Oscar-nominated American actor Sally Kirkland has died at the age of 84, days after entering hospice care, drawing a close to a six-decade career that spanned avant-garde theatre, independent cinema and mainstream Hollywood hits including the comedy Bruce Almighty.
Her representative, Michael Greene, said Kirkland died on Tuesday morning in a hospice facility in Palm Springs, California. The actor had been living with dementia and a series of serious health problems that left friends and colleagues fundraising publicly to cover the cost of her care. In recent months she suffered multiple fractures and life-threatening infections, according to updates posted on a GoFundMe page set up in 2024.
Supporters writing on that page described “a challenging few months” in which Kirkland endured a fall in the shower that injured her ribs and foot and left her needing round-the-clock supervision in a specialist facility. A final update posted shortly before her death said she was on hospice care and “resting comfortably”, thanking donors for their “love and support” and asking them to “hold and send the light for Sally”.
News of her death prompted tributes from across the film and television industry. The actors’ union SAG-AFTRA called her “a fearless performer whose artistry and advocacy spanned more than six decades” and “a true mentor and champion for actors”. Fellow performers and fans highlighted both her intense screen presence and the difficulties she faced in later life.
Kirkland was born in New York City on 31 October 1941. Her mother, also named Sally Kirkland, was a prominent fashion editor at Life and Vogue magazines, and her father, Frederic McMichael Kirkland, worked in the garment industry.After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and training at the Actors Studio, she started out as a model before turning to acting in the early 1960s, part of a generation who treated the New York stage as a proving ground.
She became closely associated with the city’s experimental arts scene, joining Andy Warhol’s Factory circle and appearing in underground films. Early stage work included roles in Shakespeare productions such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, mounted for the New York Shakespeare Festival and off-Broadway. Looking back on that period, she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991 that time spent with Shakespeare was essential for any serious performer, saying it taught breath control and “the power that Shakespeare automatically instils you with when you take on one of his characters”.
Kirkland’s screen career developed steadily through supporting roles in major studio films. In the 1970s she appeared opposite Robert Redford and Paul Newman in the Oscar-winning caper The Sting and alongside Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. Later credits included the Oliver Stone drama JFK, the action film Revenge, the cult martial-arts title Best of the Best and the supernatural television movie The Haunted.
She also worked regularly in television. Over the years she took roles in series such as Charlie’s Angels, Roseanne, Murder, She Wrote, Days of Our Lives, Felicity and a television adaptation of Valley of the Dolls, on which she appeared throughout its 65-episode run.
Her most acclaimed work came in 1987 with Anna, an independent drama in which she played a once-famous Czech actor struggling to rebuild her life in New York while mentoring a younger compatriot. The performance, mixing vulnerability with flashes of anger and vanity, drew widespread praise from critics who had long regarded her as an under-used talent. She won a Golden Globe for best actress in a drama and an Independent Spirit Award, and received an Academy Award nomination for best actress, competing in the 1988 ceremony against Cher, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter and Meryl Streep.
The recognition marked the peak of a career that Kirkland had pushed forward with unusual persistence. Interviews from the period describe how she wrote personal letters to critics and industry figures in support of Anna, determined to ensure that a small independent film would not be overlooked during awards season.
Despite that breakthrough, Kirkland’s later work rarely offered roles of similar depth. She continued to act in a wide range of projects, from low-budget thrillers to studio comedies. In 2003 she appeared in Bruce Almighty, the Jim Carrey hit that introduced a new generation of cinema-goers to her work, and she was frequently identified in popular coverage as a “Bruce Almighty star” as news of her death spread. For some viewers, her supporting turn in that film – playing the mother of Carrey’s character – became their most familiar reference point, underscoring the breadth of a filmography that stretched back four decades by that stage.
Alongside mainstream work, Kirkland continued to appear in smaller and more unusual projects. In one 1969 film, Futz, she rode nude on a pig in a storyline about a man who falls in love with the animal – a performance later criticised by a Guardian reviewer as emblematic of the excesses of the era. She was also known for appearing nude for political causes and artistic statements, prompting Time magazine to dub her “the latter-day Isadora Duncan of nudothespianism,” a reference to the early 20th-century dancer famed for her free-spirited performances.
Kirkland embraced a number of spiritual movements over the course of her life. She taught personal-growth workshops for Insight Transformational Seminars and was a longtime member of the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, a New Age-influenced group whose followers emphasise “soul transcendence”. Friends and colleagues have described her as deeply committed to alternative forms of healing and consciousness, and as someone who blended that interest with an intense approach to acting.
Her advocacy extended beyond the arts. Accounts from colleagues and charities say she volunteered with people living with AIDS, cancer and heart disease, took part in American Red Cross efforts feeding homeless people, appeared on telethons for hospice organisations and spoke up for prisoners, particularly young offenders.Those activities helped build a reputation not only as a performer but as an activist who used her public profile to support causes she believed in.
In later life, however, health problems began to limit her work and place growing strain on her finances. The GoFundMe campaign launched in 2024 said she had fractured bones in her neck, right wrist and left hip and had developed two separate life-threatening infections, requiring repeated hospital stays and lengthy rehabilitation. The organisers pointed to the loss of certain insurance benefits for older performers and said she faced “extensive out of pocket costs” beyond what her pension income would cover.
By October this year the fundraiser reported that she had suffered another fall, this time in the shower, and was receiving 24-hour care in a specialist facility.On 7 November an update told supporters that she had entered hospice and was “resting comfortably”, asking them again to keep her in their thoughts. Within days, Greene confirmed that she had died.
Tributes from fellow performers reflected the mixture of toughness and fragility that defined Kirkland’s public image. Actor Jennifer Tilly, who worked with her on the film Sallywood, wrote on X that Kirkland was “funny, feisty, vulnerable and self deprecating” and recalled her preference for the phrase “passed on into the spirits” rather than “died”. Fans posting online highlighted her performance in Anna as a particular landmark, describing it as one of the great under-seen turns of 1980s cinema, and many remembered her as a striking presence on red carpets and at awards shows.
Industry groups emphasised her role as a mentor. SAG-AFTRA noted that she supported younger actors and was generous with advice based on her decades of experience in an unpredictable profession. Accounts from former students and colleagues have credited her with encouraging them to take risks and approach roles with emotional honesty, qualities that had distinguished her own work from the 1960s onwards.
Kirkland’s death leaves a substantial body of work that cuts across genres and eras: underground film experiments, Hollywood dramas, television procedurals, soap operas and the broad comedies that gave her widest mainstream exposure. Beyond Bruce Almighty and other late-career credits, many obituaries have pointed audiences back to Anna, arguing that it remains the best representation of her abilities – a portrait of an ageing performer fighting to retain dignity and influence in an industry that often prefers youth.
She continued to accept roles and make public appearances well into her eighties, even as her health declined. Friends said she remained interested in new projects and maintained close ties with spiritual communities and charities she had supported for years.
Sally Kirkland is survived by a legacy that encompasses both her contributions to film and television and her work off-screen on behalf of vulnerable people. Colleagues and fans paying tribute this week have emphasised that combination, remembering not only an Oscar-nominated actor whose name was attached to films from The Sting to Bruce Almighty, but also a campaigner and mentor whose influence extended far beyond any single role.