Actor starred in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, before role in Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales

Sondra Locke, the American actor who was nominated for an Oscar for her first film before co-starring in six films with her one-time partner, Clint Eastwood, has died.

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The actor, who was 74, died at her home in Los Angeles after a cardiac arrest stemming from breast and bone cancer, according to a death certificate obtained by Associated Press. She died on 3 November and authorities were promptly notified at the time. It is not clear why it took nearly six weeks to be reported.

Locke was best known for the six films she made with Eastwood whom she dated for 13 years. Their professional association began with the western The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976 and ended with the Dirty Harry movie, Sudden Impact, in 1983.

Born Sandra Louise Smith, she grew up in Tennessee, where she worked at a radio station and appeared in a handful of plays before winning a nationwide talent search in 1967 to be cast opposite leading man Alan Arkin in the movie adaptation of Carson McCullers’ 1940 novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Working under her stepfather’s last name, she won rave reviews for the role along with nominations for a Golden Globe and an Oscar. Both awards went to Ruth Gordon for Rosemary’s Baby.

She had a run of unmemorable film and TV roles until meeting Eastwood on the set of Josey Wales, which he both directed and starred in.

Her career would mirror his for the next several years. The pair’s hit films also included the 1978 street-fighting and orangutan comedy Every Which Way But Loose and its 1980 sequel Any Which Way You Can.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sondra Locke with Eastwood on the set of Gauntlet in 1977. Photograph: Snap/REX/Shutterstock

Locke also played singer Rosemary Clooney in a 1982 TV biopic, and directed the 1986 film Ratboy, which flopped in the US but was popular with critics in Europe.

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In 1989, the couple broke up with Locke writing about how it marked the end of her charmed life. The locks were changed and her belongings were placed outside a home she thought had been a gift from Eastwood.

She sued her former partner for palimony then later sued him for fraud saying a movie development deal he arranged for her was a sham to get her to drop the palimony suit. They settled the highly publicised lawsuit for an undisclosed amount during jury deliberations in 1996.

The following year she released her memoir, titled The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly: A Hollywood Journey, which also detailed the double mastectomy and chemotherapy that came with her first bout with breast cancer.

She told the AP at the time that the title, a play on one of Eastwood’s films, was “applicable to the story”.

“I try to cover the good years as well as the bad and the ugly,” Locke said. “Also, that in even the worst ugly things there can sometimes be a lot that will make you a better person.”

Locke had married actor Gordon Anderson in 1967. According to her death certificate, the two were still legally married when she died, and he was the person who reported her death. She described their relationship to the AP in 1997 as just good friends.