Sondra Locke’s name didn’t appear in that year’s Oscars In Memoriam segment. An Academy Award nominee, a director, a woman who had once been one of Hollywood’s most talked-about actresses—and she was completely forgotten by the industry she had given everything to. Her silence in death was the final act of a life filled with secrets, lies, and heartbreak. She was born Sondra Louise Smith in Shelbyville, Tennessee, on May 28, 1944.
Her father left before she was even born, and her mother later remarried, giving Sondra and her brother a new last name. But Sondra would eventually leave that family behind completely. After studying theater on a full scholarship at Middle Tennessee State University, she dropped out after just two plays and cut off all contact with her relatives. Her brother Donald blamed her high school friend, Gordon Anderson, saying the man had an almost hypnotic effect on her.
Little did Sondra know that Anderson would stay in her life for the next fifty years. She started working in radio and TV in Nashville, but then she heard about a massive audition. Nearly 600 actors were competing for a role in *The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter*. Sondra wanted the part of a teenager, but she was already 23.
So Anderson gave her a makeover, and Sondra made a decision that would haunt her for the rest of her life: she cut six years off her age and lied. She won the role, beating out almost everyone. It was a dream come true, but also the beginning of a nightmare. While filming, she married Anderson, partly to clean up her reputation in case she became famous.
When the awards season arrived, Sondra Locke was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes for her very first film. To protect her lie, press materials scrubbed all mention of her university days and her Nashville career, making it look as though she had auditioned straight out of high school. At the Oscars, Anderson designed her a $7,000 sequin gown. The dress impressed critics so much that Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen asked for their own versions.
Sondra and Anderson went from unknowns to Hollywood power players overnight. But that was only the beginning of the problems. While making her next forgettable film, *Cover Me Babe*, Sondra began a relationship with her co-star Robert Fields. She was a newlywed.
The truth about her marriage to Anderson would come out much later: Anderson was gay, and the marriage was never consummated. For now, she kept that secret and continued hiding her real age. A series of bad career decisions followed. Her team turned down *Last Summer* and she passed on the lead in *My Sweet Charlie*—a role that won Patty Duke an Emmy.
She also rejected *They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? *, which earned nine Oscar nominations. She lost two roles to Liza Minnelli. Desperate, she tried out for a horror film, *Reflection of Fear*, where she played a 15-year-old while her real age was 28.
Then came a string of affairs with her co-stars, despite the fact that she was still married. There was Paul Sand, then David Soul, then Bo Hopkins. She even appeared with Hopkins as a couple on a celebrity game show before making a speedy exit. Her next project was *The Outlaw Josey Wales* with Clint Eastwood.
Sondra was desperate for a hit, so she took a pay cut, earning just $18,000 as the female lead. On set, both Eastwood and the director Phil Kaufman pursued her. Eastwood got the competition removed—he had the director fired and took over the film himself. He got his date, and things got serious quickly.
One night, Eastwood stepped out of their hotel completely naked and announced to the world that he was in love. Sondra later said it was the first time either of them had truly been in love. Eastwood even told her she made him monogamous. They planned a life together.
The film was a huge success, earning over $30 million on a $4 million budget. For the first time since her career began, Sondra had found a partner she could be successful with. Eastwood let her name appear above the title of their next film, *The Gauntlet*—a gesture he never repeated. After that, her name moved below the title, and then off the poster entirely.
For *Every Which Way but Loose*, Eastwood posed with an orangutan instead of her. He called the orangutan “one of the most natural actors he had ever worked with. ”
At home, things also became strained. Eastwood had fathered children out of wedlock, and the official word was that neither he nor Sondra wanted children.
But Sondra became pregnant twice with Eastwood and terminated both pregnancies. She later revealed that she had removed her IUD because Eastwood found it uncomfortable. To prevent any future pregnancies, Eastwood suggested she be sterilized. Sondra cried, but she agreed.
Afterward, she wondered why they hadn’t discussed him having a procedure instead. Feeling guilty, Eastwood sold his home and bought her a dream house in Beverly Hills. Sondra called the house “her baby. ” But the house became the beginning of the end.
Eastwood continued fathering children—two in the late 1980s that Sondra had no idea about. She could sense the tension. The man she had fallen in love with was becoming a stranger. In January 1989, they attended the American Cinema Awards together, their final public appearance.
After two unromantic nights in Beverly Hills, Eastwood left. He slept in the caretaker’s quarters or at his Burbank apartment. Sondra believed his behavior was “acting out” because he was getting older and losing power at the box office. She wasn’t ready to give up on him, but she called a divorce lawyer anyway, wanting to know her options.
Eastwood found out and used a wiretap to listen to her conversation. What he heard made him act. In April 1989, Sondra came home to find security guards blocking her way. Eastwood had changed the locks, moved her possessions into storage, and effectively kicked her out.
Sondra sued for $70 million, listing charges that included emotional distress, breach of contract, forcible entry, and possession of stolen goods. She also demanded the title to the house where Anderson was living—her husband, whose true relationship with her came out during the proceedings. She also accused Eastwood of forcing her to have two abortions and a sterilization procedure. Eastwood denied it, fueling a legal battle that dragged on for nineteen exhausting months.
Then Sondra received devastating news: she had breast cancer. Too exhausted to continue fighting, she settled for far less than she had asked—$450,000 in cash, some monthly payments, the West Hollywood house, and a directing deal with Warner Bros. worth $1. 5 million.
But the deal was a trap, she believed. She brought more than thirty scripts to Warner Bros. , and they rejected each one—only for two of them to be made by other directors later. Sondra investigated and concluded that Warner Bros.
had no real deal for her. The money was coming from Eastwood’s own assets, and she suspected he was using his film *Unforgiven* to launder it. She saw it as a way to stop her from working in Hollywood. She sued both Eastwood and Warner Bros.
and settled out of court with both. On the courthouse steps, she smiled and said it had been “the best day in a long, long time. ” Eastwood responded by calling her his “occasional roommate,” accusing her of trying to grab money, and even claiming she had used her cancer diagnosis to win sympathy with the jury. Because of her cancer, Sondra needed a double mastectomy.
The operation was successful. During her recovery, she grew close to her young nurse, Scott Cunning, who was seventeen years her junior. Her own mother was only three years older than Sondra’s new partner. They bought a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, but the relationship fizzled out after eleven years.
She seemed content to live the rest of her life tucked away from the public eye. In 2015, after twenty-five years in remission, her cancer returned. On November 3, 2018, Sondra Locke died of cardiac arrest at home. Anderson was still her husband, and he accepted her ashes—along with a $20 million inheritance.
Their unusual marriage had lasted over fifty years. But the world didn’t know she was gone. No friends, no ex-lovers, no word from Eastwood. More than a month passed before Radar Online broke the news.
It was strange for an Academy Award nominee to pass without a single mention, and people began to wonder why. Some believed Sondra had requested a media blackout because she feared her real age would be announced. The Oscars that year omitted her from the In Memoriam segment entirely. When obituaries finally appeared, many led with Eastwood’s name, as if she had only ever been his girlfriend—not a director, not an Oscar nominee.
Sondra had always believed he sabotaged her career and got her blacklisted. She took him to court and won. Yet his name still haunted her, even after death. Critic Rex Reed, who had profiled her back in 1967, once said he thought Sondra lied through her teeth about many details of her life.
After she passed, he admitted he even wondered if her death might have been a publicity stunt. Sondra Locke spent a lifetime hiding her true age, hiding the truth about her marriage, and hiding the hurt that followed her from Tennessee to the top of Hollywood and back down again.
