Sondra Locke (born May 28, 1944 or 1947) is an American actress, singer and film director. She made her film debut in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. From 1976 to 1983, she appeared in six films with then partner Clint Eastwood, starting with The Outlaw Josey Wales, and ending with the fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, where she played a serial killer seeking revenge for a past rape. She was born and raised in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Her parents are Raymond Smith, who served in the military, and Pauline Bayne Locke, a pencil factory worker. They separated before she was born and her mother quickly married Alfred Taylor Locke (1922–2007), a construction worker. She has a younger half-brother, Don. Locke was the valedictorian of the Shelbyville Central High School class of 1962. She attended Middle Tennessee State University for a year, before dropping out to pursue an acting career. Locke won a nationwide talent search for the 1968 film The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, in which she played a lonely teenage waif who develops a bond with a deaf-mute man (played by Alan Arkin) in a small southern town.