwood amazed and shocked Tinseltown and titillated the public. Her action sought unspecified damages and an equal division of the property she and Eastwood had acquired during their relationship. Locke asked for title to the Bel-Air home they had shared and to the Crescent Heights (West Hollywood) place Eastwood had purchased in 1982 (in which Gordon lived). The closed hearing was held on May 31, 1989, before a private judge. Before any court decision could be made, a private settlement was reached between the parties. Locke received $450,000, the Crescent Heights property, and a $1.5 million multiyear development-directing pact at Warner Bros. In return, she dropped her suit. By then, the fall of 1990, she was happy to end the hassle. (In the past months she had been diagnosed with cancer, undergone a double mastectomy, and endured chemotherapy.)

For the next three years Locke submitted over 30 projects to Warner Bros., but none received a green light to move ahead. Moreover, the studio refused to assign her to direct any of their in-house projects. In the mid-1990s, Sondra discovered evidence that Eastwood had arranged to reimburse Warner Bros. for her three-year studio contract -- a matter that he had never mentioned to her. It became obvious that the studio's negative professional attitude toward her had little or nothing to do with her directing or project-finding abilities. On June 5, 1995, Locke sued Eastwood again, alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. She claimed that Clint's behind-the-scene actions had sent a message "to the film industry and the world at large ... that Locke was not to be taken seriously." (According to Sondra's lawyer, the situation was Clint's "way of terminating the earlier palimony suit.")

While Locke's case was revving up at the Burbank Courthouse, Eastwood begged her to settle. On September 24, 1996 -- the morning jurors were set to begin a second day of deliberation -- Sondra announced her decision to drop her suit against Clint for an undisclosed monetary reward. One contingency was laid down: she would not reveal the settlement amount. The jubilant plaintiff said, "This was never about money. It was about my fighting for my professional rights." According to the victor, "I didn't enjoy it. But sometimes you have to do things you don't enjoy." Locke added, "In this business, people get so accustomed to being abused, they just accept the abuse and say, 'Well, that's just the way it is.' Well, it isn't."

But Locke was not finished. She had a pending action against Warner Bros. for allegedly harming her career by agreeing to the sham movie-directing deal that Eastwood had purportedly engineered. On May 24, 1999, just as jury selection was beginning (and four days before Locke turned 55), the studio reached an out-of-court settlement with Sondra.

In the decade following her courtroom saga, Sondra did not direct another movie. She did make a brief return to acting with cameo roles in back-to-back low-budget independent features, The Prophet's Game (2000) and Clean and Narrow (2000), both of which failed to secure a theatrical release. In 2001, she sold her home in the Hollywood Hills and moved to another part of L.A. After interim flings with producer Hawk Koch and John F. Kennedy's nephew Robert Shriver, she had a live-in relationship with one of the physicians who had treated her during her cancer siege. Dr. Scott Cunneen, described by Locke as "Herculean," was 17 years her junior, his mother only three years older than Sondra. She eventually split up with him.

In 2016, preceded by a protracted absence from the public eye, trade press reported that Locke would come out of retirement to co-star in Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2017) opposite Keith Carradine. The film was booked for a limited run in spring 2018. No longer able to hide her true year of birth in the post-internet era, Sondra was playing a romantic lead at the unheard-of age of 74.

Locke died on November 3, 2018, of cardiac arrest stemming from metastatic breast cancer. It was not publicized until mid-December. The mysterious six-week delay raised a lot of eyebrows, especially since the belated news leaked opening day of the latest Eastwood blockbuster, The Mule (2018). According to a death certificate obtained by the media, her cancer had returned in 2015 and spread to her bones. Locke's remains were cremated at Westwood (Village) Mortuary and the ashes entrusted to her husband of 51 years. Rosanna Arquette, Frances Fisher and Evan Rachel Wood were among the celebrities who paid tribute. Despite the acrimony that followed the collapse of her famous relationship, Locke will be long remembered for her prominent roles in some of Eastwood's most popular works -- and perhaps dichotomously, as a pioneer for the rights of independent working women.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: lulabreid40@hotmail.com

Family Spouse Gordon Anderson (September 25, 1967 - November 3, 2018) her death

Children

No Children

Parents

Raymond Smith

Pauline Bayne Locke

Alfred Locke

Relatives

Donald Elkins (Half Sibling)

Trademarks

Sharklike eyes

Often played women who aroused all the male characters around her

Sarcastic personality

Use of subterfuge in order to manipulate public perception, particularly with regard to her age

Career-long habit of playing parts for which she was 10 years too old

Trivia

Former partner of Clint Eastwood (1975-1989). They never married.

She left behind a reported fortune of $20 million.

News coverage of Locke's death was unprecedentedly low-key. After being kept secret six weeks, it got about 15 seconds on ABC News and a mere two sentences in People magazine (which she'd appeared twice on the cover of), and she was omitted from the Oscars' In Memoriam segment despite being a past nominee. Neither her widower nor exes gave a public statement. On top of that, her former friends, co-stars and colleagues (e.g. Louie Anderson, Richard Dreyfuss, Stacy Keach, Sally Kellerman, Ted Neeley, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver, Cynthia Sikes, Cicely Tyson) were tellingly silent on social media. In absence of any explanation, some have inferred that Locke requested the blackout in her final wishes, perhaps to keep her true age from being exposed. It's deducible, given Locke's vanity and history of deceiving the public, that she coordinated with end-of-life caregivers, mortuary staff etc, to ensure news of her own death would be suppressed as much as possible.

Co-starred with Clint Eastwood in six films: Any Which Way You Can (1980), Bronco Billy (1980), Every Which Way But Loose (1978), The Gauntlet (1977), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Sudden Impact (1983).

Friendship with future California first lady Maria Shriver ended over Maria's refusal to take sides publicly in the litigious war between Sondra and Clint Eastwood. The women were 11½ years apart.

Underwent a double mastectomy due to breast cancer.

She was standoffish toward her family and, upon hearing of her death, her half-brother said she'd only visited twice in 50 years.

Before she sued Eastwood for fraud, Locke met with feminist attorney Gloria Allred. Allred was interested in the case but as gender discrimination. Locke felt that gender bias was not the primary issue and didn't want to risk being stereotyped. She ultimately hired Peggy Garrity to represent her. After a two-week trial, 10 out of 12 jurors were ready to decide in her favor. Eastwood, knowing the jig was up, suddenly offered a sizable settlement, which Locke accepted. Garrity recounts the courtroom drama in a new book, "In the Game: The Highs and Lows of a Trailblazing Trial Lawyer" (2016). In a surprising twist, she ended up having to sue Locke for cutting her out of $1 million in fees. That case, which garnered minimal press, was settled out of court in October 1999.

Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982) and Clean and Narrow (2000) are the only movies in which she plays a mother. However, the former is told in a nonlinear manner, and in the latter her character's deceased son is never shown.

Blake Edwards promised her one of the two female leads in City Heat (1984) (ultimately played by Jane Alexander and Madeline Kahn) at a stage in development when Burt Reynolds had signed on but the role of the other leading man was yet to be filled. The actress later asserted that Edwards was merely using her to get to Clint Eastwood who'd already seen the script and turned it down, because once Eastwood changed his mind and came on board, Edwards dropped the idea of casting Ms. Locke.

In 1971, fifth graders at Eastside Elementary in Shelbyville were left star-struck when Locke made a visit and held pretend auditions in the class to show them what it was like in Hollywood. One student, Cameron Watson, was inspired by Locke and is now an actor/director. Watson later wrote a screenplay, Our Very Own (2005), which paid homage to Locke and the influence she had on his group of friends. Naturally, she felt honored and accepted an invitation to be a special guest at the movie's premiere.

Locke was first introduced to future long-term love Clint Eastwood by screenwriter Jo Heims on the Universal lot in 1972. When she chatted with Eastwood in his office bungalow, he held a golf club the whole time and chipped balls across the room while she sat on the couch with her legs folded up underneath her, trying to convince him that she was the *only* actress to play the title role in his sophomore directorial effort, Breezy (1973). Producer Robert Daley was also there, but Locke never got an audition because she was simply too old to be credible in the part. They didn't see each other again until 1975.

She was robbed of her purse at knifepoint in 1974. Following the incident, she kept a .25 caliber automatic pistol in her house and often took it along when she went out alone.

Lost custody of her parrot Putty in breakup with Clint. The parrot was still alive as of 2003, renamed Paco.

First job was as a bookkeeper at Tyson chicken processing plant, circa 1961.

In 1990, Locke was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. She died on November 3, 2018, at the age of 74 from a cardiac arrest related to breast and bone cancers. Her death was not publicly announced and was confirmed by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health six weeks after she died. There was no funeral or memorial service, and no explanation of why not. Her body was cremated and the ashes were given to her widower, Gordon Anderson, whom she married in 1967.

For publicity purposes, the spelling of her name was changed from Sandra to Sondra, six years chopped off her age, and her residence in Nashville, where she was employed by WSM-TV, wiped out.

On March 10, 1994, she filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Warner Bros. claiming that the studio coaxed her into dropping a palimony suit against ex-significant other Clint Eastwood in exchange for a development deal; Locke claimed that she'd proposed some 30 projects - including what later became Junior (1994) and Addicted to Love (1997) - which were all rejected. Warner moved for summary judgment (typically requested when one side believes the case has no merit), which the court granted. Locke appealed. On August 26, 1997, the case was reinstated. A settlement was reached behind closed doors on May 24, 1999, minutes before jury selection was scheduled to begin. Eastwood was listed as a material witness for the lawsuit had it gone to trial, Locke's attorney Neil Papiano said.

Stuck to an avocado-and-grapefruit regimen for decades, practiced transcendental meditation (TM), and was a lifelong non-smoker save for a few film roles.

On 22 August 1987, Sondra and Clint were traveling with Harrison Ford aboard a Gulfstream III when it developed an engine fire and stuck landing gear while inbound from Paris and was forced to land in Bangor, Maine. The charter company owning the G-3 sent another jet and mechanics to Bangor, and the group flew out on that plane the next day.

Despite what her publicity suggested, at 5'4" she was not remarkably short - an illusion attributed to usually wearing flat shoes instead of heels and being paired with a tall actor in most of her films. Authentic stars such as Julie Christie and Natalie Wood, for counterexample, were a couple inches shorter than Locke was.

Was naturally a brunette.

In high school she was voted 'Duchess of Studiousness' by her senior class. Grade average was 97.72%. Her ambition then, reads the 1962 edition of SCHS's Aquila yearbook: "Always to take disappointment with a smile".

'Human failing', 'control freak', 'monster' and 'sociopath' are some of the vehement terms she used to describe Eastwood in her book. She also compared him to accused murderer O.J. Simpson. "Others who knew Clint said that I had been 'far too kind' to him," she noted.

Even though she played the leading female role in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), during Oscar season Warner Brothers decided they would suggest that voters consider her for Best Supporting Actress instead of Best Actress, to make winning easier. She lost anyway to Ruth Gordon (for Rosemary's Baby (1968)), who went on to co-star with Locke in Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980).

Employees at the box factory where her estranged mother worked were warned not to ask about Sondra, because she'd burst into tears at the mention of her name. Speaking on the record in 1989, Pauline Locke said she hadn't seen her daughter in about 15 years and shared the following thought: "One of those children Clint made her abort could have been the grandson I've always wanted." (Pauline's three grandchildren were all girls.).

The aqua sequined gown she wore to the Academy Awards in 1969 was hand-sewn by WB seamstresses from her husband's design.

While it was common for women of Locke's era, especially actresses, to "fib" about their age, she took it to a whole other level, telling reporters during a junket for The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) that she was a dozen years younger than she really was. The Nashville Tennessean "outed" her in December 1967 and again in May 1989, yet she ceaselessly continued to lie about her age even near the end of her life. In her last interview for a podcast called The Projection Booth, she said that she "was just graduating high school" when she made The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) when she was in fact in her mid-20s. Locke had been the oldest nominee for Most Promising Newcomer at that year's Golden Globes, though she led people to believe otherwise with her retconned narrative. So deep were her stratagems entrenched in the public consciousness, that Australian journalist Dorian Wild, one year Locke's junior, described her at age 45 as "a rather pretty young thing" in an article ostensibly slanted against her.

Was the subject of Our Very Own (2005), a narrative film about five teenagers in Shelbyville, Tenn. who hope to meet Locke when she returns to town for the local premiere of Every Which Way But Loose (1978).

After starring in Willard (1971), about a boy who trains rats, she directed and starred in Ratboy (1986), about a boy who is half rat.

Shed her southern accent in studio diction class.

In 1992, she served as honorary chairwoman for the "Starry, Starry Night" auction in Costa Mesa, Calif. to benefit Human Options, a shelter for victims of domestic violence.

Alpha Psi Omega alumni.

Posed for Playboy's "Sex Stars of 1969" issue in a seminude layout that was meant to change her plain-Jane image. Wrote in her memoir that she still gets those racy Frank Bez snapshots in fan mail for her autograph and cringes when she sees them.

Widower Gordon Anderson is a sculptor very much in demand by private collectors. One of his creations, a miniature set of characters from Alice in Wonderland, was eventually acquired by Demi Moore.

Had a maternal half-brother named Donald Locke (born Donald Joseph Elkins on 26 April 1946), who ran an air-conditioning and refrigerator business. It wasn't until grammar school that Sandra found out not only did she and Don have different fathers, Alfred Locke - the man they called "Dad" - wasn't related to either of them. Alfred was the third husband of their mother Pauline, who also had an annulled marriage to painter Thomas H. Nelson.

Appeared in commercials for clothing store Rich-Schwartz, Belle Camp chocolates and Southerland mattresses during her modeling days in Nashville. As late as 1972 local stations still aired the mattress spot.

While receiving cancer treatment at Cedars Sinai Hospital, she linked up with surgeon Scott Cunneen, seventeen years her junior. Cunneen's father was born in 1926 and his mother in 1941, just three years older than Locke. The romance ended because of their age difference.

Autobiography "The Good, the Bad & the Very Ugly: A Hollywood Journey" released.

At the peak of her fame, late '70s, dabbled in music on the side and sung in small venues like LA's Palomino Club and on television, where she performed duets with Eddie Rabbitt, Phil Everly and Tom Jones.

Name always was pronounced Sondra - or so she claimed - only spelled with an A. People kept calling her Sandy, so she cinched it with an O.

The role of Gus Mally in The Gauntlet (1977) was originally slated for Barbra Streisand, but Clint Eastwood grew impatient with her hesitance about taking the role and opted to cast his far less bankable live-in. 12 years later, Streisand would date Eastwood for a brief period immediately after he and Locke broke up. Coincidentally, she is now married to James Brolin whose first ex-wife, the late Jane Cameron Agee, was an old friend of Locke's - and alleged side piece of Eastwood's.

Threw shade at John Wayne for wearing a toupee and Clint Eastwood for getting hair transplants. Locke herself wore wigs when she went bald in her seventies.

Director Brian De Palma supposedly interviewed Locke for Carrie (1976), but her manager at the time advised against the studio's proposed scale salary. After she declined to do a screen test, the role was given to Sissy Spacek. What's ironic is that Locke was 32 in 1976 - twice the age of the character - and De Palma chose 29-year-old Betty Buckley to play Carrie's gym teacher.

Was a no show at her mother's funeral.

Did summer theater in Washington D.C. and summer stock in the East, but when she tried to become a professional actress in New York everyone told her to catch a bus back home.

Lobbied for the role of Pookie Adams in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) which went to Liza Minnelli.

She had Scottish ancestry through her maternal side.

Attended Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN, on a full scholarship, dropping out after two semesters to work in real estate.

On her death certificate, she and Gordon Anderson are listed as residing at the same address. An AP report said attempts to reach Anderson for comment were unsuccessful.

Stage credits prior to her film career include "The Boy Friend", "The Crucible", "The Glass Menagerie", "Life with Father", "The Monkey's Paw", "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad", "A Thousand Clowns", "Tiger at the Gates", and "Turn of the Screw".

Appeared in a 1966 UPI wire photo that showed her frolicking in new fallen snow.

She has appeared in one film that has been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).

Was a star on her high school girls' basketball team, PTSA representative, president of the French club in her junior year and member of the National Honor Society.

Is cited under the pseudonym 'Miss Smith' in bestselling self-help book "Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach" (1982), co-authored by Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw.

Quotes

In acting, you're subject to what everyone else does to you: the light someone else puts on you, the pace someone else sets for the scene, how someone else cuts you together, what they throw away and what they keep. Pretty soon you realize, 'This is great, but there must be something a little more.'

No matter how big actors get, they always somehow think, 'Today is it -- tomorrow everybody's going to wake up and hate me.'

As an actor, if there's a good role you can take it for the role's sake and not worry about the fact that the whole story doesn't seem to work. The actor won't get the blame for it. You'll do a good job and they'll say, 'The story stinks, but Sondra Locke was good in the part of whatever.' I look on acting as a great vacation now. You work a few weeks, get paid a lot of money and everyone pampers and takes care of you.

Everyone always wants to type you. With me, I started out as a vulnerable waif and for many years that's all anyone ever wanted me to play.

I've had some great parts, it's just that you're always looking for something that will take you in a different direction. People only see you in those boxes you've been most recently seen in. That way, they don't have to think or be creative.

Women have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. People don't stop and think how long you have been around or what you may be on your own. There is a wall. But if you just know who you are and keep plugging along, sooner or later the little crack in the wall gets bigger. Pretty soon you can put your foot through. Then you are able to emerge as yourself.

Success is just a drop in the bucket, a grain of sand on the beach.

Externals don't throw me. I'm like a turtle. If I don't like the going, I just pull my head in.

I am a romantic. I want to cry when I throw out my Christmas tree, and I have a lot of feelings about magic and fantasy. I believe in elves and giants. I believe that fairy tales are nothing more than news reports of what once happened.

Believe in yourself. People try to discourage you about the cold world outside, but it's cold everywhere. Go after what you believe in. You have to try. If you fail, you will probably end up with something better than if you never tried.

I'm very ambitious. I'm Mount Vesuvius - with a cork in my head. I'm ready to burst. But I'm not so anxious that I'll take the first opportunity that comes along. I'm going to wait for a golden part to come along before I take it. If not golden, at least silver.

I'm not really very ambitious or very aggressive. I won't play politics or games to get roles. And so I really work very seldom. I think I've done ten pictures in the ten years that I've been in Hollywood. Actually, I don't mind not working, but I hate doing poor material, so I'd rather not work than do something I don't like.

People associate strength with masculinity. In this age of action movies specializing in masculine virtues, it's very difficult for an actress to play a strong woman. In the old days, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis managed to be strong and feminine simultaneously. So did Irene Dunne. The best example of all, perhaps, was Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara. They dominated the screen, but not the leading man. Actually, a strong woman adds to the masculinity of the man she is playing opposite. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy played powerful characters to their mutual advantage. Claudette Colbert didn't dominate Clark Gable in It Happened One Night (1934). Yet she played a very strong woman. You need a strong and talented man to begin with if you hope to maintain your femininity. But I think a good many leading men confuse masculinity and strength. They're insecure about women's roles that accentuate strength.

I think the reason actresses are taking a backseat to actors is that they're putting the wrong women on screen. They seem to put a new fashion model in a starring role every year. And being simply pretty isn't enough. It's boring. Using models in place of actresses implies that women have nothing to contribute to the screen. Acting is a profession and a special talent is involved. Films have moved away from pretty boys to actors with interesting faces. It's time they did the same thing with actresses.

[on Ratboy (1986)] There were many times when I said to myself, 'why did I have to pick a story like this?' If I wanted to direct, why not go out and find a Top Gun (1986) and make some money? You know, something sensible. I felt I had to go for it. For me, the story had the heart of a fairy tale and the head of a morality play. I had the sense of it owning me, in some way. It swept me off with it.

My personality, or persona or whatever, is really more in line with directing. If I had seen more women's names on the credits when I was a child - you know, 'directed by Gladys Hooper' - I think I might have drifted more in that direction.

[on Clint Eastwood] I discovered he was a liar and a cheat who was leading a double, no, a triple if not a quadruple life, and who was terrified of being found out.

A real marriage doesn't need those papers. But a real breakup does.

[after winning her fraud case against Eastwood, 1996] I'll never have to work again. I don't know what I'm going to do. But I think I want to work. Clint said, 'I will never settle. I will take you to the Supreme Court.' But I stuck with it. I battled against huge odds. I feel vindicated.

[her reaction to finding out Clint Eastwood sired another woman's children while they were still together] I just thought, 'Oh my God!' Either he changed from white to black or I had been living with somebody I didn't even know.

Clint never really gave direction to the actors, certainly not to me. I was very much on my own. I always wondered how much better my performances might have been, had I had a director who really 'worked' with me. Certainly Clint's method of printing the first or second take didn't give me time to find all the texture of the moment.

[on the prospect of a film version of her life] I honestly hope that it will not be made, because I fear it could fall into hands that would turn it into something ordinary, like some awful movie for television. I haven't given thought to who might possibly make a good film of it. I think it's best left as a part of my book, although so many people say that it should be a film. Unfortunately Hollywood would probably only be interested in exploiting the Clint section of the book.

[regarding suppression of her autobiography] I was shut out of most venues to promote the book, in particular the networks. Remember, Robert A. Daly (president of WB) had, at one time, run CBS. The influence was there. I was told by my publisher that Oprah Winfrey wanted me to come on her show. As it was being scheduled, I was suddenly canceled and Clint was set to appear on the show instead. At that time, and even rarely today, Clint had almost never appeared on such a talk show. The gay magazine The Advocate was set to do a big article on my book, which was a natural because of Gordon being gay. Suddenly Clint was giving them an interview and appearing on the cover and I was out ENTIRELY. Why could they not have run both pieces if indeed it was an innocent coincidence? Liz Smith, a very highly regarded and read New York columnist, wrote a supportive rave review about my book - and me - in her column. When her column appeared in the L.A. Times, the review and all references to my book were excised from it. The rest of her column was intact. Warner Brothers had some sort of association with L.A. Times. I was told at the time what the connection was, but have forgotten. Entertainment Weekly, a very well read entertainment magazine, also gave my book a rave review. It was pulled and a bad review appeared instead. I am fairly certain that Warner Brothers had some financial involvement with Entertainment Weekly - perhaps they even owned it, I can't recall.

Richard Schickel has made a living off writing puff pieces and documentary films about Clint. As I know those times and that subject well, I know Schickel's books are full of misstatements and downright fabrication, not only about me but others. He glorifies, practically deifies, Clint.

I believe Clint knows who he is; he just doesn't LIKE who he is. I do believe that Clint loved me as much as he is capable of love, and in the first eight or so years together he really WANTED to be the man he knew I saw in him. I think he tried very hard, but eventually one's nature cannot change.

I have many flaws, not the least of which is thinking too much of the other person's feelings and not enough of my own. Because of this, I try to please too much. I hate conflict and so I avoid it until it is almost too late and then I have the battle of a lifetime. I am a terrible worrier. I have to some degree overcome this one, because I learned that the things we worry about are rarely the things that actually happen. It's always something we never thought would or could happen - like what Clint did. Also, I had no breast cancer in my family so I didn't worry about that, and of course it did happen to me.

If you stay with what you won't admit is false, or go along with an incompatible group, you will be victimized by a chain reaction that you can't turn off. Never forget that we are responsible for every act, that the law of cause and effect is always operating.

I am reconciled that I will probably not work again, but if I do it will be something 'meant to be.'

[on Clint Eastwood's fans] They only want his image and not to be bothered with reality.

[1989, on what she would do if Clint Eastwood showed up on the set of Impulse (1990) to bad-vibe her] I'd go to my purse, take out my gun and shoot him in the back of the fucking head!

What a completely evil, manipulating, lying excuse for a man he was. And what ultimate irony. Clint Eastwood, the man who symbolized to so many what a man should be, had turned out to have none of the acknowledged qualities of a real man - loyalty, honesty, bravery and moral strength - and yet Gordon, a child-man, a gay man, had possessed them all.

Some friends of mine have some places up in Oregon and in northern California and Idaho and it's such beautiful country I take off there and collapse. I read and walk. And you know, it's amazing. I find everybody asks me what do you do, don't you get bored? I find that when I get in the country I don't know what it is but I find there's never enough time in the day, the day goes by so fast and I'll think: Oh, I wanted to write such and such a letter today or something else. Well, there's no time. I suppose the smallest task seems a monumental thing at the end of the day. I go with friends but away from business and away from Hollywood, and the telephone.

[from an interview with Dick Kleiner, 1969] I haven't thought of having a family. I'm not sure about bringing kids into this world. Anyhow, I'd feel sorry for any child that had me for a mother.

[on Willard (1971)] I hated it. I'm sorry that I did it.

Signs and messages about life choices often appear to us in everyday ways. It's up to us to 'see' them and recognize their meaning. Often we are too preoccupied to pay attention. I have had more than my share of synchronicities, for which I am very grateful.

[on being hauled up on a 25-foot cross in The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) while a helicopter whirled around her with the camera] The roar of the helicopter was deafening and its blades seemed only twelve feet or so from my head. The cross was vibrating and I was absolutely terrified. Actors are crazy, I thought.

On Sudden Impact (1983) I recall commenting to Clint about something in the decor of my character's house. I felt it was out of character for her, and reflected a different sort of person. His response to me was, 'If they're looking at that, they are not following the movie.' To him, it was entirely unimportant. I disagree completely. To me - and perhaps this was another early sign of the director in me - a film is as good as *every* detail put onto the screen. Like a painting, each and every detail adds up to create the total impression. Sometimes a thing works subliminally, but I believe it is all a solid and important part of the experience. In my opinion, Clint does not so much 'direct' a film as he 'shoots a script.' He rarely develops or initiates a screenplay. He buys a script and then shoots it literally. I would say it is not so much directing as 'covering' the script. By that I mean he will 'cover' a scene with all shots required to know what is going on, but doesn't express an opinion or guide the audiences' emotions or eye.

[re Eastwood on Eastwood (1997), the documentary in which film clips were edited so carefully that she doesn't appear to have been in any of them] Yes, I heard about that. I wasn't surprised. It is one example of the pettiness that is Clint.

[on Cover Me Babe (1970)] What's on the screen is not the film I agreed to do. It was far-out material at first, but there were lots of script changes during the filming and what emerged was rather conventional. It was a disappointing experience for me, because I know the movie they intended to make and didn't.

[commentary for Henry C. Parke's 40th anniversary retrospective of The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)] Altogether the filming of Josey was a wonderful experience. It has left a warm place in my heart. Josey and Bronco Billy (1980) are my favorite films I made with Clint. It was the first of six films I made with Clint. It is the only western film I have had the luck of making. Living in that period alone was a great experience - the horses, the primitive nature of everything. I mostly recall the beautiful countryside. Lake Powell at sunset was amazing. The cast of Josey was full of such good actors. I will always recall Paula Trueman, who was 80 years old at the time, and how feisty she was. She put me to shame with her somersaults! Yes, she could still do them at 80! She loved to show off now and then on the set. And, of course, working with the great Chief Dan George gave such an authenticity to the experience. He was a wonderful person and told great tales of times gone by. In between takes I always found myself moving my chair near his so I could hear his words. I have nothing but great memories of the making of Josey. I wish I could be with you all at this screening. I haven't seen it in quite a while. Your honoring it makes me want to see it again. Have a great event. All my best, Sondra.

[on Death Game (1977)] The director didn't have any idea what he needed to be, was, or should be doing. He knew nothing.

[in Lydia Lane's column, 1971] I think many in this so-called now generation have had it too easy. They are suffering from the ills of a materialistic society. I am for change where it is needed, but not for revolt. If you look back in history you will find idealists in every age who wanted to change the world and the parasites who attached themselves to the movement for a free ride. I strongly believe in personal instincts or intuitions and try to listen and follow them. You cannot understand and relate to others until you understand and relate to yourself.

The way I approach a part is to read the script and then just go about my everyday business. The character boils on the back burner of my mind until she becomes so vivid that she takes over, and I disappear. I never know what I'm going to do until I do it.

To me, simplicity means elegance.

[on marrying Gordon Anderson] It's funny the sort of cultural changes, but in those days males and females never lived together unless they were married.

I never felt at home in Tennessee. I felt I'd been parachuted out at the wrong spot somehow.

Before I had met Clint my gynecologist had suggested and fitted for me an IUD. Because my sex life was not very active, he did not think I should be constantly taking birth control pills. Clint complained of the IUD - it was uncomfortable for him, he said. And he too was not in favor of birth control pills, so he suggested a special clinic at Cedars Hospital where they taught a 'natural' method of birth control. It was the same 'rhythm' system that historically has been used to determine the fertile days for those who are attempting to achieve pregnancy. Of course, it could be used for the opposite results as well. Not only was I taught their method but I was constantly monitored with regular pregnancy checks. The whole process was awkward and entailed taking my temperature every morning and marking the calendar, etc. It was demanding and ultimately it had failed twice.

[on having a repeat abortion] I couldn't help but think that that baby, with both Clint's and my best qualities, would be extraordinary.

[on her first date with Clint Eastwood] Once at my door all that was necessary was another look at each other. There was no conversation, no maneuvering, it was all as natural as if it were happening for the thousandth time, but as exciting as any first time could be. He pulled me into his arms and kissed me gently, delicately. Then lifting me up, like some knight bearing his maiden, he carried me across the room to the bed. Physically I thought he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen - his heroic face, his tall, lithe, muscular body. And in spite of his size and power, he was a gentle, affectionate, thoughtful, and yet intensely ardent lover. I thought of nothing except the moment. There was nothing in his past I wanted to know about, and nothing I wanted to tell, and certainly nothing I wanted to address about any future reality. We made love that night, not once, but several times. It was truly magic. Together, it seemed that, though we were two bodies, two hearts . . . in perfect accord we were one.

Every TV job I did, I felt worse and worse and worse. I got so depressed, I thought I couldn't act anymore. The lines were terrible.

There is nothing I've always hated more than business and accounting.

Let my critics direct a movie if they think it's so easy!

I love comedy that seems kind of a little bit absurd.

I will steal anyone's idea if it is a good one.

Most movies are too brightly lit. I think that may come from a lot of directors having watched too much TV.

Salaries

Trading Favors (1998) - $10,000

Ratboy (1986) - $100,000

Sudden Impact (1983) - $350,000

Any Which Way You Can (1980) - $100,000 + % net profits

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) - $18,000

The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) - $40,000

Cover Me Babe (1970) - $150,000

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) - $15,000

Sondra Louise Anderson (née Smith; May 28, 1944 – November 3, 2018), professionally known as Sondra Locke, was 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, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can and Sudden Impact. She has worked with Clint Eastwood, who was her companion for over 13 years. Her autobiography, The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly – A Hollywood Journey, was published in 1997.

Early life Locke was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, the daughter of Raymond Smith, a native of New York City then serving in the military, and Pauline Bayne Locke, a pencil factory worker. Her parents separated before she was born, and Bayne 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. She attended Shelbyville Senior High School, where she was again valedictorian and voted "Duchess of Studiousness" by classmates, graduating in May 1962. She then enrolled at (but did not graduate from) Middle Tennessee State University, majoring in Drama. Later, Locke worked in the promotions department for WSM-TV in Nashville when she lived there for approximately three years.

Career Locke won a nationwide talent search in 1967 for the part of Mick Kelly in a big-screen adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter opposite Alan Arkin. Prior thereto, she had starred in some half-dozen theater productions with husband Gordon Anderson for Circle Players Inc. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was released in the summer of 1968 to critical acclaim, garnering Locke an Academy Award nomination as well as two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Most Promising Newcomer.

Her next film role was as Melisse in Cover Me Babe, originally titled Run Shadow Run, 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. Locke made television guest appearances in several drama series throughout the early 1970s, 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. Lloyd acted with her again in Gondola, a three-character teleplay with Bo Hopkins, and remarked that Locke gave "a beautiful performance – perhaps her best ever." She was also featured in William A. Fraker's A Reflection of Fear (1972) and had the title role in The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974).

Locke's career reached a turning point in 1975 when she took a supporting role in The Outlaw Josey Wales as the romantic interest of Clint Eastwood's eponymous character. This was followed by a lead role alongside Eastwood in the hit action film The Gauntlet (1977). Over the course of their personal relationship, Locke did not work in any capacity on any theatrical motion picture other than with him except for 1977's western The Shadow of Chikara. In 1978, she and Eastwood appeared with an orangutan named Manis in that year's second highest-grossing film, Every Which Way But Loose, an adventure-comedy in which Locke portrayed country singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor. The 1980 sequel, Any Which Way You Can, was equally successful. She recorded several songs for the films' soundtracks and has also 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 commercial success. She cites Bronco Billy and The Outlaw Josey Wales as her favorites of the movies they made together. The pair's final collaboration as performers was Sudden Impact (1983), the highest-grossing film in the Dirty Harry franchise, in which Locke 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 feature directorial debut with Ratboy, a fable about a boy who is half-rat, produced by Eastwood's company Malpaso. Ratboy only had a limited release in the United States, where it was a critical and financial flop, but was well received in Europe, with French newspaper Le Parisien calling it the highlight of the Deauville Film Festival. Concentrating almost exclusively on directing from that point onward, Locke's second foray behind the camera was Impulse (1990), a thriller 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 (1997) starring Rosanna Arquette.

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

Personal life Locke married sculptor Gordon Anderson on September 25, 1967. She has stated in court papers that the marriage was never consummated and described her relationship with Anderson (reportedly a homosexual) as "tantamount to sister and brother." According to Locke, her husband is "more like a sister to me."

From 1975 until 1989, Locke cohabited with actor Clint Eastwood. They had first met in 1972, but became involved while filming The Outlaw Josey Wales. She had two abortions in the late 1970s. Shortly after the second abortion, she underwent a tubal ligation, stating in her autobiography that her decision to have the procedures was due to Eastwood's insistence that parenthood would not fit into their lifestyle. She later discovered that he secretly fathered two children with another woman during the last three years of their relationship.

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

In 1994, Locke sued Eastwood for fraud, alleging that the deal with Warner was a sham–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. According to Locke's attorney Peggy Garrity, Eastwood committed "the ultimate betrayal" by arranging the "bogus" film directing deal as a way to keep her out of work. The case went to trial in 1996, but just minutes before a jury was to render a verdict, Eastwood agreed to settle for an undisclosed amount. 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."

Locke also sued Warner Brothers separately, claiming that the studio never had any intention to use her as a director and rejected all of her projects without fairly considering them. The suit against Warner Brothers is used in some modern law-school contract textbooks to illustrate the legal concept of good faith. As had been the case with the previous lawsuit, this ended in an out-of-court settlement, in 1999. The agreement with Warner, Locke said, was "a happy ending" after "five years of torture."

Locke is a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a double mastectomy and chemotherapy in 1990. 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. In 2001, Locke purchased a six-bedroom home in the Hollywood Hills, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the southeastern Santa Monica Mountains.

Locke died on November 3, 2018 from cardiac arrest related to breast and bone cancers. She was buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary.

Sondra Locke Actress - Born 28 May 1944 - Filmgoers who have attributed the stardom of actress Sondra Locke to the "sponsorship" of her onetime soulmate Clint Eastwood are suffering from the dreaded SMS, or Short Memory Syndrome. These worthies have forgotten that Locke was Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of a suicidal small-town girl in Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968) while Eastwood was still grinding out spaghetti westerns. It is true that Locke's flagging screen career was regenerated by her appearance in Eastwood's The Outlaw Josie Wales. It is also probable that she would not have been afforded the opportunity to play everything from supercilious heiresses (Bronco Billy) to foul-mouthed Federal witnesses (The Gauntlet) to vengeful murderers (Sudden Impact) without Eastwood's support and encouragement. The acrimonious "palimony" suit that followed the breakup of Locke and Eastwood served only to perpetuate the myth that Locke was a blonde nonentity coasting on the reputation of her live-in lover. That such a notion is idiotic has been proven by Sondra Locke's artistic achievements as director of such low-profile theatrical features as Ratboy (1990) and Impulse (1990) and such TVers as Death in Small Doses (1995).

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Relationships Given that Locke waited decades to confirm that her marriage was platonic, most of her actual romantic attachments went unpublicized. In the mid-1960s, she dated her supervisor at WSM-TV's PR department, Brad Crandall (1920–1973). She started as secretary to Tom Griscom in local sales for WSM Radio.

George Crook, a cameraman for WSM, squired Locke to Nashville society events including the 1965 hunt ball. He later got into local politics and was elected mayor of Belle Meade in 2000. Another early boyfriend, personal injury attorney Gary Gober, starred with Locke in Circle Players' productions while attending Vanderbilt University Law School. Locke also dated a sculptor (she did not name him) prior to marrying Anderson.

During her marriage, Locke was rumored to have been romantically linked to co-stars Robert Fields (Cover Me Babe), Bruce Davison (Willard), Paul Sand (The Second Coming of Suzanne) and Bo Hopkins (Gondola), as well as producer Hawk Koch, real estate agent Herb Goldfarb, and John F. Kennedy's nephew Robert Shriver. For a while in the early 1970s, she shared a liaison with married actor David Soul after they played siblings in an episode of Cannon.

Locke referred to these intervals as "casually exploring for a romantic relationship," noting that she had not fallen in love with any of the men. "Love ... was not something to search out actively; it finds you, I believed.

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Personal life

Marriage

Mr. and Mrs. Anderson at the Beverly Hills Hotel in July 1968

On September 25, 1967, Locke married sculptor Gordon Leigh Anderson (born August 2, 1944, Batesville, Arkansas) at the First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, one week after The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter commenced principal photography. Dr. Walter Rowe Courtenay presided over the ceremony. They remained married for 51 years until her death in 2018.

Locke had known Anderson since at least the late 1950s; accounts as to when they met vary by as much as four years. In early 1969, as Locke was flooded with script offers after her Oscar nomination, she and Anderson left Tennessee and moved into a condo at The Andalusia in West Hollywood.

According to a 1989 affidavit, the marriage was "tantamount to sister and brother" and they never consummated it. Anderson was gay. Locke, testifying under oath to a jury, characterized her husband as being "more like a sister to me" and explained, "it's funny the sort of cultural changes, but in those days males and females never lived together unless they were married." According to her death certificate, the two were residing at the same address when she died, and he was the person who registered her death.

Anderson is a central presence in Locke's autobiography, but she does not elaborate on her reasons for marrying him beyond the following passage:

However conventional or unconventional our marriage might turn out to be honestly did not concern me that much. I was very young, but I had come to feel that, for me, sex was the least important element in a relationship and the one thing that time had proven to me was that my love for Gordon came from such a deeply connected place that it transcended everything else.

Romances

Given that Locke waited decades to confirm that her marriage was platonic, most of her actual romantic attachments went unpublicized. In the mid-1960s, she dated her supervisor at WSM-TV's advertising department, Brad Crandall. She started as secretary to Tom Griscom in local sales for WSM Radio. According to co-worker Alan Nelson, fellow staff members perceived Locke's promotion as an act of nepotism.

George Crook, a cameraman for WSM, squired Locke to Nashville society events including the 1965 hunt ball. He later got into local politics and was elected mayor of Belle Meade in 2000. Another early boyfriend, personal injury attorney Gary Gober, starred with Locke in Circle Players' productions while attending Vanderbilt University Law School. Locke also dated sportscaster Larry Munson prior to marrying Anderson.

During her marriage, Locke was rumored to have been linked amorously to co-stars Robert Fields (Cover Me Babe), Bruce Davison (Willard), Paul Sand (The Second Coming of Suzanne) and Bo Hopkins (Gondola), as well as producer Hawk Koch, real estate agent Herb Goldfarb, and John F. Kennedy's nephew Robert Shriver. For a while in the early 1970s, she shared a liaison with married actor David Soul after they played siblings in an episode of Cannon.

Locke referred to these intervals as "casually exploring for a romantic relationship," noting that she had not fallen in love with any of the men. "Love ... was not something to search out actively; it finds you, I believed."

Life with Eastwood

Eastwood and Locke in Kanab, Utah, 1975

Locke and actor/director Clint Eastwood entered a domestic partnership in October 1975. She first met Eastwood in 1972 when she unsuccessfully lobbied for the title role in his film Breezy (1973); they became involved upon arrival at the shooting location of The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) in Page, Arizona. "It was just an immediate attraction between the two of us," Locke recalled in a