Sally Kirkland, stage-screen actress and Oscar nominee for Anna, dead at 84

American model-turned-actress Sally Kirkland, who was noted for her stage, TV and film roles — including sharing the screen with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting and earning an Oscar nomination for 1987's Anna — has died at 84.

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

Friends established a GoFundMe account this fall 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 hospitalization and rehab.

Kirkland acted in such films as:

Kirkland also had a cameo in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles.

Her biggest role was in Anna, as a fading Czech movie star remaking her life in the United States and mentoring a younger actor, Paulina Porizkova. Kirkland won a Golden Globe and got the Oscar nomination in the best actress category.

Kirkland's small-screen acting credits include stints on Criminal Minds, Roseanne and Head Case. She was also a series regular on the TV shows Valley of the Dolls and Charlie's Angels.

Born in New York City, Kirkland's mother was a fashion editor at Vogue and Life magazines who encouraged her daughter to start modelling at five years old.

Kirkland graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and studied with Philip Burton, Richard Burton's mentor, and Lee Strasberg, the master of the Method school of acting.

An early breakout was appearing in Andy Warhol's 13 Most Beautiful Women in 1964.

On the stage, Kirkland appeared in Terrence McNally's off-Broadway Sweet Eros. Some of her early roles were in Shakespeare productions, including the lovesick Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream for New York Shakespeare Festival producer Joseph Papp and Miranda in an off-Broadway production of The Tempest.

"I don't think any actor can really call him or herself an actor unless he or she puts in time with Shakespeare," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. "It shows up, it always shows up in the work, at some point, whether it's just not being able to have breath control, or not being able to appreciate language as poetry and music, or not having the power that Shakespeare automatically instils you with when you take on one of his characters."

Kirkland was a member of several New Age groups, taught Insight Transformational Seminars and was a longtime member of the affiliated Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, whose followers believe in soul transcendence.

She reached a career nadir while riding nude on a pig in the 1969 film Futz, which a Guardian reviewer dubbed the worst film he had ever seen.