Sally Field

Sally Field

Field at the 62nd Academy Awards ceremony, 1990
Born Sally Margaret Field
November 6, 1946 (1946-11-06) (age 64)
Pasadena, California, U.S.
Occupation Actress, singer, producer, director, screenwriter
Years active 1962–present
Spouse Steve Craig (1968–1975)
Alan Greisman (1984–1993)

Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American actress, singer, producer, director, and screenwriter. In each decade of her career, she has been known for major roles in American TV/film culture, including: in the 1960s, for Gidget (1965-66) or Sister Bertrille on The Flying Nun (1967-70); in the 1970s, for Sybil (1976), Smokey and the Bandit or Norma Rae; in the 1980s, for Absence of Malice, Places in the Heart (1984) or Steel Magnolias; in the 1990s, for Not Without My Daughter, Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) or Forrest Gump; and in the 2000s, on the TV shows ER or Brothers & Sisters. She has also performed in numerous other roles.

Field has won two Academy Awards, for Norma Rae (1979) and Places in the Heart (1984). She has also won three Emmy Awards: for her role in the TV movie Sybil (1976); her guest-starring role on ER in 2000; and for her starring role as Nora Holden Walker on the ABC series Brothers & Sisters in 2007. She has also won two Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. She also won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, for Norma Rae (1979).

Contents

Early life

Sally Field was born on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Margaret (b. May 10, 1923), an actress, and Richard Dryden Field, a U.S. Army officer who worked in sales.[1] Her parents divorced in 1950, and her mother subsequently remarried actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney.

She attended Portola Middle School, then Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California where she was a cheerleader. Among her classmates were infamous financier Michael Milken, fellow actress Cindy Williams (of Laverne and Shirley fame) and Michael Ovitz of CAA and Walt Disney Studios fame.

Career

Television

Field got her start on television as the boy-struck surfer girl in the mid-1960s surf culture sitcom series, Gidget. She went on to star as Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun. In an interview included on the DVD release of The Flying Nun, she said that she would have preferred to continue playing Gidget. Sally hated being on The Flying Nun because she wasn't treated with respect. After her iconic role on The Flying Nun, she had become typecast. Later, she starred opposite John Davidson in a short-lived series called The Girl with Something Extra (1973-74).

In 1971, Field starred in Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring with David Carradine and a soundtrack by Linda Ronstadt. She played the role of a discouraged teen runaway who returned home after a year on the road with a bearded drug-abusing hippie named "Flack" (David Carradine).

She made several guest appearances, including a recurring role on the western comedy Alias Smith and Jones, starring Pete Duel (with whom she had worked on Gidget) and Ben Murphy, plus the Rod Serling's Night Gallery episode "Whisper".

Field at Expo 67.

Having played mostly comedic characters on television, Field had a difficult time being cast in dramatic roles. She studied with famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who had previously helped Marilyn Monroe go beyond the "bimbo" roles with which her career had begun.

Soon afterward, Field landed the title role in the 1976 TV film Sybil, the first of two films based on the book written by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Field's dramatic portrayal of Sybil, a young woman afflicted with Dissociative Identity Disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder, in the TV film not only garnered her an Emmy Award (in 1977) but also enabled her to break through the typecasting she had experienced from her television sitcom roles.

Music

While starring on The Flying Nun, Sally tried her hand at singing. Sally Field sang on the Soundtrack for The Flying Nun in 1967 and she even sang The Flying Nun theme song "Who Needs Wings to Fly". The same year, she cracked the Billboard Hot 100 with one single, Felicidad.

Film

Field had made her film debut in 1962 with a small part in Moon Pilot. Her first major film role was in The Way West (1967). In 1977, she co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed in that year's #2 grossing film, Smokey and the Bandit.[2] In 1979, she played a union organizer in Norma Rae, a successful film that established her status as a dramatic actress. Vincent Canby, in his review of the film for the New York Times, wrote: "Norma Rae is a seriously concerned contemporary drama, illuminated by some very good performances and one, Miss Field's, that is spectacular."[3] She won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Field did three more of Reynolds' films (The End, Hooper and Smokey and the Bandit II), none particularly an acting challenge. In 1981, Field continued to change her image, playing a foul-mouthed prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the South-set film Back Roads, which received middling reviews and grossed $11 million at the box office. She won Golden Globe nominations for the 1981 drama Absence of Malice and 1982 comedy Kiss Me Goodbye.

Then came a second Oscar for her starring role in the 1984 drama Places in the Heart. Field's gushing acceptance speech is well remembered for its earnestness. She said, "I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!"[4] The line ending in "...I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!" is often misquoted as simply, "You like me, you really like me!" which has subsequently been the subject of many parodies. (Field parodied the line herself in a commercial.) The phrase, "You like me" was originally from her wry, understated, famous reply in the film Norma Rae, but many people totally missed the subtle, sophisticated connection in her acceptance speeches, with that point in the film.

The following year, she co-starred with James Garner in the romantic comedy Murphy's Romance. In A&E's biography of Garner, she cited her on-screen kiss with Garner as the best cinematic kiss she had ever had.

Field appeared on the cover of the March 1986 issue of Playboy magazine, in which she was the interview subject. She did not appear as a pictorial subject inside the magazine, although she did wear the classic leotard and bunny-ears outfit on the cover.

For her role as the matriarch, M'Lynn, in the film version of Steel Magnolias (1989), she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She had supporting roles in a number of other movies, including Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) in which she played Miranda Hillard, the wife of Robin Williams's character and the love interest of Pierce Brosnan's character Stuart 'Stu' Dunmyer. She followed this with the role of Forrest's mother in Forrest Gump (1994), even though she is only 10 years older than Tom Hanks, with whom she had co-starred six years earlier in Punchline.

Her other films in the 1990s included Not Without My Daughter, a controversial suspense film, and Soapdish, a comedy in which Field plays the pampered star of a television soap opera. She played Natalie Portman's mother in Where the Heart Is (2000) and appeared opposite Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003).

Recent roles

In November 2009, Sally appeared on an episode of The Doctors to talk about osteoporosis and her Rally With Sally Foundation.

On television, Field had a recurring role on ER in the 2000-01 season as Dr. Abby Lockhart's mother Maggie, who is struggling to cope with bipolar disorder, a role for which she won an Emmy Award in 2001. After her critically acclaimed stint on the show, she returned to the role in 2003 and 2006. She also starred in the very short-lived 2002 series The Court.

Field has also directed. Her first stint behind the camera was for the television film The Christmas Tree (1996). She also directed the feature film Beautiful (2000) as well as an episode of the critically-acclaimed TV mini-series From the Earth to the Moon (1998).

Field was a late addition to the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters, which debuted in September 2006. In the show's pilot, the role of matriarch Nora Walker had been played by actress Betty Buckley. However, the producers of the show decided to take the character of Nora in another direction, and Field was cast in the role. She won the 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in her role as Nora Walker. The blockbuster soap also stars familiar actresses such as Calista Flockhart and Rachel Griffiths, in the roles of Nora's adult daughters, Kitty Walker and Sarah Walker, respectively, as well as Welsh film actor Matthew Rhys tackling the very American role of Nora's son, Kevin Walker.

Field recently had a voice role as Marina del Rey, the villain in Disney's The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, which was released in August 2008.

Currently, Field can be seen on television as the compensated spokesperson for Roche Laboratories' postmenopausal osteoporosis treatment medication, Boniva.

Political advocacy

During her 2007 acceptance speech for her 2006-07 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Field made an anti-war statement: "If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place!"[5] Though the crowd present at the Emmy Awards heard it, viewers watching the telecast in the United States only heard "if mothers ruled the world there would be no ... ," due to the censoring of the rest of the statement (in Canada, her remark was not bleeped). All so-called "live" awards ceremonies are shown with as much as a 10-second delay to allow for the censoring of profanity and the same controversial statements that Field made, because in the recent past awards winners on any host of shows have used acceptance speeches as a platform for political tirades. While Field's was mild by comparison to many others, the decision to censor it and her statement itself created considerable controversy. In the 2008 presidential election, she supported Hillary Clinton in her bid for the Democratic Party nomination.

Personal life

Field married Steven Craig in 1968. The couple had two sons, Peter Craig, a novelist, and Eli, an actor and director. They divorced in 1975. Sally Field was romantically involved with Burt Reynolds for many years, during which time they co-starred in several movies, including Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II, and The End. In 1984, she married film producer Alan Greisman. They had one son, Sam. Field and Greisman divorced in 1993.

On October 29, 1988, she and her family survived a crash after their charter plane lost power on takeoff. They all survived, but suffered minor injuries.[6]

Field suffers from osteoporosis.[7]

Filmography

Film

Year Film Role Notes
1962 Moon Pilot Beatnik girl in lineup
1967 The Way West Mercy McBee
1976 Stay Hungry Mary Tate Farnsworth
1977 Smokey and the Bandit Carrie / 'Frog' Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
Heroes Carol Bell
1978 The End Mary Ellen
Hooper Gwen Doyle
1979 Norma Rae Norma Rae Academy Award for Best Actress
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
Best Actress Award - Cannes Film Festival
American Movie Award for Best Actress
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
National Board of Review Award for Best Actress
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure Celeste Whitman
1980 Smokey and the Bandit II Carrie / 'Frog'
1981 Back Roads Amy Post
Absence of Malice Megan Carter Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1982 Kiss Me Goodbye Kay Villano Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1984 Places in the Heart Edna Spalding Academy Award for Best Actress
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1985 Murphy's Romance Emma Moriarty Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1987 Surrender Daisy Morgan
1988 Punchline Lilah Krytsick
1989 Steel Magnolias M'Lynn Eatenton Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1991 Not Without My Daughter Betty Mahmoody
Soapdish Celeste Talbert / Maggie
1993 Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey Sassy voice
Mrs. Doubtfire Miranda Hillard
1994 A Century of Cinema Herself documentary
Forrest Gump Mrs. Gump Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role - Motion Picture
Nominated — Blimp Award for Favorite Movie Actress
1996 Eye for an Eye Karen McCann
Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco Sassy voice
2000 Where the Heart Is Mama Lil
Beautiful directorial debut
2001 Say It Isn't So Valdine Wingfield
2003 Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde Rep. Victoria Rudd
Going Through Splat: The Life and Work of Stewart Stern Herself documentary
2006 Two Weeks Anita Bergman
2008 The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning Marina Del Ray (voice-over; animated)
2011 Lincoln (film) Mary Todd Lincoln pre-production

Television

Year Production Role Notes
1965–66 Gidget Frances Elizabeth "Gidget" Lawrence 32 episodes
1966–67 Hey, Landlord Bonnie Banner 4 episodes
1967–70 The Flying Nun Elsie Ethrington "Sister Bertrille" 82 episodes
1971 Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring Denise "Dennie" Miller
Hitched Roselle Bridgeman
Marriage: Year One Jane Duden
1972 Home for the Holidays Christine Morgan
1973–74 The Girl with Something Extra Sally Burton 22 episodes
1976 Bridger Jennifer Melford
Sybil Sybil Dorsett Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie
1977 Merry Christmas, George Bailey Mrs. Bailey/Narrator
1995 A Woman of Independent Means Bess Alcott Steed Garner TV mini-series
Nominated — Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Miniseries or Television Film
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Female Actor - Miniseries or Television Film
1998 From the Earth to the Moon Trudy Cooper miniseries
1999 A Cooler Climate[8] Iris Nominated — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Miniseries or a Movie[9]
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Female Actor - Miniseries or Television Film[8]
2000 David Copperfield Aunt Betsey Trotwood Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Female Actor - Miniseries or Television Film
2000–06 ER Maggie Wyczenski Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress - Drama Series (2001)
Nominated — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress - Drama Series (2003)
Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series (2000)

Recurring role
2002 The Court Justice Kate Nolan Cancelled after 6 episodes
2005 Conviction
2006– Brothers & Sisters Nora Walker Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress - Drama Series (Won in 2007, Nominated 2008-2009)
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series (Nominated in 2008, Won in 2009)
Prism Award for Best Performance in a Drama Series Multi-Episode Storyline (2008)
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Television Series Drama (2008-2009)

85+ episodes

Discography

Singles

Albums

References

  1. ↑ Sally Field. Film Reference.com.
  2. ↑ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=smokeyandthebandit.htm
  3. ↑ [1]
  4. ↑ Oscar acceptance speech: Littlereview.com
  5. ↑ Marikar, Shelia (2007-09-18). "On TV, 'Extreme Caution' vs. Free Speech". ABC News. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=3618536. Retrieved 2007-11-05. 
  6. ↑ "Sally Field in Jet Accident". New York Times. Associated Press. November 1, 1988. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE6D81F3BF932A35752C1A96E948260. 
  7. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000398/bio
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "6th Annual SAG Awards Nominees". Screen Actors Guild Awards. Archived from the original on January 23, 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5n0Wb20oX. Retrieved January 23, 2010. 
  9. ↑ "Sally Field in The Court". WCHStv.com. West Virginia, United States of America: WCHS-TV8. Archived from the original on January 23, 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5n0XeV32v. Retrieved January 23, 2010. 

External links