Oscar Profile #122: Sally Field

Born November 6, 1946 to actress Margaret Field and her husband, an Army captain and later salesman, the doctor who delivered Sally Field allegedly told her mother “you have an actor”.

Field’s parents divorced when she was five and her mother later married stunt man turned actor Jock Mahoney. She began her film career in an un-credited role in 1962’s Moon Pilot. She played her first lead three years later in the TV series, Gidget, a re-boot of the character played by Sandra Dee and Deborah Walley in several fims of the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was cancelled after just one season. She then co-starred with Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in the 1967 film, The Way West. That same year she began a three season run as TV’s The Flying Nun, a role she didn’t like because she felt various TV directors made fun of her. She married first husband Steve Craig in 1968 with whom she had two sons before divorcing in 1975.

She kept busy with mostly minor TV work after The Flying Nun until she startled critics and audiences alike with her Emmy award winning performance in the 1976 TV movie, Sybil playing a woman with multiple personalities opposite Joanne Woodward as her psychiatrist. Still unable to secure dramatic roles on screen, she starred opposite Burt Reynolds, with whom she began a long-term relationship, in the box office hit Smokey and the Bandit. She and Reynolds made several films together.

In 1979, her first major dramatic screen role in Norma Rae paid off with an Oscar and numerous other awards. She followed that with successful roles in Absence of Malice opposite Paul Newman; All the Way Home for TV opposite William Hurt; Kiss Me Goodbye opposite Jeff Bridges and James Caan and Places in the Heart for which she won a second Oscar. She married second husband, producer Alan Greisman in 1984 with whom she had a third son. They divorced in 1993.

While married to Greisman she had a string of successes including Murphy’s Romance opposite James Garner; Punchline; Steel Magnolias and Soapdish.

In 1994 her iconic portrayal of Tom Hanks’ mother in Forrest Gump earned her further awards recognition but failed to obtain her a third Oscar nomination.

Field’s most significant work in recent years was on TV’s ER in a recurring role form 2002-2006 and as the star of TV’s Brothers & Sisters from 2006-2011. She won Emmys for both.

In 2012 she was welcomed back to the big screen with open arms as Mary Todd in Lincoln for which she received her first Oscar nomination in 28 years.

When not appearing before the cameras, Field devotes her time to numerous causes for which she has also been amply rewarded. Her career continues non-stop at the age of 66.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

NORMA RAE (1979), directed by Martin Ritt

One person against the world has always been a popular theme in movies. It’s rare for that person to be a woman, but in Field’s reluctant union organizer we get a gal with so much gumption it’s impossible not to love her no matter which side you might be on in labor disputes.

Spunky Norma Rae’s home life is as chaotic as her working life in a southern mill. She’s a single mother living with her parents until her father’s fatal heart attack spurs her to action both at the factory and in her personal life. Field receives excellent support from Beau Bridges as her new husband, Ron Leibman as the union organizer form up north and Pat Hingle as her father.

PLACES IN THE HEART (1984), directed by Robert Benton

Four of the women competing for Best Actress this year were former Oscar winners (Field, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, Vanessa Redgrave) and three of them were playing farmwomen vs. nature (Field in this film, Lange in Country, Spacek in The River). Redgrave was playing a 19th Century suffragette in the little seen art-house film, The Bostonians. The fifth nominee was Judy Davis as the de facto villainess in A Passage to India. It was clearly the year of the farmwoman and Field’s film was the only one nominated for Best Picture as well as the only one with acting nominees in other categories. She was the clear favorite yet the win seemed to take her by surprise, resulting in one of Oscar’s most beloved and parodied acceptance speeches.

STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989), directed by Herbert Ross

Field is smack in the middle of Shirley MacLaine territory here as the mother of a bride with a fatal illness. Highly reminiscent of the character MacLaine played in Terms of Endearment six years earlier, Field not only has to find new nuances to bring to what is by now becoming a clichéd character, she has to compete with a whole host of scene stealers including MacLaine herself, Olympia Dukakis and Dolly Parton as her best friends and up-and-coming Julia Roberts as her daughter.

Field received a Golden Globe nomination, but only Roberts received an Oscar nomination.

FORREST GUMP (1994), directed by Robert Zemeckis

Six years after playing Tom Hanks’ love interest in Punchline, Field was cast as his mother in this wildly successful Best Picture Oscar winner. Granted, she starts out playing the character’ smother when he is played by a child actor, but the casting reminds one of Lillian Gish’s oft-quoted remark that “Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather, later my father, and finally, he played my husband. If he’d lived, I’m sure I’d have played his mother. That’s the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.”

Field received SAG and BAFTA nominations for her endearing performance but AMPAS seemed to think she had already been amply rewarded with two Oscars and failed to nominate her.

LINCOLN (2012), directed by Steven Spielberg

Field started off awards season with a prestigious Best Supporting Actress win from the New York Film Critics for her deft portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln in Spielberg’s acclaimed film, but has since lost ground to Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables. Should she win the Oscar ten days from now she will join a select group of three time Oscar winners and become the first since Walter Brennan to win three on three nominations.

In a reversal of the way it usually work in Hollywood, she is playing the ten years younger wife of the 16th President although in real life she is ten years older than Daniel Day-Lewis who plays her husband. She has stated, though, that at 5’ 2” she is the right height.