Sally Field
Sally Field | |
|---|---|
 Field in the television show Alias Smith and Jones (1971) | |
| Born | Sally Margaret Field November 6, 1946 Pasadena, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Actress, singer, producer, director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1962–present |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Margaret Field, Richard Field |
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 her leading American TV and film roles; among the most notable are Gidget (1965–66), The Flying Nun (1967–70), Sybil (1976), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Norma Rae (1979), Places in the Heart (1984), Steel Magnolias (1989), Not Without My Daughter (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), and Lincoln (2012).
Field is a two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress, for playing Norma Rae Webster in Norma Rae (1979) and Edna Spalding in Places in the Heart (1984). She has received three Emmy Awards for her title role in the TV film Sybil (1976), her guest role on ER (2000), and her role as Nora Holden Walker on ABC's series Brothers & Sisters (2007). She has also won two Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress, as well as the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2012 Field's widely praised portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln brought her Best Supporting Actress nominations for the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, and the BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild awards. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.[1]
Early life
Sally Field was born in Pasadena, California. Her father, Richard Dryden Field, was an Army officer, and her mother, Margaret Field (née Morlan), was an actress.[2] Her parents divorced in 1950; her mother later married actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney.
Field attended Portola Middle School, followed by Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, where she was a cheerleader. Her classmates included infamous financier Michael Milken, actress Cindy Williams (of Laverne & Shirley fame) and Michael Ovitz of Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
Career
Acting career
1965–1976
Field got her start on television as the boy-crazy surfer girl in the sitcom Gidget (1965–66). The show was not an initial success and was canceled after a single season. However, summer reruns garnered respectable ratings and ABC had a belated success. Industry practice at the time did not allow for canceled shows to be resurrected, so the network scrambled to find a new starring vehicle for Field. The result was The Flying Nun (1967–70), in which Field portrayed Sister Bertrille for three seasons.[3] In an interview included on the Season One DVD release, Field said that she thoroughly enjoyed Gidget, but hated The Flying Nun, because she was not treated with respect by the show's directors. Field was then typecast and finding respectable roles was difficult. She later starred opposite John Davidson in the short-lived series The Girl with Something Extra (1973–74), playing a young woman trying to lead a normal life despite her telepathic abilities.
In 1971, Field starred in the ABC TV movie Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring, playing a discouraged teen runaway who returns home with a bearded drug-abusing hippie (played by David Carradine). She made several guest television appearances through the mid-1970s, including a recurring role on the western comedy Alias Smith and Jones (starring Pete Duel, with whom she had worked on Gidget) and in the Night Gallery episode "Whisper".
She studied with the esteemed acting teacher Lee Strasberg,[4][5] who had previously helped Marilyn Monroe transcend the "bimbo" roles with which her career had begun.
Soon afterwards, Field landed the title role in the 1976 TV film Sybil, based on the book by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Her dramatic portrayal of a young woman afflicted with Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder) not only earned her an Emmy Award[6] (in 1977) but enabled her to break through the typecasting of her sitcom work.
1977–1980s
In 1977 she costarred with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed in that year's #2 highest-grossing film, Smokey and the Bandit.[7]
In 1979 Field played the eponymous union organizer in Norma Rae, a successful film that established her as a dramatic actress. Vincent Canby, reviewing 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."[8] For her role in Norma Rae, Field won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Field appeared with Reynolds in three more films: (The End, Hooper and Smokey and the Bandit II). In 1981, she continued to change her image, playing a foul-mouthed prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the South-set film Back Roads. She received Golden Globe nominations for the 1981 drama Absence of Malice and the 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 and has since been both admired as earnest and parodied as excessive. 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!"[9] Field was actually making a humorous reference to dialog from her role in Norma Rae, but many people missed the connection.[who?] Field even parodied herself when she delivered the line (often misquoted as "You like me, you really like me!" [10]) in a Charles Schwab commercial.
In 1985, she costarred 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 ever had. The following year, 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 in the magazine, although she did wear the classic leotard and bunny-ears outfit on the cover. That year, she received the Women in Film Crystal Award.[11] For her role as matriarch M'Lynn in the film version of Steel Magnolias (1989), she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.
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1990–present
Field 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 then played the mother of Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump (1994), even though she was only 10 years older than Hanks, with whom she had costarred six years earlier in Punchline.
Field's other 1990s films included Not Without My Daughter, a controversial thriller based on the real-life experience of Betty Mahmoody's escape from Iran with her daughter Mahtob; and Soapdish, a comedy in which she played pampered soap-opera star Celeste Talbert, and was joined by an all-star cast including Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Shue and Robert Downey, Jr. In 1996 Field received the Berlinale Camera award at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival for her role as a grieving vigilante mother in director John Schlesinger's film Eye for an Eye.[12] She co-starred with Natalie Portman in Where the Heart Is (2000) and appeared opposite Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde.
Field had a recurring role on ER in the 2000–01 season as Dr. Abby Lockhart's mother, Maggie, who suffers from 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's directorial career began with the television film The Christmas Tree (1996). In 1998 she directed the episode "The Original Wives' Club" of the critically acclaimed TV mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, also playing a minor role as Trudy, the wife of astronaut Gordon Cooper. In 2000 she directed the feature film Beautiful.
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 was played by actress Betty Buckley. However, the show's producers decided to take the character in another direction, and offered the part to Field, who won the 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her performance. The drama also starred Calista Flockhart and Rachel Griffiths as Nora's adult daughters.
In November 2009, Field appeared on an episode of The Doctors to talk about osteoporosis and her Rally With Sally Foundation.
She portrayed Aunt May in the Marvel Comics films The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its 2014 sequel, and Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln, written by Tony Kushner.
On May 5, 2014, Field received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions in motion picture. Her star is located in front of the Hollywood Wax Museum.[13]
Music
While on The Flying Nun, Field tried her hand at singing. She sang on the soundtrack for The Flying Nun in 1967, and sang The Flying Nun theme song "Who Needs Wings to Fly". The same year she made it into the Billboard Hot 100 and Adult Contemporary charts with her single "Felicidad".
Field had the voice role of Marina del Rey in Disney's The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning and sang the song "Just One Mistake".
Activism
In 2005, Field was diagnosed with osteoporosis. Her diagnosis led her to create the "Rally With Sally For Bone Health" campaign[14] with support from Roche and GlaxoSmithKline that controversially co-promoted Boniva,[15][16] a bisphosphonate treatment for osteoporosis. Field's campaign encouraged early diagnosis of such conditions through technology such as bone-density scans.[17]
During the 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Field's acceptance speech contained an anti-war statement in which she said: "If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place."[18] Fox, which aired the Emmys, cut the sound and picture after the word "god" and did not cut back to the stage after Field finished talking.[18] An e-mail statement from the company the day after the incident explained that the censorship of Field's speech (amongst two other censorship incidents during the award ceremony) occurred because, "some language during the live broadcast may have been considered inappropriate by some viewers. As a result, Fox's broadcast standards executives determined it appropriate to drop sound and picture during those portions of the show."[18]
Sally Field is a Democrat and she supported Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election.[19][20]
Field is a dedicated advocate for women's rights. She has served on the board of directors of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international women's NGO, and has co-hosted the Global Leadership Awards six times.[21]
Field is also an activist for gay rights. In 2012 she won the Human Rights Campaign's Ally for Equality Award (her youngest son, Sam, has come out as gay).[22]
Personal life
Field was romantically involved with Burt Reynolds for many years, during which time they co-starred in several films including Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II and The End.[23]
Field married Steven Craig in 1968. The couple had two sons: Peter Craig, a novelist, and Eli Craig, an actor and director. Craig and Field divorced in 1975.[23] She married film producer Alan Greisman in 1984, and they had one son, Sam in 1987; Field and Greisman divorced in 1993.[23]
On October 29, 1988, Field and her family survived a crash after their charter plane lost power on takeoff. They all survived with minor injuries.[24]
On a Late Show with David Letterman appearance in April 2014, she revealed that her brother, Dr. Rick Field, is a high energy particle physicist whom she visited recently at CERN in Switzerland.[25] Rick financed his education with a gymnastics scholarship at UC Berkeley. He later went on to work as an assistant to Richard Feynman.[26] Sally has expressed that she felt her parents put an emphasis on education for boys, and as a result never received the liberal arts education she still wishes she had.[27]
Filmography
Film
| Year | Title | 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' | |
| 1977 | Heroes | Carol Bell | |
| 1978 | The End | Mary Ellen | |
| 1978 | Hooper | Gwen Doyle | |
| 1979 | Norma Rae | Norma Rae | |
| 1979 | Beyond the Poseidon Adventure | Celeste Whitman | |
| 1980 | Smokey and the Bandit II | Carrie / 'Frog' | |
| 1981 | Back Roads | Amy Post | |
| 1981 | Absence of Malice | Megan Carter | |
| 1982 | Kiss Me Goodbye | Kay Villano | |
| 1984 | Places in the Heart | Edna Spalding | |
| 1985 | Murphy's Romance | Emma Moriarty | |
| 1987 | Surrender | Daisy Morgan | |
| 1987 | Lethal Weapon | KTLA Reporter | Uncredited |
| 1988 | Punchline | Lilah Krytsick | |
| 1989 | Steel Magnolias | M'Lynn Eatenton | |
| 1991 | Not Without My Daughter | Betty Mahmoody | |
| 1991 | Soapdish | Celeste Talbert / Maggie | |
| 1993 | Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey | Sassy | Voice role |
| 1993 | Mrs. Doubtfire | Miranda Hillard | |
| 1994 | A Century of Cinema | Herself | Documentary |
| 1994 | Forrest Gump | Mrs. Gump | |
| 1996 | Eye for an Eye | Karen McCann | |
| 1996 | Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco | Sassy | Voice role |
| 2000 | Where the Heart Is | Mama Lil | |
| 2000 | David Copperfield | Betsey Trotwood | |
| 2000 | Beautiful | Directorial debut | |
| 2001 | Say It Isn't So | Valdine Wingfield | |
| 2003 | Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde | Rep. Victoria Rudd | |
| 2005 | 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 Rey | Voice role |
| 2012 | The Amazing Spider-Man | Aunt May | |
| 2012 | Lincoln | Mary Todd Lincoln | |
| 2014 | The Amazing Spider-Man 2 | Aunt May | |
| 2015 | Hello, My Name Is Doris[28] | Doris |
Television
| Year | Title | 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 |
| 1971–72 | Alias Smith and Jones | Clementine Hale | 2 episodes |
| 1971 | Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring | Denise "Dennie" Miller | Movie |
| 1971 | Hitched | Roselle Bridgeman | |
| 1971 | Marriage: Year One | Jane Duden | |
| 1972 | Home for the Holidays | Christine Morgan | Movie |
| 1973–74 | The Girl with Something Extra | Sally Burton | 22 episodes |
| 1976 | Bridger | Jennifer Melford | |
| 1976 | Sybil | Sybil Dorsett | Miniseries |
| 1977 | Merry Christmas, George Bailey | Mrs. Bailey/Narrator | |
| 1995 | A Woman of Independent Means | Bess Alcott Steed Garner | Miniseries |
| 1998 | From the Earth to the Moon | Trudy Cooper | Miniseries; also directed |
| 1999 | A Cooler Climate | Iris | Showtime original movie |
| 2000 | David Copperfield | Aunt Betsey Trotwood | U.S./Irish production |
| 2000–06 | ER | Maggie Wyczenski | 12 episodes |
| 2002 | The Court | Justice Kate Nolan | 6 episodes |
| 2005 | Conviction | ||
| 2006–11 | Brothers & Sisters | Nora Walker | 109 episodes |
Awards and nominations
Discography
| Year | Title | Chart positions |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. | ||
| 1967 | The Flying Nun
|
172 |
| 2008 | The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning
|
— |
Singles
- "Felicidad" (Billboard Hot 100 #94, Adult Contemporary #25) / "Find Yourself A Rainbow"—Colgems (1967)
- "Golden Days" / "You're a Grand Old Flag"—Colgems (1968)
- "Gonna Build A Mountain" / "Months of The Year"—Colgems (1968)
- "Just One Mistake" -- Walt Disney Records (2008)
- "Just One Mistake (Reprise)"—Walt Disney Records (2008)
References
- ^ "American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership".
- ^ Sally Field. Film Reference.com.
- ^ tv.com/shows/gidget
- ^ "Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute Alumni". Strasberg.com. Retrieved December 4, 2012.
- ^ Garfield, David (1980). "Appendix: Life Members of The Actors Studio as of January 1980". A Player's Place: The Story of The Actors Studio. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. p. 278. ISBN 0-02-542650-8.
- ^ "Sally Field Emmy Winner". Emmys.com. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
- ^ "Smokey and the Bandit (1977)". Box Office Mojo. January 1, 1982. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
- ^ Canby, Vincent (March 2, 1979). "Film: 'Norma Rae', Mill-Town Story:Unionism in the South". The New York Times. [dead link]
- ^ Oscar acceptance speech: Littlereview.com
- ^ Gawker supercut
- ^ "Past Recipients: Crystal Award". Women In Film. Retrieved May 10, 2011.
- ^ "Berlinale: 1996 Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved January 1, 2012.
- ^ "Sally Field's Hollywood Walk of Fame star unveiled". 3 News. May 7, 2014. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
- ^ "Actress and Osteoporosis Advocate Sally Field Salutes Women's Health Innovators and Encourages American Women to 'Rally With Sally' for Bone Health (PRNewswire, 2006)".
- ^ "Sally Field and Boniva: Great spokeswoman, misleading ad (Consumer Reports, 2009)".
- ^ "FDA warns Genentech about Boniva ad with Sally Field (Video)(San Francisco Bus Times 2011)".
- ^ "Ability Magazine: Sally Field - Promoting Healthy Habits" (2009)". Retrieved April 3, 2012.
- ^ a b c Marikar, Shelia (September 18, 2007). "On TV, 'Extreme Caution' vs. Free Speech". ABC News. Retrieved November 5, 2007.
- ^ "Cal State Los Angeles - 2/2/08. Sally Field and Bradley Whiteford speaking their support for Hillary Clinton for President 2008".
- ^ "Sally Field and Hillary Clinton".
- ^ "Board of Directors". Vital Voices. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
- ^ Broverman, Neal (October 7, 2012). "Watch: Sally Field's Amazing HRC Speech About Her Gay Son". The Advocate.
- ^ a b c "Sally Field- Biography". Yahoo! Movies. Retrieved December 29, 2012.
- ^ "Sally Field in Jet Accident". New York Times. Associated Press. November 1, 1988.
- ^ "Wednesday, 2014-04-23, Show #4016". Wahoo Gazette. The Late Show with David Letterman. Retrieved April 24, 2014.
- ^ Mcleod, Michael (December 14, 1986). "Rick Field". Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved April 24, 2014.
- ^ Wilburn, Stephanie (June 7, 2013). "Sally Field's Secret Sorrow". National Enquirer. Retrieved April 24, 2014.
- ^ http://www.deadline.com/2014/05/sally-field-max-greenfield-beth-behrs-star-in-indie-hello-my-name-is-doris/
External links
- Sally Field at IMDb
- Sally Field at the TCM Movie Database
- Sally Field at AllMovie
- Two Weeks movie site
- Sally Field at Emmys.com
- Actress Sally Field On Hollywood, Family and Aging, an NPR Interview, June 3, 2009 (streaming audio)
- Sally Field at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
| International | |
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| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
| Warning | Local parameters are deprecated. |
- 1946 births
- 20th-century American actresses
- 21st-century American actresses
- Actors Studio members
- American child actresses
- American female singers
- American film actresses
- American film directors
- American television actresses
- American voice actresses
- Best Actress Academy Award winners
- Best Drama Actress Golden Globe (film) winners
- Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- American women film directors
- Film directors from California
- Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute alumni
- Living people
- Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Drama Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
- Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie Primetime Emmy Award winners
- Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series Screen Actors Guild Award winners
- Actresses from Pasadena, California
- LGBT rights activists from the United States
- Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents
- National Board of Review Awards