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| Sondra Locke |
The Triumph and Tragedy of Sondra Locke
Sondra Locke, the Oscar-nominated actress who starred in several movies with Clint Eastwood—a romantic partner-turned-litigious opponent—has died. She was 74. According to the Associated Press, Locke died on November 3 at her Los Angeles home of cardiac arrest stemming from bone and breast cancer.
Locke was an accomplished actress, making her debut in the 1968 drama The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter alongside Alan Arkin. She was nominated for a best-supporting-actress Oscar for her performance, an auspicious welcome for the Hollywood newcomer. She continued steadily working from that point, but her career—and life—changed forever when she was cast alongside Eastwood in the 1976 Western The Outlaw Josey Wales. The pair began dating on the set, sparking a relationship that would last for 13 years and spawn five more movies, the last being Sudden Impact in 1983. However, their relationship ended acrimoniously, coloring both their legacies and entwining them in two ugly lawsuits.
In her 1997 book The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly, Locke wrote about their relationship, detailing how it deteriorated as the years went on, according to a write-up in The Washington Post. Locke claimed the reason that she and Eastwood were at odds was because she wanted to branch out into the industry and build a career beyond his films—including by directing her own movies. Ultimately, Locke made two films during that period: Ratboy (1986) and Impulse (1990).
“I understood it would be at the risk of our relationship,” Locke said to the Post, referring to her desire to move away from Eastwood films. “And when I did, that was the beginning of the end.”
By 1989, it was clear the relationship was falling apart, she said. Eastwood was secretly involved with another woman and had two children with her. Meanwhile, Locke claimed that she had had two abortions over the course of their relationship, because Eastwood had told her that he didn’t want more children.
One April day while she was filming Impulse,she returned to their shared home to find that Eastwood had changed the locks and boxed up her clothes, the Post notes. Locke then filed a lawsuit. in depositions, Eastwood characterized her as his “occasional roommate . . . for 10 years,” per the Post. They ultimately settled the suit, with Locke securing a three-year, $1.5 million deal with Warner Bros. to develop directing projects.
However, as the years went on, Locke’s deal went nowhere. From 1990 to 1993, her lawyer Peggy Garrity claimed, Locke proposed 30 films to the studio, all of which were turned down. So she filed another suit, alleging that Eastwood defrauded her, and that the Warner Bros. deal she had been given was not real. Terry Semel, then the C.E.O. and co-chairman of Warner Bros., said when questioned that the deal did not guarantee any films would be produced and, because the deal was not exclusive, she was free to take projects to other studios. Eastwood later testified that he felt victimized by Locke. “I felt it was like social extortion of a kind—blackmail or whatever you want to call it,” he said.
The suit was eventually settled in 1996 for an undisclosed sum. At the time, Locke said it sent a “loud and clear” message to Hollywood “that people cannot get away with whatever they want to, just because they’re powerful.”
In the 1997 interview with the Post, Locke spoke openly about the ordeal and writing her subsequent book. “People can say, ‘He made her famous; he gave her movies.’ He didn’t give me movies—I did a job,” she said. “He didn’t make me famous. It was never my fame—it was his fame. I was Clint’s girl. I only stood to lose professionally.”
Locke directed two more films after Impulse:*Death in Small Doses (1995) and Trading Favors (1997), both of which were little-seen. She also acted in a handful of projects, making her final turn in the 2017 romantic comedy Ray Meets Helen.
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