Oscar Profile #638 – Sally Field Revisited – Cinema Sight by Wesley Lovell

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 films 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 nomina

Field then turned to TV’s for ER in a recurring role from 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. More recent films include The Amazing Spider-Man, Hello, My Name Is Doris, Spoiler Alert, and 80 for Brady.

Given a career achievement award by the screen Actors Guild last week by screen nephew Andrew Garfield, Sally Field’s career continues non-stop at the age of 76.

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. In it, she’s a single mother living with her parents until her father’s fatal heart attack spurs her to action both at the factory where she works and in her personal life. Field receives excellent support from Beau Bridges as her new husband, Ron Leibman as the union organizer from “up north”, and Pat Hingle as her father.

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

Three of the year’s Oscar nominees for Best Actress were playing farmwomen vs. nature (Field in this film, Jessica Lange in Country, and Sissy Spacek in The River). It was clearly the year of the farmwoman and Field’s film was the only one of the three nominated for Best Picture as well as the only one with acting nominees in other categories – Supporting Actor John Malkovich and Supporting Actress nominee Lindsay crouse.. 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 must 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. Although nominated for a Golden Globe, she failed to receive an Oscar nod for this one.

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.” SAG and BAFTA nominated her, but Oscar took a pass.

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 for which she received her third Oscar nomination. In a reversal of the way it usually works in Hollywood, she was playing the ten years younger wife of the 16th President although in real life she is ten years older than Daniel Day-Lewis who played her husband. She stated, though, that at 5’ 2” she was the right height. That same year she played Andrew Garfield’s Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man.