Oscar-nominated screen star

SALLY Kirkland, a onetime model who became a regular on stage, film and TV, best known for sharing the screen with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting and her Oscar-nominated title role in the 1987 movie Anna, has died. She was 84.

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Sally Kirkland attends the closing night gala of the 22nd Arpa International Film Festival at the American Legion Post 43 on November 10, 2019 in Los Angeles

(John Wolfsohn/Getty Images.)

Her representative, Michael Greene, said Kirkland died on Tuesday morning at a hospice in Palm Springs, California.

Friends had established a GoFundMe account this autumn for her medical care. They said she had fractured four bones in her neck, right wrist and left hip. While recovering, she also developed infections, requiring hospitalisation and rehab.

"She was funny, feisty, vulnerable and self deprecating," actor Jennifer Tilly, who costarred with Kirkland in Sallywood, wrote on X. "She never wanted anyone to say she was gone. 'Don't say Sally died, say Sally passed on into the spirits! Safe passage, beautiful lady."

Kirkland acted in such films as The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand, Revenge with Kevin Costner, Cold Feet with Keith Carradine and Tom Waits, Ron Howard's EDtv, Oliver Stone's JFK, Heatwave with Cicely Tyson, High Stakes with Kathy Bates, Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey and the 1991 TV movie The Haunted, about a family dealing with paranormal activity. She had a cameo in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles.