page_title: Sondra Locke
section_title: Films with Clint Eastwood
hierarchical_section_title: Sondra Locke / Career / Films with Clint Eastwood
caption_attribution_description: English: Film still of Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke in The Gauntlet (1977)
context_page_description: Sandra Louise Anderson, professionally known as Sondra Locke, was an American actress and 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 hit 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 worked often with Clint Eastwood, who was her companion for 14 years. She also directed four films, notably Impulse. Locke's autobiography, The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly: A Hollywood Journey, was published in 1997.
context_section_description: In 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'd earned for her previous job. The film was one of the top 20 grossing films of 1976 and revived Locke's career. She followed it up with a lead role alongside Eastwood in the popular action film The Gauntlet (1977), the duo replacing Steve McQueen and Barbra Streisand, who bowed out from the production due 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 unblushingly predicted that she would win an Oscar for her performance. Locke wasn't 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. The home invasion film 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. "He didn't like the idea of me being away from him."
  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. She recorded several songs for the soundtracks of these films and was whispered to be shopping for a record deal at the time. Honing her musical skills, Locke 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 age 17 to 40, Locke was 38 when she played the role.
  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. The New York Times critic Janet Maslin noticed that "each of them works more delicately here than they have together previously." 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.
  Locke never appeared in a wide release after Sudden Impact. The film premiered five months before her 40th birthday, the customary cutoff age for leading ladies of the era. 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".
caption: Eastwood and Locke in The Gauntlet (1977)
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