Sally Kirkland dies: Oscar nominee and Globe winner was 84

Sally Kirkland, a Golden Globe-winning actress on stage and screen who was also nominated for an Academy Award, has died. She was 84 years old.

The actress died Tuesday morning in Palm Springs, her manager confirmed to The Associated Press, after being placed in hospice care last week with a diagnosis of dementia.

Kirkland’s credits came from the 1987 film “Anna,” in which she co-starred with Polina Porzhkova. The film, which also won her an Independent Spirit Award for leading actress, was one of Kirkland’s hundreds of credits, including 1991’s “JFK,” “Bruce Almighty,” “80 for Brady” in 2023 and the television series “Charlie’s Angels.”

Born on October 3, 1941 in New York City, Kirkland was encouraged by her mother to begin modeling when she was 5 years old. She graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and studied with Philip Burton, director of Richard Burton. Kirkland took Lee Strasberg’s method acting class at the Actors Studio when she was 18 and began her career working in off-Broadway theater. She would study with Strasburg for 20 years and later teach Shakespeare. Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino were among her fellow students.

At one point, Strasburg had a scene from her “Richard III” for months, with Lady Anne playing the title character in front of classmate Rip Tavern.

“I spit on the rap, but he didn’t know I was actually doing it, and he picked me up by the back of my neck, by my clothes, and suspended me in the air, and everybody in the studio was like, ‘Ah! What’s going on?’ ” she told The Times in 1991. “The Actors Studio. Of course, I love it.”

Decades after she contacted Strasburg, around the time “Grandma” hit theaters, Kirkland told The Times about the advice she got from legendary “Gone With the Wind” producers David O. Selznick when she was just 17 and dating one of Selznick’s daughters.

You’re going to be a big star, David said. but Before you are in your late 30s or 40s. Kirkland was 43 when she played the award-winning title role in “Anna.”

“She plays a Czech film star in exile in New York, drowning in alcohol and despair but bound by career wounds,” wrote Times film critic Charles Champlin in 1987. “It’s one of those wild parts ever seen, players will stake their souls to get it.”

Kirkland called Selznick’s advice “fantastic.”

He said I should continue working everythingcollect as many credits as I can. Get 300 women under your belt. It will all pay off,” he said. “Was he psychotic? Did he program my mind? I never stopped acting.”

She didn’t quite hit 300 women in her film and television career, but she came close, with about 270 credits on both the big and small screens at the time of her death, according to IMDb. In the industry, she had a reputation as a serious professional who was also fearless and unconventional. She shed her clothes in the name of art and social protest with her three films “artistically intended but X-ratable” according to the late Champion.

Kirkland told The Times in 1991, when she was performing at Garden Grove to raise funds for the Grove Shakespeare Festival, that she believed in reincarnation.

“There’s no question in my mind,” she said. “I was an actor in Shakespeare’s day.”

Kirkland also taught motivational workshops and was a longtime member of the Church of Spiritual Insight movement, whose followers believed in the transmigration of souls. She was a disciple of the church’s founder, John Rogers, who resigned as its spiritual leader in the late 1980s after allegations of financial irregularities and the church was described as a cult by former followers in California.

While other celebrities distanced themselves from MSIA, Kirkland stayed. She said in the early 1990s that she meditated for two hours a day and visited prisons and gave “drug-free counseling to kids” who struggled with drugs as teenagers.

Kirkland’s film credits include “The Sting,” “The Way We Were,” “Coming Apart,” “Revenge,” “ED TV,” and “A Woman’s Archeology.” On television, she has had roles in “Roseanne,” “Lou Grant,” “Kojak,” “Three’s Company” and “Hawaii Five-O.” She had a 31-episode arc in the 1999 daytime drama Days of Our Lives.

Even then, she was a “working actress” rather than a movie star, according to friends who started a GoFundMe campaign last year to raise money for her ongoing medical care.

“While Sally had a successful career as an actress, during the stock market crash of 2007 Sally lost a large portion of her investment and the money she had earned during her career (1988-1998) due to the bad advice of a financial advisor-business manager,” wrote friends Paige Dylan, Coty Galloway and MelundF on the England Online website. They also cited a 2021 change in SAG-AFTRA’s insurance coverage for older actors as helping her financial struggles.

Kirkland had fallen repeatedly in recent months, breaking four bones in her neck, right arm and left hand. While recovering, she also developed infections, requiring hospitalization and rehabilitation — more than Medicare covers, friends said.

“To those of us who put this campaign together, Sally was more than just a friend – she was a mother figure, offering encouragement, wisdom and love when it was needed.” “To those who knew Sally personally, she was a boundless source of generosity, kindness and an indomitable spirit.”

Kirkland never married, choosing instead, they wrote, to prioritize “being there for others [and giving] Everything she owes to her art, her church, her friends and her community.

The actor’s mother, also named Sally Kirkland, worked for Vogue and was the editor of Life magazine for more than 20 years. Elder Kirkland died in 1989.

Former Times staff writer Jean Dubin, The late arts editor and critic Charles Champlain and The Associated Press contributed to this report.