Sally Margaret Field was born on November 6, 1946, and is a gifted movie actress and director.

She is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and she has been nominated for a Tony Award and two BAFTA Awards.

Field began her professional career on television, starring in the short-lived comedies Gidget (1965–1966), The Flying Nun (1967–1970), and The Girl with Something Extra (1973–1974). In 1976, she garnered critical acclaim for her performance in the miniseries Sybil, for which she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.

Her film debut was as an extra in Moon Pilot (1962), but it escalated during the 1970s with starring roles including Stay Hungry (1976), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Heroes (1977), The End (1978), and Hooper (1978).

Her career further expanded during the 1980s, receiving the Academy Award for Best Actress for both Norma Rae (1979) and Places in the Heart (1984). She also co-starred in Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Murphy's Romance (1985), Steel Magnolias (1989), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and Forrest Gump (1994).

In the 2000s, she 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 and the following year made her stage debut with Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?

From 2006 to 2011, she portrayed Nora Walker on the ABC television drama Brothers & Sisters, for which she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2007. She starred as Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln (2012), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

And she portrayed Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) as well as its 2014 sequel, with the first being her highest grossing release. In 2015, she portrayed the title character in Hello, My Name Is Doris, for which she was nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in a Comedy.

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

As a director, Field is known for the television film The Christmas Tree (1996), an episode of the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, and the feature film Beautiful (2000). In 2014, she was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 2019 received the Kennedy Center Honors.

Early life

Sally Field was born in Pasadena, California, to Margaret Field (née Morlan; an actress) and Richard Dryden Field. Her father was an army officer. They divorced in 1950.

Through her maternal grandmother's genealogical line, Field is a descendant of Mayflower passenger and colonial governor William Bradford, her tenth great-grandfather.

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.

Career

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 canceled 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 come by.

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).

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 1973, Field was cast in a starring role opposite John Davidson in the short-lived series The Girl with Something Extra from 1973 to 1974. Following the series' cancellation, Field studied at the Actors Studio with the acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Strasberg became a mentor to the actress, helping her to move past her television image of the girl next door. It was during this period that Field divorced her first husband in 1975.

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 multiple personality disorder earned her a best dramatic actress Emmy Award in 1977 and enabled her to break through the typecasting of her sitcom work.

Also in 1977, she co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Reed in the year's #2 highest-grossing film, Smokey And The Bandit.

In 1979, Field played the same named union organizer in Norma Rae, a successful 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, ms 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.

Field appeared with Reynolds in three more films: The End, Hooper, and Smokey And The Bandit II. In 1981 she continued to change her image, playing a foul-mouthed prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the South-set film Back Roads. She received Golden Globe nominations for the 1981 drama Absence Of Malice and the 1982 comedy Kiss Me Goodbye.

Then came a second Oscar for her starring role in the 1984 drama Places In The Heart. Field's gushing acceptance speech is well remembered and has since been both admired as earnest and parodied as excessive. She said, "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!"

Field was actually making a humorous reference to dialog from her role in Norma Rae, but many people missed the connection. Field even parodied herself when she delivered the line (often misquoted as "You like me, you really like me!") in a Charles Schwab financial commercial.

In 1985, she co-starred with James Garner in the romantic comedy fan favorite Murphy's Romance. In A&E's biography of Garner, she cited her on-screen kiss with Garner as the best cinematic kiss she ever had.

The following year, Field appeared on the cover of the March 1986 issue of Playboy magazine, in which she was the interview subject.

She did not appear as a pictorial subject in the magazine, although she did wear the classic leotard and bunny-ears outfit on the cover. That year, she received the Women in Film Crystal Award. For her role as matriarch M'Lynn in the film version of Steel Magnolias (1989), she was nominated for a 1990 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress.

Field had supporting roles in a number of other movies, including Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), in which she played the wife of Robin Williams's character and the love interest of Pierce Brosnan's character.