Sally Field Career Summary:
My Oscar Book (first published in 1986., now in 11th edition)
Occup Inheritance: Yes (mother actress)
Nationality:
Birth: Pasadena, California
Family: divorce; stepfather actor and stuntman.
Social Class: Middle; father pharmacist; mother actress
Education: Birmingham High School, Van Nuys
Training
Stage Debut
TV debut: Gidget (1965–1966); ages 19-20
Broadway Debut
Screen Debut: extra in Moon Pilot (1962), age 16; star roles in The Way West (1967); age 17
Age at First Nom: 33
Age at Oscar Win: 33
Span between First Film and First Nom: 17
Span between First Nom and First Oscar
Number of Oscars/Noms: 2 Oscars, 1 Supp. Nom
Career Length: 1962-present
Career Output:
Age at Last Film” NA
Retirement: NA
Marriage
Politics
Death
Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946), American actress who has performed in movies, Broadway theater, and television, and made records of popular music.
Known for her extensive work on screen and stage, she has received many accolades throughout her career spanning six decades, including two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two British Academy Film Awards.
She was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2014, the National Medal of Arts in 2014, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2019, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2023.
Sally Field was born on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California, to actress Margaret Field (née Morlan) (1922–2011) and pharmacist Richard Dryden Field (1914–1993), who served in the Army during World War II.
Her brother is Richard Dryden Field Jr., a physicist and academic. Her parents were divorced in 1950; on January 21, 1952, in Tijuana, Mexico, her mother married Jock Mahoney, an actor and stuntman.
Her ancestry includes English, Irish and on her father’s side Italian from the island of Sicily.
Field said in her 2018 memoir that she was sexually abused by Mahoney during her childhood.
As a teen, Field attended Portola Middle School and Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, where she was a cheerleader. Her 1964 classmates included financier Michael Milken and talent agent Michael Ovitz, while actress Cindy Williams was a year behind Field.
Field has stated that when she was 17 she had an illegal abortion in Mexico, and was molested during it.
Field began her career on TV, starring in the comedies Gidget (1965–1966), The Flying Nun (1967–1970), and The Girl with Something Extra (1973–1974). She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the NBC television film Sybil (1976).
Her film debut was as an extra in Moon Pilot (1962) followed by starring roles in The Way West (1967), Stay Hungry (1976), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Heroes (1977), The End (1978), and Hooper (1978).
She won two Best Actress Oscars, for Norma Rae (1979), and for Places in the Heart (1984).
Other notable roles include in Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Murphy’s Romance (1985), Steel Magnolias (1989), Soapdish (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Forrest Gump (1994).
In the 2000s, Field returned to TV with a recurring role on the NBC medical drama ER, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2001.
For her role of Nora Walker in the ABC drama series Brothers & Sisters (2006–2011), Field won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
She portrayed Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln (2012), for which she received Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
She portrayed Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its 2014 sequel.
Other roles include in the films Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015), and 80 for Brady (2023), as well as in the Netflix limited series Maniac (2018).
She made her professional stage debut replacing Mercedes Ruehl in the original Broadway production of Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? in 2002.
Field returned to the stage after an absence of 15 years with the 2017 revival of The Glass Menagerie, for which she received Tony Award nom for Best Actress in a Play.
She made her debut on the West End theatre in revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons in 2019.
Field got start on TV as the boy-crazy surfer girl in sitcom Gidget (1965–1966). The show was not an initial success and was cancelled after a single season; however, summer reruns garnered respectable ratings, making the show a belated success.
Wanting to find a new starring vehicle for Field, ABC next produced The Flying Nun with Field cast as Sister Bertrille for three seasons, from 1967 to 1970.
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, finding respectable roles difficult to obtain. In 1971, Field starred in the ABC television film 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 guest TV appearances through the mid-1970s, including the Western Alias Smith and Jones, a popular series starring Gidget co-star Pete Duel. She also appeared in the episode “Whisper” on the thriller Night Gallery.
In 1973, Field was cast in a starring role opposite John Davidson in the series The Girl with Something Extra that aired from 1973 to 1974.
Following the series’ cancellation, Field studied at the Actors Studio with teacher Lee Strasberg. Strasberg became a mentor to Field, helping her move past her TV image of the girl next door. During this period, Field divorced her first husband in 1975.
Sybil: Emmy
After studying with Strasberg, 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 earned her Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Special Program – Drama or Comedy in 1977 and enabled her to break through the typecasting of her sitcom work.
In 1977, Field co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Reed in the year’s second-highest-grossing film, Smokey and the Bandit.
In 1979, she played the titular union organizer in Norma Rae, a film that established her as a dramatic actress. Vincent Canby wrote: “Norma Rae is a seriously concerned contemporary drama, illuminated by very good performances and one, Miss Field’s, that is spectacular.” For her role in Norma Rae, Field won the Best Female Performance at the Cannes Film Fest and the Best Actress Oscar.
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 foul-mouthed prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the South-set film Back Roads.
In the 1984 drama Places in the Heart, she starred as Edna Spalding, a farm widow struggling to weather the Great Depression. She won her second Oscar. Field’s acceptance speech has since been admired as earnest and parodied as excessive, mainly the line, “And I can’t deny the fact that you like me…right now…you like me! (applause) Thank you!” Field later parodied herself when she delivered the line (often misquoted as “You like me, you really like me!”) in a Charles Schwab commercial.
In 1985, she co-starred with James Garner in the romantic comedy Murphy’s Romance.
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.
She received the Women in Film Crystal Award.
Her role as matriarch M’Lynn in the film version of Steel Magnolias (1989)
In the early 1990s, Field had supporting roles, including Disney’s live-action film Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), where she voiced the role of Sassy. In Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), she played the wife of Robin Williams’s character and the love interest of Pierce Brosnan’s character. She then played Tom Hanks’s mother in Forrest Gump (1994), though she was only 10 years older than Hanks, with whom she had co-starred six years earlier in Punchline. For Forrest Gump, she received BAFTA and SAG nominations.
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 a pampered soap-opera star and was joined by a cast that included Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg, Cathy Moriarty, Elisabeth Shue, and Robert Downey Jr. In 1996, Field reprised her role as Sassy in Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco and later that year, she 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.[29] In 1997, Field guest starred on the King of the Hill episode “Hilloween”, in which she voiced religious woman Junie Harper, who contends with Hank Hill (Mike Judge) to ban Halloween.
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 2000–2001 season as Dr. Abby Lockhart’s mother, Maggie, who suffers 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 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 miniseries 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 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.[32] 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) as well as the 2014 sequel. \
Field’s widely praised portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln, also in 2012, brought her Best Supporting Actress Award nominations at the Oscars, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, and Critics’ Choice.
On May 5, 2014, Field received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to motion pictures. Her star is located in front of the Hollywood Wax Museum.
In January 2015, she co-host TCM.
The same year, Field portrayed the titular character in Hello, My Name Is Doris, for which she was nominated for the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in a Comedy.
In 2017, Field reprised her role as Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre. Performances began on February 7, 2017, in previews, and officially opened on March 9. The production closed on May 21, 2017, after 85 performance and 31 previews. Field had previously played the role in the Kennedy Center production in 2004. She was nominated for Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance.
Her memoir, “In Pieces,” was published by Grand Central Publishing in September 2018.
Field returned to episodic television in 2018, starring in the Netflix miniseries Maniac. Subsequently, in 2020, Field starred in the AMC series Dispatches from Elsewhere.
In 2023, Field co-starred in the comedy movie 80 for Brady, which starred NFL quarterback Tom Brady along with fellow actresses Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Rita Moreno.
Also in 2023, Field was named the 58th recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, which she was presented at the 29th SAG Awards.
Field was married to Steven Craig from 1968 to 1975, though they separated in 1973. The couple had two sons: Peter Craig, novelist and screenwriter (b. 1969); and Eli Craig, an actor and director (b. 1972).
From 1976 to 1980, Field had a relationship with Burt Reynolds, during which time they co-starred in four films: Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II, The End, and Hooper.
After their 1980 breakup, Field and Reynolds continued to date on and off before splitting permanently in 1982.
Field married her second husband, Alan Greisman, in 1984. Together, they had one son, Sam (b. 1987). Field and Greisman divorced in 1994.
On October 29, 1988, at Aspen/Pitkin County Airport in Colorado, Field and three members of her family were in a private plane owned by media mogul Merv Griffin when it lost power and rejected takeoff, slamming into a parked aircraft. They all survived with minor injuries.
Field wrote in her memoir that she suffered from “severe depression” in her late teens. She stated that taking acting classes helped her overcome “this urgency, this anxiety, this need to find something that was festering in me.”
In 2005, Field was diagnosed with osteoporosis. Her diagnosis led her to create the “Rally with Sally for Bone Health” campaign with support from Roche and GlaxoSmithKline that controversially co-promoted Boniva, bisphosphonate treatment for osteoporosis. Field’s campaign encouraged the early diagnosis of such conditions through technology such as bone-density scans.
In 2005, Field received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented in recognition of her lifetime of contributions to the arts as well as her dedication as a social activist.
During her acceptance speech at the 2007 Emmy Awards, when she won for Outstanding Lead Actress: Field said: “If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place.” Fox Broadcasting Company, which aired the show, cut the sound and picture after the word “god” and did not return camera/sound to the stage until after Field finished talking.
An e-mail statement from the company the day after the incident explained that the censorship of Field’s speech (among 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.”
Field is an 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.
A Democrat, Field supported Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election,[58] and Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.[9]
Field is also an advocate for gay rights, and won the Human Rights Campaign’s Ally for Equality Award in 2012.
Her youngest son, Samuel Greisman, is gay.
Field was arrested on December 13, 2019, while attending Jane Fonda’s weekly Friday climate change protests in Washington, D.C.
Having undergone a traumatic illegal abortion in Mexico at age 17, Field is vocal advocate for abortion rights in the US.
