(24 December 1940 - 15 May 2023)
Sharon Farrell, the American actress, has died at the age of 82. A former dancer, she appeared on film for nearly forty years – all steady work for the girl-next-door type of actress that she was. She was born Sharon Forsmoe in Sioux City, Iowa, of Norwegian descent, and her family were Lutherans. After studying ballet as a child, she later toured with the American Ballet Theatre company.
Her first film role was in Kiss Her Goodbye in 1959, about a young woman going mad, with Elaine Stritch and Steven Hill and Sharon in various states of undress. 40 Pounds of Trouble, a Damon Runyon story, was better, Norman Jewison’s first effort as a film director, with Tony Curtis. The Spy with My Face was a spin-off from TV’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., while A Lovely Way to Die was a film noir with Kirk Douglas. Her films were better for a while – Marlowe with James Garner as Raymond Chandler’s gumshoe, is hired by Farrell’s character to find her lost brother. Her best film was, arguably, The Reivers, Mark Rydell’s take on the William Faulkner novel. Set in 1905, it starred Steve McQueen who steals a car to go in search of his lady-love played by Farrell. After that it was sex in The Love Machine, mutant horror in It’s Alive, psychological horror in The Premonition, madness in The Fifth Floor and a heroin-addicted mother for Farrell in Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue (1980).
A little more uplifting was The Stunt Man, with Peter O’Toole and Steve Railsback in a film about a movie shoot. Farrell was the unit’s hairdresser. It garnered three Oscar nominations: for the director Richard Rush, O’Toole and for Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus’ script. Dominic Frontiere won a Golden Globe for his score. After that, Farrell’s films were mostly genre pictures – a slasher thriller, a romantic comedy, a Western, a sci-fi comedy and an actioner. She made her last film in 1997 but TV kept her busy until 2014.
Sharon Farrell’s first husband was the actor Andrew Prine in 1962 but they split after a few weeks. She dated the actor John F. Boyer and had a son, Chance, after whose birth she contracted an embolism that affected her heart plus brain damage and memory loss, but she did recover. She was also married to the producer Ron DeBlasio, the production consultant Steve Salkin and to the director Dale Trevillion. She also had relationships with Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee.
MICHAEL DARVELL
