Sally Field

Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American actress.

Known for her extensive work on screen and stage, she has received many accolades throughout her career spanning five decades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two British Academy Film Awards.

Sally Field was born on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California, to Margaret Field (née Morlan), an actress, and Richard Dryden Field, who served in the Army during World War II.

Her brother is Richard D. Field, a physicist and an academic.

Her parents were divorced in 1950; on January 21, 1952, in Tijuana Mexico, her mother married Jock Mahoney, an actor and a stuntman.

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).

Field began her career on television, starring in the comedies Gidget (1965–1966), The Flying Nun (1967–1970), and The Girl with Something Extra (1973–1974).

Field got her start on television as the boy-crazy surfer girl in the 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.

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, finding respectable roles difficult to obtain.

She made several guest television appearances through the mid-1970s, including a role on 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 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).

In 1973, Field was cast in a starring role opposite John Davidson in the short-lived series The Girl with Something Extra that aired from 1973 to 1974.

Following the series' cancellation, Field studied at the Actors Studio with acting teacher Lee Strasberg.

Strasberg became a mentor to Field, helping her move past her television image of the girl next door.

During this period, Field divorced her first husband in 1975.

She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the NBC television film Sybil (1976).

Soon after studying with Strasberg, Field landed the title role in the 1976 television film Sybil, based on the book by Flora Rheta Schreiber.

Her dramatic portrayal of a young woman afflicted with dissociative identity disorder earned her an 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.

She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress for Norma Rae (1979), and Places in the Heart (1984).

In 1979, she played the titular union organizer in Norma Rae, a 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."

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.

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), and Forrest Gump (1994).

In the 2000s, Field returned to television 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.

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.

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 an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination.

She portrayed Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its 2014 sequel.

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.

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).

Field returned to the stage after an absence of 15 years with the 2017 revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

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 classmates included financier Michael Milken, actress Cindy Williams, and talent agent Michael Ovitz.

She made her debut on the West End theatre in the revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons in 2019.