Offbeat actress Sally Kirkand ("the Sylvia Miles of Karen Blacks"), 84, died on Nov. 11. The daughter of a Vogue fashion editor, Kirkland began acting Off-Broadway; she hung out at Andy Warhol’s Factory, and appeared in several of his “films.” She worked steadily, but mostly in small roles—she had small or supporting roles in Going Home, The Way We Were, The Sting, Big Bad Mama, Crazy Mama, A Star Is Born, and Private Benjamin. It wasn’t till the’80s that Kirkland began getting praise for bigger roles in odder films: Fatal Games, Anna, Revenge, the dreadful JFK, Cold Feet, Best of the Best, and Bruce Almighty. She was offbeat in real life, too, becoming a painter and ordained minister in the church of Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (she also founded the Kirkland Institute for Implant Survival Syndrome). Kirkland continued acting through this year, appearing in the short Kallie. She also became known for her nude scenes, both on screen and onstage: “I did a play called Sweet Eros by Terrence McNally in 1968 and that became the very first nudity in theater in America. It opened before Hair. It opened before Oh, Calcutta. My mother understood it. My father was furious and my grandparents, Philadelphia Main Line, all that. I was a debutante. They could not understand how I could ruin my life.”
