Sally Kirkland passed away peacefully in hospice care in Palm Springs on November 11, 2025, at the age of 84. A trailblazing, fearless performer whose career spanned over six decades, she was celebrated for her bold choices, uncompromising spirit and the kind of vivacious presence that made an immediate impression.
I first met Sally when I was working at Turner Entertainment Report and went to her West Hollywood apartment for a story. I walked into the living room and found it filled with clothes racks—rows and rows of garments spilling into the space. I’d never seen anything like it. It was completely on-brand for Sally: chaotic, creative, brimming with personality. She greeted me with a flamboyant flourish, as though any ordinary greeting would be beneath her. In her presence you sensed that she refused to fade into the background. She had a wild, wonderful energy—and behind the spectacle there was real craft.
Born in New York City in 1941 to a Vogue fashion-editor mother and a metals dealer father, she modeled briefly before turning to acting. She studied with the greats and emerged in the 1960s art-scene orbit of Andy Warhol’s Factory, never shy about experimentation. She built her résumé with a mix of avant-garde work, stage roles and film appearances—always pushing into territory that most actors would shy away from. Her breakout came with the title role in the 1987 film Anna, for which she won a Golden Globe and earned an Academy Award nomination, becoming a beacon of fearless artistry.
Her filmography reads like a tour through modern Hollywood’s back channels: from The Sting and The Way We Were in earlier years, to JFK and Bruce Almighty in later decades, Sally never allowed herself to be boxed in. As she once said, she was drawn to roles that reflected life’s messier edges and the emotional truths beneath celebrity glamour.
It was that combination of wildness and warmth that made her memorable. She was the actress who — in one breath — could invoke glamour, in the next breath expose vulnerability. In our conversation, I sensed a woman who knew the value of reinvention, who refused to let age or convention dictate her role. I remember her laughing about the clothes racks in her apartment and saying, “Honey, if you’ve got it, show it.” Her indomitable spirit (that phrase seems apt here) ran through everything she did.
In later years, her health declined, and friends set up a GoFundMe when she suffered fractures, infections and dementia. Still, even in those harder days, she retained a spark—she asked that people say she “passed on into the spirits” rather than “died,” invoking the theatrical flourish that had been her signature.
Sally Kirkland leaves behind a legacy of audacity, generosity and craft. For those of us lucky enough to have met her, the memory of the apartment full of clothes racks remains a fitting emblem: a life lived large, full of texture and chance.
She is survived by close friends, students, and countless actors who found in her a mentor and model for boldness. The lights go down, the curtain falls—but Sally’s performance will echo for a long time.
