Sally Field was not the actual love of Burt Reynolds’ life.
Three years before his passing, in 2015, Reynolds gave her that name. On the set of 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit, their romance began, and he gushed about how much he missed her and how one of his greatest regrets in life was not making it work.
The actress had a very distinctive viewpoint.
He was not someone I could be around, she said in a recent interview with Variety. He just wasn’t the right guy for me.
Field, 75, asserted about Reynolds’ public statements that “I wasn’t the more significant person to him than he had assumed in his reimagining of things. Reynolds died at age 82 after suffering a heart attack. He only wanted to be the owner of what he lacked. I simply didn’t want to deal with that.
Twelve days after Reynolds passed away, on September 18, 2018, Field released her memoir In Pieces, in which she discussed their complicated relationship. She described his drug use and said that he was abusive and domineering while filming Smokey and the Bandit. She also claimed that he took barbiturates, Percodan, and Valium. (Reynolds’ second wife, Loni Anderson, detailed his drug use in her book and asserted that it led to his physical abuse against her.)
For five years, Reynolds and Field had irregular relationships while working together to make four movies. In the book, Field claimed that her stuntman and actor stepfather, Jock Mahoney, assaulted her until she was 14 years old and that she later tried to recreate the connection with Reynolds. Someone once said, “She was exorcising something that needed exorcising.”
Upon Reynolds’ passing, Field, who had two marriages that ended in divorce, released a nice statement. Yet, she chose not to attend his funeral.
Field said in an interview with Variety that she didn’t worry about writing so frankly about her relationship with Reynolds because she “didn’t think I was going to publish it.” Field’s biography took her seven years to complete.
Field talked about her extended Hollywood career and how it “can really kick the feces out of you” in the interview. Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin are her co-stars in the road trip movie 80 for Brady, on which she is now working.
She became famous on television in 1965 as Gidget, but while playing the Flying Nun, she aspired for acting roles in movies (1967 to 1970). It was work, she said about Flying Nun. I also improved my survival skills. Understanding how to handle both joyful and bad events is essential. I just needed to get to work, give it my all, and focus. And it’s during those times that you realize why you’re eating so much and trying to hide it at the same time. You’re trying to keep your depression hidden. But, at that point in my life, I lacked both the knowledge and capacity to comprehend what was occurring to me.
I had to sort of fight my way out of a door because they wouldn’t let me through it, Field said in HBO’s Winning Time: The Origins of the Lakers Dynasty. And it merely made me labor constantly and accept assignments I might not have otherwise accepted.
Smokey and the Bandit helped her become well-known, and she later won two Academy Awards—the first for Norma Rae in 1979 and the second for Places in the Heart in 1984. Yes, she experienced sexual harassment along the road. (“Yes, without a doubt, I have. Yes, many times and in different ways. Some horrors are worse than others. She also spoke about pay equity. I never had the luxury of saying, “Oh, I’m going to hold out for more money,” because I had to sustain myself. I believed I was a small child from a less fortunate home. Please give me whatever you have.
Field also talked about how the famous “Places in the Heart” Oscars speech is often mistranslated as “You enjoy me. “I can’t argue with the fact that you like me, at this very moment, you like me,” she said. You genuinely like me.
She stated, “Sometimes I want to hit them in the nose, but mostly because they never say the context of what I said previously,” when she heard it misquoted.
“I acknowledge that my career has not gone according to the norm and that I have struggled, but for this short period of time, I must permit myself to know and feel your liking for me,” she clarified. I also could have spoken more gracefully. I should have referred to your “appreciation” of my effort. The word escapes me now. During that small moment, the fact that I succeeded was all that mattered to me. I completed. I thanked them for picking it up after I had it figured out. Several of them didn’t know what they were discussing. They had no concept of what it was like to perform and expose one’s nose, ears, and legs for ridicule and judgment. They don’t understand how that feels. They’re not there, in the arena. Deodorant is being handed out in the stands.
