"My agent said, 'You aren't good enough for movies.' I said, 'You're fired.'"
Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946 in Pasadena, California) is an American actor in film and television.
Field first came to fame starring in the 1960s sitcoms Gidget and The Flying Nun — and has spent the ensuing decades doing her level best to make people forget this. She has won numerous accolades for her work, including two Academy Awards for Best Actress, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Emmy Awards.
She has also worked behind the camera, directing the 1996 made-for-TV movie The Christmas Tree and the 2000 theatrical film Beautiful.
She's been married twice, and had a high-profile relationship with Burt Reynolds in the late '70s and early '80s.
Filmography:
- Gidget (1965-1966)
- The Flying Nun (1967-1970)
- Sybil (1976)
- Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
- The End (1978)
- Hooper (1978)
- Norma Rae (1979) - Academy Award for Best Actress
- Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)
- Absence of Malice (1981)
- Places in the Heart (1984) - Academy Award for Best Actress
- Steel Magnolias (1989)
- Soapdish (1991)
- Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (voice) (1993)
- Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
- Forrest Gump (1994)
- Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco (1996)
- Where the Heart Is (2000)
- ER (2000-2006)
- Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)
- Brothers & Sisters (2006-2011)
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
- Lincoln (2012)
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
- Maniac (2018)
- 80 for Brady (2023): Betty
Provides examples of:
- Age Lift: On the subject of Spider-Man, the character of Aunt May
has steadily become younger in the movies. First played by then-74-year-old Rosemary Harris in the Spider-Man Trilogy, then by 65-year-old Sally Field in The Amazing Spider-Man, and 51-year-old Marisa Tomei in the MCU. Befittingly, she's a Clueless Dude Magnet who's hit on by everyone from Iron Man to the Thai restaurant waiter. - And Starring: The Amazing Spider-Man has "With Martin Sheen and Sally Field". The sequel replaces Sheen with Paul Giamatti.
- Cast Incest: Brothers & Sisters had an alleged relationship between David Annable, who played Justin, with Sally Field, his onscreen mother.
- Hide Your Pregnancy: Sally Field was pregnant during The Flying Nun's final season. Aside from the obvious problem, the whole premise of the show is that her character can fly due to being very lightweight. The usual tricks were combined with using a stunt double for flight shots.
- Post-Kiss Catatonia: When asked about the best screen kiss she'd ever had, Sally Field — who, it must be noted, has kissed many, many men onscreen over the course of her career — named James Garner, her co-star in the 1985 romantic dramedy Murphys Romance. According to Field, he kissed her so well and so thoroughly that she was left dazed and unable to film for some time afterward — the first and last time this had happened to her in her career.
- Tom Hanks Syndrome: Field got started in sitcoms like Gidget, The Flying Nun, Smokey and the Bandit, and The Girl with Something Extra. Fed up with doing nothing but comedy, she fought for and won the title role in Sybil, opposite Joanne Woodward, as a girl with multiple personalities. The role won her an Emmy. Her next venture into drama was her gritty, Academy Award-winning turn as textile worker Norma Rae, but she was still considered a "flash in the pan" until she won her second Oscar as Edna Spalding in Places in the Heart, which cemented her as one of America's greatest actors and silenced the skeptics for good.
