Perenially young Sally Field

August 21, 3:00 PMLady Boomer ExaminerDena Kouremetis

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                                                                       Sally Field in 2005

She's the girl everyone would want to take home to meet thee family. Everyone -- not just men -- because even as a Boomer, Sally Field exudes that cheerleader, girl-next-door, girlfriend confidante cutie that you just never hear anything negative about.

Those rosy cheeks were born in Pasadena in 1946.  Hard to even imagine Sally Field being 62 years old, isn’t it? Especially when she started out as TV’s Gidget in 1965 and then spread her celestial wings as Sister Bertrille in the Flying Nun in 1967.  (In an interview, however, she admitted that she would rather have stayed the surfer girl than don the religious garb). 

The diminutive (5’2”) Field made guest appearances on other TV shows as well, with a recurring one on Alia Smith and Jones. But the typecasting she received as a result of her comedic roles made it difficult to be taken seriously for dramatic ones.  It was, however the character she was tasked to play in the 1976 TV film Sybil that enabled her to bring down the walls that had contained her in comedy.  Portraying a woman afflicted with multiple personality disorder in the film, Field won her first Emmy.

She went on to co-star with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit, but got the attention of film critics and fans alike when taking on the role as a union organizer in Norma Rae.  In his review of the film for the New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the actress. “Norma Rae is a seriously concerned contemporary drama illuminated by some very good performances and one, Miss Field’s, is spectacular,” he wrote.  

Not one to sit still for long, Field won acting awards at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the the Academy Award for Best Actress.  Places in the Heart won her yet another Oscar in 1985, for which she is well remembered for her guileless, emotionally spilling, "I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!"   The line has been paraphrased and parodied many times over now, even by Field herself. 

She played a more mature, matriarchal character in the film version of Steel Magnolias in 1989) and was subsequently nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. Other supporting roles include her role as Robin Williams’ ex-wife in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and love interest to Pierce Brosnan.  Only ten years older than Tom Hanks in the movie Forrest Gump , Field played his mother in the 1994 movie. 

Field’s romantic life has been diverse.  She has two sons by Steven Craig, whom she married in 1968; Peter Craig is a novelist, and other son, Eli, is an an actor and director. The couple divorced in 1975, shortly before Field began a live-in, 3-year relationship with Major Daniel M. Yoder, USAF. She was romantically involved with Burt Reynolds for many years, co-starring with him in Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II and The End. She subsequently married film producer Alan Greisman, with whom she had one son, Sam, but the couple divorced in 1993.

Obstacles became Field’s raison d’être and in 2005 was quoted as saying,  “I MUST go to what desperately frightens me – the chance of failure,” attesting to the many roles she was to take on after being typecast as TV’s, The Flying Nun. “It was an important journey to change that. It made me learn some really valuable lessons, and that is that if I wasn't where I wanted to be, it was because I wasn't good enough, period. Period. It wasn't because they weren't letting me in the door." (Achievement.org)