Rise to prominence In July 1967, Locke competed with 590 other Southern actresses and dozens of New York hopefuls for the part of Mick Kelly in a big-screen adaptation of
Carson McCullers' novel
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter opposite
Alan Arkin. For the first audition in
Birmingham, Alabama, then-fiancé Gordon Anderson gave his bride a so-called Hollywood makeover; he bound her bosom, bleached her eyebrows, and carefully fixed her hair, makeup, and outfit so as to create a more
gamine appearance. Locke lied about her age,
shaving off six years to make herself seem younger—a pretense she would keep up not only for the rest of her career, but also the entirety of her public life. After callbacks in New Orleans and Manhattan, she was cast in the role by recommendation from entertainment coordinator
Marion Dougherty. The film's shooting wrapped in the fall of 1967. Locke, who had quit her post at WSM, opted to wait until its release before choosing a follow-up project. In the nine-month interim, she was asked to play the female protagonists in
True Grit and
Michelangelo Antonioni's
Zabriskie Point. Locke's performance garnered her an
Academy Award nomination, as well as a pair of
Golden Globe nominations for
Best Supporting Actress and
Most Promising Newcomer – Female. Being the oldest nominee in the latter category, she concealed this distinction through
retconning with aid from studio publicists.
Commercial ups and downs, missed roles, TV work 's book
The Brownies at Home, 1971 Hoping to shed the plain image she had accentuated in her screen debut, in January 1969 Locke posed for a seminude
Lady Godiva-ish pictorial by photographer Frank Bez, which was published in the December issue of
Playboy. The
Playboy layout established Locke's status as a
sex symbol, and the images were recycled in other men's magazines as her fame increased. Nearly three decades later, Locke said she still got those photos in fan mail requesting her autograph. opposite
Robert Forster. She made it as part of a $150,000 three-picture deal with
20th Century Fox, and was compensated for the other two which never materialized. It was announced that she would play the lead in
Lovemakers—a film adaptation of
Robert Nathan's novel
The Color of Evening—but no movie resulted. Locke was offered
Barbara Hershey's role in
Last Summer (1969), but her management turned it down without telling her. Shortly afterwards, she passed on the lead in
My Sweet Charlie (1970), which won an
Emmy for its eventual star
Patty Duke. She also declined the part of
Bruce Dern's pregnant wife in ''
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Projects Locke actively pursued but got rejected for included The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon'' (1970), with directors
Alan J. Pakula and
Otto Preminger both choosing
Liza Minnelli instead. in
Kung Fu, 1974 In 1971, Locke co-starred with
Bruce Davison and
Ernest Borgnine in the psychological thriller
Willard, which became a surprise box-office smash. Locke felt overqualified for her role, but did it as a favor to Davison, who at the time was her unofficial paramour. She was then featured in
William A. Fraker's underseen mystery
A Reflection of Fear (1972), which required her to project the image of a character half her age, and held the title role in first-time director Michael Barry's
avant garde drama
The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974), winner of three gold medals at the
Atlanta Film Festival. Both films were shelved for two years before finally opening in arthouse cinemas, attracting little attention at first. Over time,
Suzanne has accrued a
cult following, In 1973, Locke was attached to star in
Terminal Circle. "It's a woman's role that comes along once in a lifetime," she said. The San Francisco-based film was to be directed by Mal Karman and shot by cinematographer Robert Primes, who did camerawork for
Gimme Shelter, but it was scrapped for lack of funds. Locke guest starred on top-rated television drama series throughout the first half of the 1970s, including
The F.B.I.,
Cannon (as two different characters),
Barnaby Jones, and
Kung Fu. She was advised by her agents to stay away from TV, but thought it foolish to sit around not working between films. 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 Locke again in
Gondola (1973), a racially themed, three-character
PBS teleplay co-starring her real-life significant other at the time,
Bo Hopkins, and commended the actress for "a beautiful performance – perhaps her best ever."
Ron Harper, who worked with Locke on the short-lived 1974 show
Planet of the Apes, was even more effusive: "After acting with her in a couple of scenes, there was something so feminine about her that I could picture myself easily falling for her ... She's one of those women who exudes femininity, and you just become so attracted to that."
Films with Clint Eastwood In mid-1975, Locke was cast in
The Outlaw Josey Wales as the love interest of
Clint Eastwood's eponymous character. Locke said she chose the role for its exposure, following a run of unremarkable credits. She took a pay cut just to be in the film; her salary for
Josey Wales was $18,000—less than half of what she had earned for her previous job. The film emerged as one of the top 15 grossing films of 1976 and revived Locke's career. She followed it up with a lead role alongside Eastwood in the popular action road film
The Gauntlet (1977), the duo replacing
Steve McQueen and
Barbra Streisand, who bowed out from the production owing to a reported clash of egos. Its pre-publicity touted Locke as "the first actress ever to be in a Clint Eastwood movie and get equal billing on screen with the macho star." Eastwood predicted that she would win an Oscar for her performance. Locke was not even nominated, and received mixed critical response at best: on the upside,
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times said, "Locke is not only pretty, but also occasionally genuinely funny" and
Los Angeles Times critic
Kevin Thomas stated that Locke "has not received such a rich opportunity since her Academy Award-nominated debut"; in contrast,
Gene Siskel of the
Chicago Tribune said, "she's wasted here" and
TV Guide felt that "Locke is simply repulsive." Over the course of their decade-and-a-half-long personal relationship, Locke did not work in any capacity on any theatrical motion picture other than with Eastwood except for 1977's experimental horror Western
The Shadow of Chikara. Co-starring
Joe Don Baker,
The Shadow of Chikara is noted for being the first film to be shot on the
Buffalo National River. Eastwood accompanied Locke on the shoot and spent his days touring the countryside and fishing while she filmed. The home-invasion potboiler
Death Game (1977), though released after they became an item, was actually shot in 1974. "Clint wanted me to work only with him," said Locke. In 1978, Locke and Eastwood appeared with an orangutan named
Manis in that year's fourth-highest grossing film,
Every Which Way but Loose. She portrayed country singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor in the adventure-comedy. Its 1980 sequel
Any Which Way You Can—for which Locke earned a six-figure salary plus a share of the profits—was nearly as successful. Locke recorded several songs for the soundtracks of these films, and was whispered to be shopping for a record deal at the time. On the coattails of the franchise's success, she performed live in concert (one-off gigs) with
The Everly Brothers,
Eddie Rabbitt, and
Tom Jones. During this period, Eastwood did a few movies that had no prominent female character for Locke to play. In the meantime, she accepted some television offers, co-starring with an all-female ensemble cast in
Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979) and portraying
big band-era vocalist
Rosemary Clooney in
Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982). While the biopic followed Clooney from ages 17 to 40, Locke was 38 when she played the role, and though hardly counting as a proper exception due to its nonlinear structure, this marked the only time she played a mother onscreen. As part of the promotional push behind
Rosie,
Varietys Rick Du Brow wrote a flattering article in which he called Locke "one of the most-watched and popular motion picture actresses in the world." Locke starred as a bitter heiress who joins a traveling Wild West show in
Bronco Billy (1980), her only film with Eastwood not to reach blockbuster status, though it still ranked among the annual box-office top 25. and the film's director of photography,
David Worth, enthused how "being able to capture the true love between Clint and Sondra was very special." Locke cited
Bronco Billy and
The Outlaw Josey Wales as her favorites of the movies they made. The couple's final collaboration as performers was
Sudden Impact (1983), the highest-grossing film in the
Dirty Harry franchise, in which Locke played an artist with her own code of vigilante justice. Her fee was a reported $350,000. The film premiered five months short of her 40th birthday, declared by
People as "the pre-
Fonda age cutoff for actresses." Despite Locke's past nomination for an Academy Award and repeat appearances in box-office hits, she had failed to achieve first-magnitude stardom or win the affection of the moviegoing public. By 1979, the year Eastwood and she made their fourth film together, accusations of
nepotism arose. Cultural critic
Joe Queenan, writing for
Mail & Guardian, would express particular contempt for her in a 2010 editorial about Eastwood's career, believing that "his worst movies, without question, are the ones he made with Sondra Locke." In late 1983, Locke announced plans to develop and star in a movie about
Marie Antoinette, but the project fell apart. Eastwood then directed Locke in a 1985
Amazing Stories episode entitled "Vanessa in the Garden", with
Harvey Keitel.
Directing Locke made her feature directorial debut with
Ratboy (1986), a parable about a youth who is part rat and part human, produced by Eastwood's company
Malpaso. When asked why she had been absent from her longtime beau's recent star vehicles, Locke replied simply, "I wasn't right for the roles."
Ratboy had very limited distribution 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. Locke, who also appeared in the lead role alongside
Sharon Baird as the title character, was nominated for a
Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress. Amidst this setback, Locke conceded that plum acting offers had dried up, though she never backed down from the ruse she had begun in 1967, masquerading ceaselessly about being younger. In a subsequent interview with Siskel, Locke said she was not eager to act again. "If you love the craft of filmmaking as much as I do, it's hard to go back to acting after you've tasted the high of directing." She was also bumped from
The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in her words, "shut out of most venues to promote the book, in particular the networks." The book received a supportive rave review from
New York Daily News writer
Liz Smith, while
Entertainment Weeklys Dana Kennedy dismissed the book as a "peculiar, not terribly consequential, life story." Locke told a Portuguese website that she had been informed that
Entertainment Weekly originally planned to publish a positive review, but for reasons unclear, it was pulled and a negative review appeared instead. Locke was nonetheless grateful to have a platform at all, stating: "It was a miracle that a major publisher took it." Locke would once again be notably deleted from a montage commemorating Eastwood at the 2002
Maui Film Festival. After 13 years away from acting, Locke re-emerged in 1999 to appear opposite
Dennis Hopper in ''The Prophet's Game
and Wings Hauser in Clean and Narrow
, the latter shot in Texas. Both films went straight to video. About that time, she planned to direct "a two-guys-on-the-run film" called The Hard Easy
, which did not eventuate. In 2014, Locke served as an executive producer on the Eli Roth film Knock Knock'', starring
Keanu Reeves. She came out of retirement once more in 2016, producing and starring in
Alan Rudolph's indie
Ray Meets Helen with
Keith Carradine. The film had only a brief run in three theaters in May 2018, less than six months before Locke died. Despite increasing infirmities, she traveled to
Ann Arbor, Michigan, a few days after her 74th birthday to attend the Cinetopia Film Festival, where
Ray Meets Helen was received poorly. Writer-director Alex O Eaton wanted Locke to play an eccentric Appalachian grandmother in
Mountain Rest (2018), but she did not take the role, which ultimately went to the decade-younger
Frances Conroy. ==Other activities==