LIFESTYLE |
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| By Douglas Eby Sally Kirkland has
been acting since the time she attended an all-girls high school, where her skill and
height led her to being cast in male leads. Upon graduation she became the youngest person
to study at the Actors Studio in New York, and is now a lifetime member. The Los Angeles
Times called her performance in "Anna" (1987) one
of the five best of the decade. In addition to an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her
work in that film, she won Golden Globe Award,
the L.A. Film Critics Award, the Independent Spirit Award and
the Women in Film Award. A few of her
other many starring roles include "Cold
Feet,""Revenge," "JFK," and "Best
of the Best." Her film "Cheatin' Hearts in which she stars and also
executive produced, was picked by Robert Redford for the last Talking about the housewife she portrayed in the film, Sally says,"When you go into a place and feel extremely bad vibrations, it may be you're not necessarily clairvoyant and can't see into the invisible realms and if you could, you would see entitles, dark forces battling light forces and that's what she was going through."Sally at times refers to herself as a warrior and started life having to fight to survive. She was born at 6 months weighing 4 pounds, not expected to live. Acting is a passion for her, an enduring vocation and a place of spiritual practice, as she notes: "I always try to bring soul and the heart in all of the performances I do.And if you have pain in your life, you can transmute it into an artistic expression. In "Anna" I used the emotional recall of my own clinical death experience and brought light to the darkness. Similarly as my role of David's mother on "Roseanne" I try to bring light to a very dysfunctional mother. I have absolutely used the tragedy in my life and if you don't have a spiritual path, you can get lost in that, not being able to walk away from it. if you're playing the heavy, and you find the humanity and the light in the tragedy, it allows the audiences to find the light in themselves, even in the darkest moments." |
Sally worked recently with Valerie Landsburg on a TV
project to air in the fall called "Women," a series
of erotic stories seen through the eye of women. And she is scheduled for a family film to
be shot in Rumania called "Little Ghosts" directed
by Linda Shayne. Sally is talking with other women producers,
directors, actors and writers for potential future projects and is optimistic about women
helping make films which have more positive social value, but she notes "it's
disheartening to me that being a woman can't automatically warrant a spiritual or
consciousness raising script. The problem if there is one,is that everybody has to pay
their dues first. Like Ron Howard had to do a chase movie
with Roger Corman before he was allowed to do By the same token, a lot of women directors are having to do chase
scenes and violence in order to do what they really want to do. Unfortunately, commercial
films right now are still action and all that stuff" Sally recalls that although she
got "a whole bunch of erotic thrillers made in the blink of an eye," it took her
three years to get her film made, |
When she saw a picture of Sai Baba " with his arms around this American guy" Sally sought John- Roger out and says she "Was
profoundly moved |
Sally works often with The Institute for Individual and World Peace in Santa Monica, which sponsors and supports many community service groups: the Heartfelt Service Project, Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross, and many others, including the Carl Bean Hospice for AIDS patients. She recalls the invitation from another actor to help: "Awhile ago Edward James Olmos asked me to go on television telethons to raise money to build some hospices, and I was quite honored to do that. When a friend of mine, Rick Sherill, got AIDS I became his caretaker. I learned all the information I could , plugging into AIDS PROJECT L.A., Project Angel Food various doctors and dentists who were extending help. And I got so high. spiritually,because whatever aches and pains I thought I had in my body from this serious car crash I had nothing compared to what he was experiencing, so it gave me a chance to appreciate and really understand the word 'gratitude' for what I had going for me when I saw the pain he was going through.' But mostly I try and treat each day as A minister of the Movement of Spiritual Inner
Awareness, Sally notes "We basically do service out in
the world: We don't necessarily give a sermon every Sunday. In my case, I try to get
spiritual soundbites out into the media, teach transformational acting and give work-shops
and seminars all over the world. But mostly I try and treat each day as an opportunity. We
would give seminars here at my apartment, and people would come. It was for Rick, but it
was for all of us, too.We'd play audio tapes of John-Roger,
or I would speak, or other seminar leaders who are authorized to do that, and meditate, together and pray together, and 'Put things in the Light' -
that's what we call it - for the highest good of all
concerned." Sally also does volunteer work with Project
Nightlight which provides companions to people who are dying:
"I love being able to bring in the Christ action, be it Jesus, Moses, Allah, Buddha,
Krishna - whatever works for people. At least they feel the spirit, and they feel the
loving, and that's the whole key . ..so nobody passes over alone." And she works with Educare, which
helps underprivileged kids "I teach stand-up comedy, theater games, emotional recall
and healing of memories, psychodrama with these young kids mostly black and Hispanic, a
lot of whom don't have parents. Many times I'll go on talk shows and I'll show footage of
me teaching the kids, so it'll give other teachers the idea of how they can work with kids
to give them more self esteem, and express themselves." |
Sundance Film Festival. She considers her role as a mother in the TV movie "The Haunted: A True Story" one of the best of her
career. Based on a true story, it helped bring to light the Catholic Church’s use of
exorcism.
because, she says, "There was
no violence in it, not T&A perse." She is completing a two year Masters of
Theology course in Practical Spirituality through Peace Theological Seminary. Sally notes
she has been involved in a spiritual journey most of her life: "When I was a child, I
was fantasizing and role playing all the time from seeing the church statues and religious
paintings in the Metropolitan Museum, and thinking that when I grew up, I wanted to be
Mary, Jesus, Saint Francis or Saint Theresa My friends would say I was nuts and had
delusions of grandeur, so then I changed it to 'I want to be a movie star' and that seemed
to be acceptable, it was okay to want to grow up to be Shirley
Maclaine or Jane Fonda or something." Sally recently was taped for a July Oprah Show, talking about her work with yoga
and mediation, and she is part of a new book It Works For Me, a collection of
interviews with 18 Celebrities talking about alternative health and spiritual practice.
In"
1970 she became initiated by Swami
Satchidananda, with the name
Satya, which means 'Truth.' She taught on staff for the Integral Yoga Institute and says
she "really loved the Bhagavad Gita and all the daily practices of Hinduism, the
discipline and mediation and various forms of yoga." Sally was in the Century City
Hospital in 1972 for a serious operation on her spine, so she called Swamiji and he flew
in from San Francisco, and talked to the doctors and said, "She's a really good
actress : if you tell her she's going to die, She’ll die, so why don't you tell her
she’ll be fine."He was really opposed to the surgery. Furthermore she aid, "Simultaneously my friend [actor] Raul
Julia was on his way to Sai Baba in India, and I'd asked him if he
got to him, to speak on my behalf. Sai Baba picked Raul out of a huge crowd and said 'Your friend Satya has a simple
infection, she’ll be fine in a week or two. So Raul called me to tell me what had
happened. Meanwhile, I had contributed to his life by getting him on the path of yoga and
off drinking and smoking and what ever we were he doing in the way of drugs back then, and
he was very devoted to my vision of a yogic world."
by his ability to talk about all
levels, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically. He almost immediately became my
teacher, in 1972, and he's been my teacher ever since.He embodies all religions; it's not
about a religion, it's a path called, the