Canadian actress Sharon Acker, who played Della Street opposite Monte Markham in the 1970s Perry Mason remake as well as Lee Marvin’s cheating wife in the 1967 neo-noir classic Point Blank, has passed away. 87 years had passed for her.
Sharon Acker Dies at 87
According to Kim Everest, a casting director and Acker’s daughter, Sharon Acker passed away on March 16 at a retirement home in her hometown of Toronto.
In the Star Trek episode “The Mark of Gideon” from the third season, Sharon Acker played Odona, a desperate lady from an overpopulated planet, in January of 1969.
She played Dan Walling’s wife on the CBS remake of Executive Suite from 1976–1977. (In the 1954 MGM film directed by Robert Wise, Acker and Ryan stepped into the roles originated by William Holden and June Allyson.)
After shooting Walker (Marvin) and abandoning him for dead during a courier robbery on Alcatraz in John Boorman’s Point Blank, Sharon Acker’s character teams up with John Vernon’s Mal Reese. When Walker comes back for payback and his half of the wealth, he assaults her and shoots up her bed.
CBS revived Perry Mason with Markham and Sharon Acker in 1973, seven years after the original series featuring Raymond Burr as the famous defense attorney and Barbara Hale as his faithful assistant ended after nine seasons. But after only 15 episodes, it was pulled from the air.
Adopted as a young child, Toronto native Sharon Eileen Acker was born on April 2, 1935. Davisville Public School was where she first studied art formally; she later attended John Fisher Public School and Northern Vocational School, from which she graduated in 1953.
In 1956, she played Anne’s teacher Mrs. Stacey on a CBC rendition of Anne of Green Gables, and the following year, she joined the Stratford Shakespeare Festival company, where she starred as Anne Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor alongside her future co-star on Star Trek, William Shatner.
After making her stage debut in Henry V with the Stratford company, she stayed in Europe to make her film début opposite Ian Carmichael and Terry-Thomas in Lucky Jim (1957). She was signed to a seven-year contract by British producers John and Ray Boulting, who found her “freshly alluring,” but she ended the relationship after getting married and having a kid.
At home, she was a regular on the critically acclaimed CBC series Festival, and in 1961, she portrayed Lady MacDuff in a five-part production of Macbeth directed by Paul Almond, starring Sean Connery and Zoe Caldwell.
Boorman cast her in Point Blank, her first American role, after watching her on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She and Angie Dickinson, who played her sister in the film, modeled “Well-Dressed Moll Styles in Alcatraz” for the August 1967 issue of Life magazine to promote the film.
She thereafter became a popular addition to episodes of shows like The Wild Wild West, Get Smart, It Takes a Thief, Lancer, and Star Trek in the role of a guest star.
In the Canadian drama Don’t Let the Angels Fall (1969), which was shown in a competition at Cannes, Sharon Acker played a divorcee who had a brief affair with a businessman (Arthur Hill). She was named that year’s “Film Star of the Future” by the Motion Picture Exhibitors of Canada.
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In the 1970 NBC drama The Bold Ones: The Senator, she played the wife of Hal Holbrook’s idealistic character, Senator Hays Stowe.
Sharon Acker has been seen on many television episodes, including Alias Smith and Jones, Mission: Impossible, Gunsmoke, Mod Squad, M.D., Cannon, Marcus Welby, The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, The Rockford Files, Police Story, and Quincy, M.E.
Happy Birthday to Me, a horror film from 1981, was her last film, while The Young and the Restless was her last television appearance, in 1992. After a successful acting career, she and her late second husband Peter Elkington moved back to Canada, where they shared a home in Muskoka, Ontario, where she could pursue her lifelong interest in painting and sculpture.
Elkington passed away in 2001. Kim and Gillian, plus granddaughter Alexis and great-granddaughter Berkeley, as well as stepdaughters Kim and Caitlin, are among her surviving loved ones.
Sharon Acker Top 10 Movies (Video) Watch Now
FAQ
What was Sharon Acker’s most famous role?
Sharon Acker may be best known for playing Laura Thomas in the Lee Marvin movie “Point Blank” in 1966. In the movie, Acker played Marvin’s wife who had broken up with him. Both audiences and critics liked her performance. Since then, the movie has become a cult classic, and Acker’s role as Laura Thomas is often mentioned as one of her best.