- 7 hours ago
Sally Field looks back on the defining moments of her life and career, from her early days as a reluctant TV star to becoming a two-time Oscar winner
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00:00I got up there and I said what I said, you like me, you really like me.
00:04This is my boy that I took on Steel Magnolias, who said that's why I'm gay,
00:08because he was younger all the time.
00:11Bert Reynolds called me, wanted me to look at this script, he said it's really awful.
00:15And he said, don't worry about the script, we'll make it up as we go along.
00:18It was just wonderful, wonderful fun.
00:23Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin, was such a diamond of a soul.
00:27You just adored him.
00:29I adored him.
00:30He'd also drive you mad, because he wouldn't stop.
00:33And we'd have to do the scene.
00:35We did the scene exactly how it was.
00:36It was wonderful.
00:37It was done.
00:37We did take one and take two, take three.
00:40Fabulous.
00:40Except Robin would want to do take four and take five and take six and seven and eight and nine
00:44and ten and eleven and twelve.
00:45Daniel!
00:46Oh my God!
00:47Oh my God!
00:49Oh my God!
00:50The whole time, the whole time, the whole time!
00:53When I was doing Mrs. Doubtfire, my real father, who had been ill, and I had put him in a
01:01nursing home, he'd had a massive stroke at one point.
01:04And I got a call while I was in the trailer, or whatever you call it, on the street at
01:08the courthouse where the divorce is happening.
01:11And this is the scene where we're shooting the divorce.
01:12And I got a call from the doctor that my father had had another massive stroke.
01:18I said, is he, and he said, no, it's a massive, massive stroke again, and his brain is not really
01:24functioning.
01:26We could keep his heart going.
01:28And I said, no, but please lean down and tell him that Sally says goodbye.
01:35And then I went out onto the set, and I'm like, oh my God, you know, this was on me,
01:45and I, my father, and we hadn't been that close, but he was still my father, and I was responsible
01:51for him.
01:51And I went on the set, I was doing the scene about the kids being taken away from the father.
01:57It was what happened to my father.
02:00I was the divorced child, and I'm doing the scene, I'm doing the scene.
02:04And Robin, at one point, pulled me over to the side.
02:07He said, Sally, I said, yeah.
02:09He said, are you all right?
02:10I said, yeah, why?
02:12He said, I don't know.
02:13I don't know, I just wanted to ask.
02:14And I started to cry.
02:16I said, my father just died, you know, and I was the one to say, you know, go ahead, let
02:23him die.
02:24And I started to cry.
02:25And Robin turned around and said, that's it for the day, guys.
02:28We're just wrapped here.
02:29We're done for the day.
02:30You can get a few shots at the kids and maybe one of the staff are, but Ms. Fields is
02:35going home.
02:37And he walked me out, and that was Robin.
02:43The first time I won for Norma Ray, it was so unexpected.
02:47I had so come out of nowhere to land here.
02:52If I joined up with you, would I lose my job?
02:54No way.
02:55I was never a very good girl scout.
02:58I was so numb when I won.
03:02I don't remember walking up on the stage.
03:04I didn't know how to do any of it, but there I was.
03:07Meaning, I didn't know how to do the Hollywood stuff.
03:10I knew how to do that.
03:12I knew how to do this.
03:13I knew how to do the work.
03:14But I didn't know how to get the dress and the thing, and how do I, it was not what
03:20I
03:20felt comfortable with.
03:21And at that time, there was only one place where there was a party, and that was the original
03:26Spago on Hollywood.
03:28And that was it.
03:30As I went into the old Spago, somebody stood up in the corner and said, Newt, come here,
03:36come here.
03:37Sally, you know, here.
03:38And I couldn't see who it quite was.
03:41He was sort of backlit, because you had Sunset Boulevard, like, right behind him.
03:45And he said, big table with people.
03:48And I went, okay, good.
03:49I'm going to go sit there.
03:51Fine, good.
03:52And I went over, and it was Cary Grant.
03:55And I was to sit down at this table, and I sat down between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.
04:02And I was just like, ah.
04:06I don't think I said one single word.
04:09I think I just sat there like, yeah, yeah.
04:14Except I had my little award.
04:19And the winner is Sally Field in Places in the Heart.
04:22And then the second one I won for Places in the Heart.
04:25I got up there, and I think what I felt is that since the first one I gave away,
04:32because I was so numb that I couldn't feel it,
04:35that I had to have a moment of allowing myself to feel that I had done something,
04:39that I had conquered something that was so hard for me to do.
04:43It doesn't mean that it wouldn't continue to need to be conquered on a daily basis,
04:48for the work to keep on getting better, to keep understanding it in a different level.
04:53And I was like, oh my God, oh my God.
04:57I don't know that I had anything really planned to say,
05:00because I feel that sort of bad luck.
05:02And so I said what I said.
05:04The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it.
05:08And I can't deny the fact that you like me right now.
05:12You like me.
05:14The way it's been completely misquoted is that the lead-up to it is that I say
05:20how hard it was for me to be here.
05:23And how hard it was for me to see that I was here.
05:28And so right now I wanted to take this moment and see it and own it for myself.
05:34That for this one minute in time, maybe never again, you like me.
05:38You really like me.
05:39And that's what I said.
05:40And it became this whole, you know, blow it out of whatever you need to blow it out of.
05:45But the reality was that I was talking to myself.
05:51This is my brother Rick, and that's me.
05:56And this is kind of looks like our childhood, just totally.
06:00This was probably in Pasadena.
06:02I grew up in my grandmother's house when I was really little in Alcadena.
06:09And my brother was my everything.
06:12He was my protector and my tormentor.
06:15And he went on to be an elemental particle physicist.
06:19Try saying that 55 times in a row.
06:21All of this with my brother at my grandmother's house was my happy spot.
06:26I was very safe at my grandmother's house with my Aunt Gladys, my great-grandmother Mimi,
06:35my grandmother Joy, and my mother, and of course my brother.
06:41So this was sort of diamond part of my childhood.
06:48This is Gidget.
06:50I was probably 18 here, and that was the beginning of my career.
06:54I think like Gidget, like the all-American girl is what Gidget was supposed to be,
07:00there was also darkness in there.
07:02There just was, especially because those little girls were raised in the 50s,
07:06and they were very repressed times for women, for little girls.
07:11You couldn't do that.
07:11You couldn't wear this.
07:12You had to sit this way.
07:13You had to walk that way.
07:14Even my grandmother, who was a very independent woman in her way,
07:21but she'd been an illegitimate child from her mother,
07:25and she had to eventually go into an orphanage with her oldest sister
07:30and sort of grew up in that orphanage in the deep south.
07:33So there was a toughness to her, but she very much was, you know,
07:39women, you couldn't do this and you couldn't do that.
07:41And if I had any emotion, if I was crying, certainly if I was angry,
07:47her response to me was, don't be ugly.
07:52So there was a part of me that was very much like Gidget.
07:56I knew how to make people laugh.
07:58I was a clown.
07:59But there was a darkness that was yet to be explored.
08:03Obviously, I can't just walk up to him and offer him a second chance.
08:07Why not?
08:07I do it all the time.
08:09At 18 and certainly 19, I became a celebrity.
08:13Just instantly, I was no longer part of the human race.
08:16You look at people differently because you're aware that they're either recognizing you
08:22or they're not recognizing you.
08:24And either way, it takes you out of just being another human at the market
08:30looking for the right artichoke to pick up.
08:33So I learned that early on.
08:36And I learned to have some part of me wary of it.
08:42But I was always kind of a recluse.
08:46I never was a person that had a whole lot of friends and was the real heart of the party
08:51and hung out with a lot of people.
08:55I had one friend and was lucky to have that.
08:58But I think what it did to me is it validated the part of me that would just as soon
09:05be alone.
09:06I didn't trust them.
09:08I didn't like them.
09:09Get away from me.
09:11But what I did like was the actors.
09:15I liked being in that family.
09:17I liked being with the crew.
09:20I was accepted.
09:21I was them.
09:21They were my friends.
09:24The Flying Nun, a notoriously tough period, yeah.
09:27I had just turned 19.
09:29I didn't want to be a nun.
09:30I wanted to finally be a girl in the world that I wanted to date.
09:37I'd never really dated except my high school sweetheart with one person.
09:43I hadn't gone to college.
09:45I didn't have any of that experience.
09:47And so I did not want to be a nun.
09:50And I said no.
09:51I said no.
09:52I said no.
09:52And then my stepfather had come to my new apartment because I had just moved out.
09:59And said to me that if I didn't do it, I might never work again, which was a really crappy
10:05thing to say.
10:07And it scared me.
10:09And so I called Harry Ackerman, the producer, and said okay, I'll do it.
10:13And I didn't know they were already shooting with somebody else.
10:15And then welcome to showbiz.
10:18And that poor young woman was fired.
10:22And I went into these three years.
10:25It was, yes, incredibly difficult for me because it was depressing.
10:30It wasn't real.
10:31There was no real scenes to do.
10:33I had come from the Birmingham Drama Department.
10:36I knew how to be an actor.
10:37This wasn't it.
10:38But the good news is at the end of the first year, when I had probably gained 400 pounds in
10:46two hours,
10:47the woman who played Mother Superior, Madeleine Sherwood, came to me and said after work on Thursday,
10:54you're to meet me here.
10:55She handed the address to me and said you're going to be there.
10:58And I was sort of frightened of her anyway.
11:01I thought okay.
11:02And she said it's the Actress Studio.
11:04Have you ever heard of it?
11:05Which I hadn't.
11:06I had barely ever been out of the state.
11:09So I said okay.
11:11And I showed up.
11:13And it was, certainly it changed my life because it's where I met Lee Strasberg and began to work with
11:20him
11:20and began to learn how to be the actor I wanted to be.
11:25I had gotten married to my high school sweetheart, not even because I wanted to,
11:29but because he said if I didn't, he would leave and I would have no one.
11:34It was like, you know, I learned eventually to not listen to this stuff and to stand up for what
11:41I really wanted.
11:42I was in the third year of the nun, beginning the third year of the nun, and I was pregnant.
11:46So I did that season, that entire season pregnant, which was hard, but okay, it was always hard.
11:56But at least I had this bubble of excitement happening inside of me.
12:05Something was changing, and it was Peter, this little guy.
12:10Peter also, this little baby, certainly saved my life because I said to myself,
12:16if I could take care of him, I could take care of me.
12:18And I needed to find my legs, and he helped.
12:22And then this little guy, Eli, came along a few years later in 1972.
12:28At that time, if you had done situation comedy television, and this was the late 60s and early 70s,
12:34I couldn't get in a room.
12:36So it wasn't that I was on auditions.
12:38I couldn't get in the room to audition.
12:39I couldn't get on the list.
12:41They thought they already knew what I was.
12:43So I, no thanks, we don't want any of that.
12:46Thanks.
12:48So I, I had to say to myself that if I wasn't where I wanted to be, I had to
12:55get better.
12:56That I couldn't say that it was their fault.
12:59They wouldn't let me in the room.
13:01This was the industry.
13:02It was rotten.
13:03It was unfair.
13:05It had to be that it was on me to make it different.
13:09So I began to work at the actor's studio with Lee constantly, as much as I possibly could.
13:17And I remember Jack Nicholson was there a lot.
13:20And Jack had said to a casting person that he knew, and ultimately to Bob Rafelson,
13:27that there was an actor he had seen working there that was well-known and an undiscovered talent.
13:34And it was my, it was me.
13:36And that the casting lady, Diane Crittenton, heard him say that and called me in on a meeting.
13:43It was the very first meeting interview I'd ever been on.
13:48It was the first interview I'd had since Gidget.
13:50And it was for a film called Stay Hungry that Bob Rafelson was directing with Jeff Bridges.
13:56And Arnold Schwarzenegger was his first movie.
13:59So in some weird way, my theory was right.
14:03I worked at the actor's studio for so long and it was so hard that Jack had seen it and
14:10the word spread
14:11and ultimately got that little role, which was the beginning of the change.
14:16There was so much in this.
14:18It was a very pivotal time.
14:20And Burt Reynolds called me.
14:22Now, I knew who he was, but I didn't know anybody in the business, really, unless I had worked with
14:29him.
14:29I knew Jeff now.
14:30I knew Jeff, wonderful Jeff Bridges.
14:34And Burt called me and wanted me to look at this script.
14:37He said, it's really awful.
14:38The script is awful, but we're going to fix all of that because we'll just make it up as we
14:43go along.
14:44And I said to him, well, why me?
14:47And he said, because he'd seen me in Gidget, which I found a little hard to believe, that he would
14:52like go, okay, Gidget, yeah, this is perfect.
14:54I want, that's the girl I want.
14:56But okay.
14:59And I had met him.
15:02And he said, don't worry about the script.
15:04We will, we will, we will throw it out the window and we'll, we'll make it up as we go
15:08along.
15:10So I went to Atlanta and, you know, then of course he and I met and began whatever it was
15:17that we began.
15:19Do you think we have anything in common?
15:22I mean, besides being chased around the country in that focacca car.
15:26It was a very complicated relationship.
15:28There were parts of Burt that were so wonderful and, and lovable.
15:32And then there were parts that were really frightening.
15:34And he was very much like my stepfather.
15:38It doesn't mean that there wasn't a part of me that loved Burt to pieces, but then I loved my
15:42stepfather too.
15:43That's the complication of what loving a very complicated person is, especially when you're a child.
15:50Because my stepfather was both wonderful and evil.
15:55So he taught me that love is wonderful and dangerous.
16:01So he was me exercising my stepfather out of my brain because I eventually could stand up to Burt and
16:11I could eventually walk away because Burt wanted to control my work.
16:18He could hurt me.
16:20He could, you know, humiliate me, but don't mess with my work because it meant more to me than work.
16:29It was my language with myself and it had always been that.
16:34So it was, it was the beginning of me pulling away when he didn't want me to do Norma Ray,
16:45you know, called her a whore because she had some sexual past.
16:49And he threw, he threw the script at me because I was standing up.
16:52He said, boy, you are really letting, you're letting this get the better of you.
16:56And I said, this is the better of me.
17:00And I went and I did meet with Marty Ritt.
17:04I did the film, but it was the beginning of me finding my legs.
17:09And I really think the roles that I was, that I've been lucky enough to have, where I got to
17:14do the work that I know how to do, that I took a long time to know how to do,
17:18that I'm still learning how to do.
17:20They changed me, they affected me, they changed who I am and being Norma at that time was exactly what
17:30I needed because to learn how to stand in her shoes, I could feel my own legs.
17:35I could feel my body getting stronger because I was having to portray how she grew up.
17:42I started to grow up.
17:43I eventually just wouldn't be manipulated and humiliated like that.
17:49And ultimately I left.
17:53Well, this is Steel Magnolias.
17:55Just a wonderful, wonderful experience.
17:58Just, we loved each other, all of us.
18:00We all just completely adored each other.
18:04And we would go shopping on the weekends, all together.
18:07Even Dolly sometimes.
18:09We'd go to the market.
18:10We played games.
18:11We'd all, we'd get together at somebody's house.
18:14There's a picture that I have hanging in my little office.
18:18It's of Shirley and Julia and Dolly.
18:22And we're looking off because it was the wrap party.
18:24And there was a big band.
18:26So it's all of our tight head shots.
18:28And on my chest is my little son, Sam.
18:32Because he was six months old.
18:34And I'm holding his head because I'm trying to save his ears because it was loud.
18:40He was on the set all the time.
18:41And my friends took care of him.
18:44Sam has always said that that's probably why he's gay.
18:49This is my wonderful Sam.
18:52I never have, and I don't think I ever will, do this part of it very happily.
18:59It's not my strong suit.
19:01But he gets it.
19:02And he helps me through it.
19:04The fact that he knows so much more about this contemporary world than I do, you know,
19:09telling me who people are.
19:10That's so, that is?
19:12Really?
19:13Oh, great, thanks.
19:14I do the acting.
19:15I don't do the other part.
19:18Brothers and Sisters was already shot as a pilot.
19:21And they wanted to keep some of the concepts.
19:23But they brought in two new characters.
19:26And that was, they changed the mother, which was not going to be me.
19:29And they brought in Matthew Reese.
19:31And it just emerged as what it needed to be.
19:35And the Matthew Reese character really rose up, mostly because Matthew was so gosh darn good.
19:43And at that time, they were never really ever exploring the relationship of a gay man and
19:48his mother and his family.
19:49I don't want anyone to know.
19:51I knew.
19:54I knew you were gay.
19:56I think I always knew.
19:58They started to let me write my character.
20:01Because none of them were an older woman.
20:04I was.
20:06And none of them had children.
20:08I did.
20:09And grown-up children.
20:11Me.
20:12So they allowed me to write her story.
20:17And, and what she said and how she, how she said it.
20:21These children, each one of them, he's, Peter is right there.
20:25He's a magnificent writer and showrunner.
20:28He's now showrunning a limited series that he wrote all of.
20:32Eli is a writer-director.
20:34He is directing something right now with Nick Jonas that's up in Canada.
20:40And Sam is also a writer and has several pieces out in the marketplace.
20:45They are my support, but I think I'm kind of theirs as well.
20:49Everybody always talks about being a grandparent is this joy you didn't know existed.
20:56I say that's not true.
20:57It was really hard.
20:59Really hard.
21:00I wasn't prepared to have grandchildren so young.
21:05Sam was still young when Peter had his first children.
21:10And, but I do know this, that parenting and grandparenting is not about this year or next
21:17year or the year after that.
21:19It's the long-term relationship that you have, that you never leave, that you're flawed, that
21:27you screw up, and that you're still there, and that you're still invested, and that you
21:32reinvest yourself.
21:33I'm hugely close to my, my grandchildren.
21:39How did this even happen?
21:41Brian Unglis and Peter Craig, we're starting their company, Brian Unglis was given this
21:46in galleys, I believe.
21:48Then Peter, Brian said, maybe give this to your mom, maybe she would like this.
21:52I read about three chapters and said yes, and then gave it to my manager, who is anonymous.
21:59Anonymous picked it up for them, and we began developing it.
22:04It's a lovely little book about healing, about family, and an homage to seed creatures.
22:10So it's very unique and small in its, in its way, in, in large and other ways.
22:16And we, you know, worked a long time to make it what it eventually became.
22:22Oh, what the hell?
22:23Go ahead.
22:24He won't hurt you.
22:30Overarchingly, how do you feel about your career as you look back?
22:34Overarchingly, I don't know.
22:35I have no idea.
22:36It's still going.
22:38It's still ongoing.
22:39Ask me that five years from now.
22:41I can't stand at a distance to see.
22:45It is what I do.
22:46I'm supposed to go into rehearsals for a play at the end of summer.
22:52Hopefully that happens or it doesn't happen.
22:56So I'm still, I still have my head down.
22:59And I'm always hoping to get better.
23:02Overarchingly, I'm always hoping to get better.
23:03Overarchingly, I'm always hoping to get better.
23:05Overarchingly, I'm always hoping to get better.
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