Sharon Farrell

The Heart That Stopped on Set

Sharon Farrell technically died in 1970. She had just given birth to her son Chance when a massive embolism stopped her vital signs for several minutes. Doctors managed to revive her, but the brain damage forced her to relearn how to read and write, in complete secrecy. No one in the industry was supposed to find out that their hot new actress had lost her memory.

And she pulled it off. Sharon hid her memory gaps by memorizing scripts with audio recordings she played over and over. Because in late-1960s Hollywood, there was no room for weakness or for long medical leaves.

Surviving was her finest performance.

Before that incident, she had already shown an unusual toughness for a young woman who arrived in New York with little more than her training as a dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. In 1959 she made her big-screen debut in Kiss Her Goodbye and soon realized that her angelic blonde look was a double-edged sword. Directors wanted her face, but she was after characters with a bit of grit under their nails.

In 1969 she shot The Hustler...

From McQueen's Horses to Cohen's Monsters

Her time in film noir left a lasting mark on Marlowe, where she shared the cast with James Garner and a young Bruce Lee. Her relationship with Lee was close, and the martial arts master even trained her personally. So Sharon Farrell was more than just a pretty face on movie posters: she could take down a grown man with a well-executed hip movement.

But it was genre cinema that truly tapped her ability to convey anguish. In 1974 she starred in It's Alive! under the direction of Larry Cohen. Playing the mother of a murderous mutant baby demanded an emotional commitment that few actresses of her generation were willing to give. Sharon approached the role with an almost academic seriousness.

That film became a cult hit that grossed millions of dollars worldwide. Audiences connected with her raw desperation (that mix of horror and maternal love that held the entire plot together). And although critics were sometimes harsh on horror movies, she never disowned her monsters.

Television gave her the stability that film sometimes denied her. During the 1980s she became a familiar face in homes around the world thanks to series such as Hawaii 5-0 and her long run on The Young and the Restless. On the latter, she played Florence Webster for more than eighty episodes between 1991 and 1997.

She never chased the cheap applause of the gossip press.

The Final Silence in Orange County

As the years passed, Sharon stepped away from the bright lights of Los Angeles in search of a quieter life. Her last film appearance came in 2014 with Broken at Love. After that, she decided she had told enough other people's stories and devoted herself to her health and her family.

She kept her private life under tight control until the end. She didn't need red carpets to validate a career that included collaborations with some of the most powerful names of the golden age of the 1970s. Her craft remained intact, but her patience for the endless waits in production trailers had run out.

But the mystery always surrounded her. She died on May 15, 2023 at a hospital in Orange County from natural causes. However, the news didn't reach international media until several months later, when her son confirmed her death to the American trade press. She was 82 years old and had a filmography of more than 100 titles on her professional record.