By Associated Press. Locke was nominated for an Academy Award for her very first film in and went on to star in six films Clint Eastwood, with who she had a well-publicized and tumultuous year relationship. According to Locke's death certificate obtained by Associated Press, she died on November 3 at her home in Los Angeles of a cardiac arrest stemming from breast and bone cancer. Although her death was promptly reported to authorities, it was not publicized until Thursday, nearly six weeks later.
The character boils on the back burner of my mind until she becomes so vivid that she takes over, and I disappear. Sandra Louise Smith. Her father was a New Yorker, serving in the military who separated from her mother before Sandra was born in Madison County Alabama. Her mother married Alfred Locke four years later. At school she was an outsider with few friends, finding comfort in the friendship of a boy called Gordon Anderson.
Here, in a cramped cutting room off Melrose Avenue, is where it could begin again--life after Clint, after cancer, after an all-consuming legal war. For years after her acrimonious breakup with Clint Eastwood--her lover and mentor until, she says, her hunger for creative independence drove them apart--nobody was doing her any favors. She was a pariah, untouchable. But last week, Locke won back a measure of respect, persuading jurors in Burbank that although she had the talent to direct, the politics of the bedroom and the back lot had stalled her career. Several jurors said they were ready to decide in her favor when Eastwood settled, for an undisclosed sum.